Well. We should probably distinguish between what rationality is about and what LW/rationalist communities are about. Rationality-the-mental-art is, I think, about "making optimal plays" at whatever you're doing, which leads to winning (I prefer the former because it avoids the problem where you might only win probabilistically, which may mean you never actually win). But the community is definitely not based around "we're each trying to win on our own and maximize our own utility functions" or anything like that. The community is interested in truth seeking and exploring rationality and how to apply it and all of those things.
Evolution doesn't really apply. If some species could choose the way they want to evolve rationally over millions of years I expect they would clobber the competition at any goal they seek to achieve. Evolution is a big probabilistic lottery with no individuals playing it.
If you're trying to win at "achieve X", and lying is the best way to do that, then you can lie. If you're trying to win at "achieve X while remaining morally upright, including not lying", or whatever, then you don't like. Choosing to lie or not parameterizes the game. In either game, there's a "best way to play", and rationality is the technique for finding it.
Of course it's true that model-building may not be the highest return activity towards a particular goal. If you're trying to make as much money as possible, you'll probably benefit much more from starting a business and re-investing the profits asap and ignoring rationality entirely. But doing so with rational approaches will still beat doing so without rational approachs. If you don't any particular goal, or you're just generally trying to learn how to win more at things, or be generally more efficacious, then learning rationality abstractly is a good way to proceed.
"Spending time to learn rationality" certainly isn't the best play towards most goals, but it appears to be a good one if you get high returns from it or if you have many long-term goals you don't know how to work on. (That's my feeling at least. I could be wrong, and someone who's better at finding good strategies will end up doing better than me.)
In summary, "rationality is about winning" means if you're put in situations where you have goals, rational approaches tend to win. Statistically. Like, it might take a long time before rational approaches win. There might not be enough time for it to happen. It's the 'asymptotic behavior".
An example: if everyone was caring a lot about chess, and your goal was to be the best at chess, you can get a lot of the way by playing a lot of chess. But if someone comes along who also played a lot of games, they might start beating. So you work to beat them, and they work to beat you, and you start training. Who eventually wins? Of course there are mental faculties, memory capabilities, maybe patience, emotional things at work. But the idea is, you'll become the best player you can become given enough time (theoretically) via being maximally rational. If there are other techniques that are better than rationality, well, rationality will eventually find them - the whole point is that finding the best techniques is precisely rational. It doesn't mean you will win, there are cosmic forces against you. It means you're optimizing your ability to win.
It's analogous to how, if a religion managed to find actually convincing proof of a divine force in the universe, that force would immediately be the domain of science. There are no observable phenomena that aren't the domain of science. So the only things that can be religious are things you can't possible prove occur. Equivalently, it's always rational to use the best strategy. So if you found a new strategy, that would become the rationalists' choice to. So the rationalist will do at least as well as you, and if you're not jumping to better strategies when they come along, the rationalist will win. (On average, over all time.)
Well. We should probably distinguish between what rationality is about and what LW/rationalist communities are about.
Rationalists aren't about rationality? Back in 2007 I don't think there was a split. Maybe we need to rename rationalists if "rationality is winning" is entrenched.
LWperson: I'm a rationalist, I really care about AIrisk.
PersonWhohasReadSomeRationalityStuff: So you will lie to get whatever you want, why should I think AIrisk is as important as you say and give you money?
LWPerson: Sigh...
...Rationality-the-mental-art is, I think,
This sites strapline is refining the art of human rationality. It assumes there is something worth talking about.
However I've been seeing "rationality as winning" bare of any context. I think the two things are in conflict.
Let me take the old favourite of the twelve virtues of rationality as representative of the arts (although I could probably find similar situations where any proposed tool doesn't win). Can I find contexts in which humans will not win if they adopt these virtues?
1) Curiousity. There are lots of instances in history where curiousity may have killed you, cramping your winning. Wandering in the wrong part of town, trying out the wrong berry. Curiousity can also be not useful if most facts are boring or useless. I am happy to be ignorant of many facts about the world (who won various sports games, colour of peoples socks).
2&3&4) Relinquishment/lightness/evenness. You might avoid going see the evidence or disbelieve evidence presented by someone you suspect of being a clever charlatan. If you "see" a woman in box get cut in half you shouldn't automatically think that the magician can actually do magic. There is no magic data to evidence converter. See also defying the data.
5) Argument. This is not a useful virtue if you are alone on a desert island. It also might not be worth engaging with people who are trying to waste your time or distract you from something else. See also trolls.
6) Empiricism. This is great if you've got plenty of time. Collecting data always takes time and energy, if you need these things to survive, I wouldn't recommend empiricism.
7) Simplicity: Simplicity is predictable. If you involved in a contest with someone you may need to chose to be unpredictable in order to win.
8) Humbleness: This is a sign of weakness and may be exploited by your opponents in some social situations.
9 & 10) Perfection & Precision: There is an aphorism for this. In social games you don't need to be perfect or infinitely precise just better or faster than your opponent. Anything more is wasted effort.
11) Scholarship: This doesn't make much sense for people on the poverty line.
That said:
All the virtues makes sense when the context is trying to figure out something very hard and important with other people who are also trying to figure out the same thing and you've got a fair amount of time and resources, with no immediate threats to your lives.
Which was the context of the people who were originally made the site, but if rationality is supposed to be a general recipe for winning, the art has to be contextualized away into pretty much nothing. What art covers working on your farm close to starvation and also trying to figure out artificial intelligence's impact on the world?
I personally want to get back to that original context. I think that discussions of rationality are far more fruitful between people who share the same contexts and constraints.