I was curious about the second link. The gist appears to be:
In other words, even when the people speaking loudest or most eloquently don’t intentionally discourage participation from people who are not like them... entertaining ‘politically incorrect’ or potentially harmful ideas out loud, in public (so to speak) signals people who would be impacted by said ideas that they are not welcome.
I think the idea is that rationalists are more likely to entertain potentially offensive ideas under the premise that traditional morals/boundaries/taboos may interfere or bias totally clear, unflinching rational thinking.
Yup! And Arthur thinks some ideas (racism, sexism, etc) are harmful to discuss, partly because the discussion legitimizes them.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/54853/our-interview-jeopardy-champion-arthur-chu
I'm not sure I've ever seen such a compelling "rationality success story". There's so much that's right here.
The part that really grabs me about this is that there's no indication that his success has depended on "natural" skill or talent. And none of the strategies he's using are from novel research. He just studied the "literature" and took the results seriously. He didn't arbitrarily deviate from the known best practice based on aesthetics or intuition. And he kept a simple, single-minded focus on his goal. No lost purposes here --- just win as much money as possible, bank the winnings, and use it to self-insure. It's rationality-as-winning, plain and simple.