I'm wondering: how many people have noticed changes in the quality of their interpersonal reactions after becoming 'more rational' than they were before learning about applied rationality? How would those changes in quality be judged from both outside and inside views?
(I use quotes, as each person will have a different metric by which they will judge an increase in rationality - and I can't think of a standard metric everyone can use for purposes of answering this query. To mitigate this variable, please state the metric you're using.)
LW doesn't seem to have a discussion of the article Epiphany Addiction, by Chris at succeedsocially. First paragraph:
I like that article because it describes a dangerous failure mode of smart people. One example was the self-help blog of Phillip Eby (pjeby), where each new post seemed to bring new amazing insights, and after a while you became jaded. An even better, though controversial, example could be Eliezer's Sequences, if you view them as a series of epiphanies about AI research that didn't lead to much tangible progress. (Please don't make that statement the sole focus of discussion!)
The underlying problem seems to be that people get a rush of power from neat-sounding realizations, and mistake that feeling for actual power. I don't know any good remedy for that, but being aware of the problem could help.