Re your 1st paragraph: you have a much higher opinion of human rationality than myself. I hope you're right, but I doubt it.
Re your second paragraph: I am currently watching Kino's Journey, and will respond later. Thanks for the reference, it sounds interesting.
Human rationality can be trained and improved, it's not an innate feature. To do that is part of the entire point of this site.
I hope you enjoy it. It is very interesting. Beware of generalizing from fictional evidence... but fiction is sometimes all we have to explore certain hypotheticals...
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules: