"The level of expertise that most rationalists strive to develop is not on a par with the skills of a professional mathematician - more like that of a strong casual amateur." Are we to assume that professional mathematicians are always to be regarded as the ultimate practitioners of rationality? Given the number of dead ends achieved through pure mathematic theory in attempts to forumulate 'a theory of everything' is it not worth considering althernative methods? As to 'sequence reruns', 'meta discussions' etc agreed definitions of these terms are I suggest not to be taken for granted.
Are we to assume that professional mathematicians are always to be regarded as the ultimate practitioners of rationality?
You're misreading the analogy. The quote means that rationalists aren't aspiring to be as good at rationality as mathematicians already are at mathematics (not rationality).
Today's post, A Sense That More Is Possible was originally published on 13 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Raising the Sanity Waterline, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.