failure to take arguments to their logical conclusion
Informal arguments often rely on perceived lack of alternatives to arrive at the conclusions, and thus even if you don't have any alternatives you can't trust it.
E.g. "we both seen blerg, and the only way blerg could happen is because of blurp, and therefore, blurp must have happened", that's only as trustworthy as your enumeration of the ways blerg could happen is complete, which is usually not at all.
Frequently, otherwise smart (i.e. high IQ individuals), especially those with little training in formal proofs, keep insisting that unless you come up with an alternative cause for blerg, you must believe in blurp, and get rather pissed off at the insolence of being dubious about the blurp without providing an alternative cause for the blerg. (Then when you provide an alternative cause they go on how the blurp must have a probability of ~50%)
This post is to raise a question about the demographics of rationality: Is rationality something that can appeal to low-IQ people as well?
I don't mean in theory, I mean in practice. From what I've seen, people who are concerned about rationality (in the sense that it has on LW, OvercomingBias, etc.) are overwhelmingly high-IQ.
Meanwhile, HPMOR and other stories in the "rationality genre" appeal to me, and to other people I know. However I wonder: Perhaps part of the reason they appeal to me is that I think of myself as a smart person, and this allows me to identify with the main characters, cheer when they think their way to victory, etc. If I thought of myself as a stupid person, then perhaps I would feel uncomfortable, insecure, and alienated while reading the same stories.
So, I have four questions:
1.) Do we have reason to believe that the kind of rationality promoted on LW, OvercomingBias, CFAR, etc. appeals to a fairly normal distribution of people around the IQ mean? Or should we think, as I suggested, that people with lower IQ's are disposed to find the idea of being rational less attractive?
2.) Ditto, except replace "being rational" with "celebrating rationality through stories like HPMOR." Perhaps people think that rationality is a good thing in much the same way that being wealthy is a good thing, but they don't think that it should be celebrated, or at least they don't find such celebrations appealing.
3.) Supposing #1 and #2 have the answers I am suggesting, why?
4.) Making the same supposition, what are the implications for the movement in general?
Note: I chose to use IQ in this post instead of a more vague term like "intelligence," but I could easily have done the opposite. I'm happy to do whichever version is less problematic.