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Jay_Schweikert comments on Only say 'rational' when you can't eliminate the word - Less Wrong
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So, when we're distinguishing "optimal car-buying" from "rational car-buying," is the point that using the word "rational" is somehow wrong and distorts or confuses the intended message? Or is really just that we want to save the word for when we need it most, so as to safeguard against death-spiraling around "rationality"? I'm not trying to suggest that the latter wouldn't be a good enough reason, but I'm trying to figure out if Eliezer's point is about being precise with this concept on a substantive level, or more about community norms, rhetorical efficacy, and sanity prophylactics. The last sentence of the OP suggests the latter is at least in play, but I'm trying to figure out whether this issue suggests some problem with what we mean by the word in the first place.
For me it's this: From a pragmatics perspective "the rational way to buy a car is..." repeats information-- when a person shares a method of doing something everyone assumes the speaker thinks that method is rational. Repeating it is redundant and redundant speech acts have a tendency to come off as arrogant and squicky. It's what you do when you talk down to someone.
It's also just sloppy to use words with connotations that don't apply when a better word exists. "Rational" connotes some general discussion of cognitive algorithms.
So I suspect it's a combination of a)sloppiness is bad and b)sloppiness looks and sounds bad
But then what about "optimal car-buying"? Surely if someone is taking the time to describe how to buy a car, they probably think it's the optimal method, or at least as close as they can get. So "optimal" would seem to be redundant too, and yet we would seem to prefer one over the other, even though they basically mean the same thing thing in this context.
Now, there may be some arrogance built into "rational" that's not present in "optimal," but I don't see the issue as one of redundancy. Rather, it seems like "rational" can sometimes come off as an assertion of superiority over another -- i.e., something like a man telling a female colleague that she needs to be more rational.
More precisely indicates we want to optimise a decision over a particular utility function, or at least set of desires.
Something that is not optimal is merely 'suboptimal' whereas something that is not rational is irrational.
Things that are not rational can also be be arational. Most obviously terminal values.
I think the objection to rational stems largely from this. Rationalism has a negative connotation in society thanks to, among other things, Hollywood and Ayn Rand.
See also: Straw Vulcan
My take on it is - "rationality" isn't the point. Don't try to do things "rationally" (as though it's a separate thing), try to do them right.
It's actually something we see with the nuts that occasionally show up here - they're obsessed with the notion of rationality as a concrete process or something, insisting (e.g.) that we don't need to look at the experimental evidence for a theory if it is "obviously false when subjected to rational thought", or that it's bad to be "too rational".