I think of "rationalist" as "one who applies rationality to real life". By that definition, I've identified as rationalist since age 2 at the latest (I said identified, not "been any good at it"). LW culture is hard to grasp. Politics is a minefield, there's apparently a terrible feminism problem, there seem to be two not so distinct factions: people who want more instrumental rationality, and people who get annoyed by this and only want to discuss philosophy. You have to read lots of things not optimized for keeping readers from falling asleep (I'm not talking about the sequences; I actually stay awake through those) in order to have the necessary background to participate in many discussions; I'm quite terrified of missteps (I make them quite often). However, I know what I'm reading will be thoroughly vetted for truthfulness most of the time, and in spite of the utter failure to demonstrate rationality superpowers, applying science and reasoning to reality for good results is encouraged and seemingly the main thrust of the whole site. It's obviously far from optimal, otherwise we'd have tons of success stories rather than something trying very hard not to be a technoCult, but those aren't really detraction enough given the absence of a better alternative. That, and solving CAPCHAs is quite inconvenient and so I'm kinda selective about where I register, so I registered here instead of Reddit and that means this is the only place I'm going to be able to talk about HPMoR. :P (Also, I like emoticons an awful lot considering that I can't see them. I haven't encountered any emoticons on LW. In any other comment, I would have been much more wary of using one. ??? )