I could be selling myself short. And I'm certainly not surrounded by rationalist superheroes -- quite the opposite, in fact.

I should have been more specific. You're not so much famous here for how rational you are, but for the freakishly outlying amount of time you're capable of devoting to a particular kind of activity: studying stuff.

I wonder how much of that sort of sustained focus is just something you were born with, and whether it inclines you to activities that require such focus. Yes, you were Christian for 21 years, but you stopped being one in part because you were able to focus enough to read lots and lots of books disconfirming your beliefs -- itself an extremely unusual thing to do.

Then again, plenty of people with outlying levels of studiousness don't become rationalists. Despite some evidence to the contrary, monasteries probably aren't breeding grounds for atheism. And plenty of people with low mental energy have strong bullshit detectors.

So I guess I don't know.