I find that sort of mentality to be amazingly depressing. If the world were like that, why get out of the bed in the morning?
Because I can't cook bacon from in bed. Bacon is delicious!
There is no rule "If I understand something about the world that differs from a simple ideology then I must make myself sad". So I don't do that.
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.—Eugene Gendlin
As a matter of fact, that's wrong when it comes to knowledge about humans; your expectations about a human (or rather, the signalling thereof) will change how said human behaves. Your beliefs (or rather, others' perception thereof) change reality. If you expect someone to be good, they may well feel compelled to meet that expectation. If you expect people to respect you and find you atractive, all alse being equal, they will be more likely to find you respectable and attractive.
And if you expect people to be selfish assholes whose kindness is nothing more than a complex deception of themselves and each other, and they pick up on that, you're more likely to get a treatment that fits that description.
This is my first attempt at starting a casual conversation on LW where people don't have to worry about winning or losing points, and can just relax and have social fun together.
So, Big Bang Theory. That series got me wondering. It seems to be about "geeks", and not the basement-dwelling variety either; they're highly successful and accomplished professionals, each in their own field. One of them has been an astronaut, even. And yet, everything they ever accomplish amounts to absolutely nothing in terms of social recognition or even in terms of personal happiness. And the thing is, it doesn't even get better for their "normal" counterparts, who are just as miserable and petty.
Consider, then; how would being rationalists would affect the characters on this show? The writing of the show relies a lot on laughing at people rather than with them; would rationalist characters subvert that? And how would that rationalist outlook express itself given their personalities? (After all, notice how amazingly different from each other Yudkowsky, Hanson, and Alicorn are, just to name a few; they emphasize rather different things, and take different approaches to both truth-testing and problem-solving).
Note: this discussion does not need to be about rationalism. It can be a casual, normal discussion about the series. Relax and enjoy yourselves.
But the reason I brought up that series is that its characters are excellent examples of high intelligence hampered by immense irrationality. The apex of this is represented by Dr. Sheldon Cooper, who is, essentially, a complete fundamentalist over every single thing in his life; he applies this attitude to everything, right down to people's favorite flavor of pudding: Raj is "axiomatically wrong" to prefer tapioca, because the best pudding is chocolate. Period. This attitude makes him a far, far worse scientist than he thinks, as he refuses to even consider any criticism of his methods or results.