it would appear to the average person that most rational types are only moderately successful while all the extremely wealthy people are irrational. due to not seeing the whole sample space (that larger proportion of rational people enjoy moderate success vs a tiny fraction of irrational people who enjoy major success) I don't think a lot of our arguments gain traction with people. Most people infer from outliers as a matter of course.

Now combine this with the idea that signaling rationality is also signaling that we think we deserve more status and decision making capability than we have (remember in politics people act as if we live in bands of 100 and political ideas actually mean something) and it starts making sense why we make people nervous and they might reject us out of hand.

So am I just ragging on rationality, trotting out a flawed reason not to be rational? No. I'm saying that something we know a lot about applies to us as well: successful ideologies are the ones that allow people to signal palatable goals while pursuing their selfish top level goal (grab resources, have children) (and that applies even if they're unaware of their top level goal vis-a-vis adaptation executor not fitness maximizer). We have to keep this in mind while proselytizing. A bare appeal to "achieving your goals more effectively" doesn't work if the person knows on some level that their stated goals are not their actual goals. They don't need a system for achieving their stated goals.