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David_Gerard comments on Self-skepticism: the first principle of rationality - Less Wrong
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I did once suggest a similar heuristic; but I feel the need to point out that there are many people in this world with track records of achievement, including, like, Mitt Romney or something, and that the heuristic is supposed to be, "Pay attention to rationalists with track records outside rationality", e.g. Dawkins and Feynman.
See, even as no fan of his whatsoever, I suspect Mitt Romney is a very smart fellow I would be foolish to pay no heed to in the general case, and who probably has a fair bit of tried and tested knowledge he's gained in the pursuit of thinking about thinking. Even given qualms I have about the quality of some things he's been quoted as saying of late, but then presidential campaigns select for bullshit.
There are too many accomplished people in the world contradicting each other to not filter it somehow.
My filtering criteria (maybe flawed) is "people whose biographies are still read after a few decades". This way "non-rationalist" like Churchill gets read; looking for "rationalists" will end up selecting people too similar to you yourself to learn interesting things.