You have declared that you aren't interested in talking about rationality

I haven't and I have been discussing it extensively.

Can we please stop doing this?

You and wedrifid aren't actually disagreeing here about what you've been discussing, or what you're interested in discussing, or what you've declared that you aren't interested in discussing. You're disagreeing about what the word "rationality" means. You use it to refer to a thing that you have been discussing extensively (and which wedrifid would agree you have been discussing extensively), he uses it to refer to something else (as does almost everyone reading this discussion).

And you both know this perfectly well, but here you are going through the motions of conversation just as if you were talking about the same thing. It is at best tedious, and runs the risk of confusing people who aren't paying careful enough attention into thinking you're having a real substantive disagreements rather than a mere definitional dispute.

If we can't agree on a common definition (which I'm convinced by now we can't), and we can't agree not to use the word at all (which I suspect we can't), can we at least agree to explicitly indicate which definition we're using when we use the word? Otherwise whatever value there may be in the discussion is simply going to get lost in masturbatory word-play.

So much for "maybe".

I see your policy is to now merely heap on more abuse on me. Expect that I will be downvoting such in silence from now on.

There are criteria for culthood. I think some people here could be displaying some evidence of them -- for instance trying to avoid the very possibiliy of having to update.

I think I've been more willing and ready to update on opinions (political, scientific, ethical, other) in the two years since I joined LessWrong, than I remember myself updating in the ten years before it. Does that make it an anti-cult then?

And I've seen more actual disagreement in LessWrong than I've seen on any other forum. Indeed I notice that most insults and mockeries addressed at LessWrong indeed seem to actually boil down to the concept that we allow too different positions here. Too different positions (e.g. support of cryonics and opposition of cryonics both, feminism and men's rights both, libertarianism and authoritarianism both) can be actually spoken about without immediately being drowned in abuse and scorn, as would be the norm in other forums.

As such e.g. fanatical Libertarians insult LessWrong as totalitarian leftist because 25% or so of LessWrongers identifying as socialists, and leftists insult LessWrong as being a libertarian ploy (because a similar percentage identifies as libertarian)

But feel free to tell me of a forum that allows more disagreement, political, scientific, social, whatever than LessWrong does.

If you can't find such, I'll update towards the direction that LessWrong is even less "cultish" than I thought.

Would it then need to acquire the knowledge that post-utopians experience colonial alienation? That heaps of 91 pebbles are incorrect? I think not. At most it would need to understand that "When pebbles are sorted into heaps of 91, pebble-sorters scatter those heaps" or "When I say that colonial alienation is caused by being a post-utopian, my professor reacts as though I had made a true statement." or "When a human experiences certain phenomena, they try to avoid their continued experience". These statements have predictive power. The reason that an instrumentally rational agent tries to acquire new information is to increase their predictive power. If human behavior can be modeled without empathy, then this agent can maximize its instrumental rationality while ignoring it. As to your last bullet point, if I may be so bold, I doubt you actually believe it. Having a rule like "Modify your utility function every time it might be useful" seems rather irrational. Most possible modifications to a clipper's utility function will not have a positive effect, because most possible states of the world do not have maximal paperclips.

The two cases presented are not entirely comparable. If Jane's utility function is "Maximize Jane's pleasure" then she will choose to not drink in the first problem; the pleasure of non-hangover-having [FOR JANE] exceeding that of [JANE'S] intoxication. Whereas in the second problem Jane is choosing between the absence of a painful death [FOR A COW] and [JANE'S] delicious, juicy hamburger. Since she is not selecting for the strongest preference of every being in the Universe, but rather for herself, she will choose the burger. In terms of which utility function is more instrumentally rational, I'd say that "Maximize Jane's Pleasure" is easier to fulfill than "Maximize Pleasure", and is thus better at fulfilling itself. However, instrumentally rational beings, by my definition, are merely better at fulfilling whatever utility function is given, not at choosing a useful one.