People have irrational beliefs. When people come to lesswrong and talk about them, many say "oops" and change their mind. However, often they keep their decidedly irrational beliefs despite conversation with other Lesswrongers who often point out where they went wrong, and how they went wrong, and perhaps a link to the Sequence post where the specific mistake is discussed in more detail.

Some examples:

http://lesswrong.com/user/Jake_Witmer/

This guy was told he was being Mindkilled. Many people explained to him what was wrong with his thinking, and why it was wrong, and how it was wrong, and what he could do, and all manner of helpful advice and discussion. He rejected it, left the site and hasn't been seen since.

Another: http://lesswrong.com/user/911truther/

Not much to say. Eliezer the Wise and Always Correct himself declared him a troll.

Another: http://lesswrong.com/user/sam0345/

Generally pretty irrational dude. Asked to leave lesswrong by the powerful and great Eliezer because his comments were so bad.

Another, different example:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lv/the_wannabe_rational/

MrHen had great insights into rationality and seemed to be a well upvoted member of lesswrong. He also believed in God. He was around in 2010 and again in 2011 for a bit, and hasn't posted in a while now.

Perhaps a more controversial example:

http://lesswrong.com/user/Mitchell_Porter/?count=50&after=t1_5tl5

Around Feb 3rd Mitchell Porter brought a debate about colour, the mind, dualism, and similar thoughts. I'm actually not sure if this was resolved, but there seemed to be some small consensus (kinda) that he was talking the Crackpot Offer. This was suggested to him.

Mitchell Porter is still around, and is an active user that seems to have lots of useful insights to many things. he is very well upvoted.

To any of these people, I am sorry for mentioning you guys like this if you are offended or anything like that.

So why am I bringing this up?

Well, people fail at being rational all the time. However, there are countless examples like these, from people who turned up, got insanely downvoted, then left, and regular users who otherwise get lots of karma and are very rational.

The main thing I wanted to do was just POINT IT OUT and see if anyone wants to comment on the fact that this happens, in LessWrong, surely the place where they are MOST likely to see why and how they are wrong.

What does this mean that so many people do not? What does it mean that such failures happen so often that I could choose random examples off the top of my head? I mean, some of the things it means are obvious, but this pains me and I need it to discussed somewhere because I find it important and I think that more people should be aware that this happens and should make more concerned, perhaps vapid comments about it.

Also, thinking of upgrading to discussion post. Tell me if that's a bad idea.

If you have read this, please tell me what you think.