...many people's lives aren't much improved by rationality training.

The outlook for rationality training may be brighter than you think. I've been looking at a number of materials aimed at businessmen who want greater success, and a lot of the techniques described and used by successful businessmen bear a strong resemblance to the sort of things you read on Less Wrong. For example, consider this passage in Peter Drucker's book The Effective Executive, describing Alfred P. Sloan, a legendary CEO of GM:

Alfred P. Sloan is reported to have said at a meeting of one of his top committees: "Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here." Everyone around the table nodded assent. "Then," continued Mr. Sloan, "I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about."

Sloan was anything but an "intuitive" decision-maker. He always emphasized the need to test opinions against facts and the need to make absolutely sure that one did not start out with the conclusion and then look for the facts that would support it. But he knew that the right decision demands adequate disagreement.

So here we have talk of the need to consider multiple alternatives, the importance of not just getting one side of a story, the need to test hypotheses against reality, and the importance of not starting with the bottom line... all familiar topics in our community.