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Roko comments on Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted - Less Wrong
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Fine. Taboo "smart" and say "Could Wednesday be the sort of person who could win a Nobel Prize in science and make great advances in rationality?" In that case, the answer is empirically yes.
Your definition of "smart" seems to be "is an atheist". Since that's not the way most people would use it, and defining it that way serves an agenda by implying that non-atheists can't make great scientific contributions when you translate it into the definition everyone else does, I would change your definition unless you want to confuse people.
Yup. In general usage, "smart" means "good at one or some mental tasks". (Your hypothetical example of Grigori Perelman is roughly analogous to the real example of Srinivasa Ramanujan.)
Isn't that why we have the smart/rational distinction? One way you might see it: smart = generates relevant logical information at a high rate, rational = processes this information in the right way so as to come to true beliefs. (This is vague but I hope you can see the intuition.) Aumann and hypothetical-Perelman both seem able to generate interesting pieces of reasoning better than almost all people, but seem to sometimes have trouble fully stitching together and accepting the implications of the interesting true ones when not disciplined by standards of mathematical proof.
Roko, do you think someone who is raised a theist but has all of your other necessary and (otherwise) jointly sufficient conditions for smartness, and then deconverts, becomes smart in that moment?
Now that Roko's actually explained Roko::smart, we don't need to keep arguing about what counts as "smart" vs. Roko::smart. It's enough to note that when Roko uses the term, the above nonstandard definition is what is meant. Let's not argue over semantics if we don't have to.
I'd say that's an eminently rational policy.
It would seem to follow from this that you don't think the following people can be "smart":
Am I reading you incorrectly?
When I am inclined to call someone childish, it's because I want to express an opinion about their maturity, not their intelligence. Smart people can be immature and mature people can be pretty dim.
Some people really seem to be able to self-deceive without obviously weakening the belief they're deceiving themselves about. It's not a skill I have, but I shouldn't assume that no one has it. I don't think it's obvious at all that these people are necessarily dumb.
Roko, could you give more detail in your reasoning here? Is any religious claim incompatible with observations, or are you thinking of a specific one?