I thought instrumental and epistemic rationality feed each other, no? Can you be one but not the other?
An epistemic rationalist is an instrumental rationalist who values truth. An instrumental rationalist values something else. If they value typical things like wealth and status, then there is some evidence that the winners in society have won by systematic winning. But epistemic rationalists don't often win in those terms.
I am a newbie so today I read the article by Eliezer Yudkowski "Your Strength As A Rationalist" which helped me understand the focus of LessWrong, but I respectfully disagreed with a line that is written in the last paragraph:
So this was my comment in the article's comment section which I bring here for discussion:
Edit 1: I realize there is change in the environment and that may make some of our cognitive biases, which were useful in the past, to be obsolete. If the word "flaw" is also applicable to describe something that is obsolete then I was wrong above. If not, I prefer the word obsolete to characterize cognitive biases that are no longer functional for our preservation.