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SoullessAutomaton comments on Instrumental vs. Epistemic -- A Bardic Perspective - Less Wrong
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Why is it irrational to think that the ways things ought to be is different from the way they are?
It's not, of course. But you should be careful not to mix the two up and, for example, give romantic advice based on how you feel relationships ought to work.
I wasn't giving romantic advice. I was giving ethical advice, and my personal data point on why the ethical advice won't necessarily spell romantic doom.
It's not. What's irrational is to let your idea of the way things ought to be prevent you from acting in such a way as to achieve your desired goals given the way things actually are
And if one's goal is "have a relationship that meets criteria X", disregarding criteria X only serves to better attain the goal "have a relationship" which isn't what one actually wanted in the first place.
You seem to be making unwaranted assumptions about other people's goals.
I don't think I'm making any assumptions about other people's goals, I'm just saying that allowing beliefs about the way you'd like the world to be to interfere with success in the actual world is irrational.
In the special case where maintaining your belief is a high priority goal in itself that obviously factors recursively into your decisions in a complicated way. A community of rationalists who give short shrift to religious arguments for god along the lines of 'I wouldn't want to live in a world without god' and that professes a high regard for truth would at least be receptive to the idea that maintaining false beliefs is not a strongly defensible position I would think.
Valuing "a relationship meeting criteria X" is not a belief, it's a term in a utility function. "People would be better off if their relationships had criteria X" is a belief that may or may not be justified. Determining the latter to be false in the general case does not invalidate the former.
Furthermore, your argument seems to be based on the observation "Most relationships do not meet criteria X" which is true but logically irrelevant to either of the above propositions.