As a kid I loved watching Ally Mc Beal because of the way it presented interesting moral dilemas that stimulate myself to think about what's right and wrong.
I know other people who liked Ally Mc Beal because of the way it presents office gossip. You can easily add a love subplot to a rational story.
Perhaps people think that rationality is a good thing in much the same way that being wealthy is a good thing, but they don't think that it should be celebrated, or at least they don't find such celebrations appealing.
A lot of people find the story of badman quite appealing. There are also various TV series who try to present characters who are labeled as intelligent. The problem is that those characters often win because they have an amazing insight for which they don't really have the necessary information and turn out to be right.
The look to the low intelligence person to be rational but not to the high intelligence person who actually expects that smart people make smart decisions for smart reasons that make sense.
A lot of people also like MacGyver. Not because they identify with his intelligence but because they think he's cool.
4.) Making the same supposition, what are the implications for the movement in general?
21st century movements should not focus on trying to appeal to everyone anyway.
This post is to raise a question about the demographics of rationality: Is rationality something that can appeal to low-IQ people as well?
I don't mean in theory, I mean in practice. From what I've seen, people who are concerned about rationality (in the sense that it has on LW, OvercomingBias, etc.) are overwhelmingly high-IQ.
Meanwhile, HPMOR and other stories in the "rationality genre" appeal to me, and to other people I know. However I wonder: Perhaps part of the reason they appeal to me is that I think of myself as a smart person, and this allows me to identify with the main characters, cheer when they think their way to victory, etc. If I thought of myself as a stupid person, then perhaps I would feel uncomfortable, insecure, and alienated while reading the same stories.
So, I have four questions:
1.) Do we have reason to believe that the kind of rationality promoted on LW, OvercomingBias, CFAR, etc. appeals to a fairly normal distribution of people around the IQ mean? Or should we think, as I suggested, that people with lower IQ's are disposed to find the idea of being rational less attractive?
2.) Ditto, except replace "being rational" with "celebrating rationality through stories like HPMOR." Perhaps people think that rationality is a good thing in much the same way that being wealthy is a good thing, but they don't think that it should be celebrated, or at least they don't find such celebrations appealing.
3.) Supposing #1 and #2 have the answers I am suggesting, why?
4.) Making the same supposition, what are the implications for the movement in general?
Note: I chose to use IQ in this post instead of a more vague term like "intelligence," but I could easily have done the opposite. I'm happy to do whichever version is less problematic.