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closeness comments on Open thread, Oct. 20 - Oct. 26, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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People who look for ways to become more rational are probably far more rational than average already.
I don't find this obvious. Why do you think this?
It makes me feel good.
I would disagree and say that people who look for ways to "become rational" in the LessWrong sense are just exposed to a class of internet-based advice systems (like lifehacker and similar) that promote the idea that you can "hack" things to make them better. Rationality is the ultimate lifehack; it's One Weird Trick to Avoid Scope Insensitivity.
Outside of this subculture, people look for ways to improve all the time; people even look for ways to improve globally all the time. The way they do this isn't always "rational," or even effective, but if rationality is winning, it's clear that people look for ways to win all the time. They might do this by improving their communication skills, or their listening skills, or trying to become "centered" or "balanced" in some way that will propagate out to everything they do.
Agreed. So basically, what made them look?
Since they were more rational already they could observe the rational approach had better outcomes. Irrational people presumably can't do that. You'd have to appeal to their irrationality to make a case for rationality and I'm not sure how that'd work out.