Imagine a world where the only way to become really rich is to win the lottery (and everybody is either risk averse or at least risk neutral). With an expected return of less than $1 per $1 spent on tickets, rational people don't buy lottery tickets. Only irrational people do that. As a result, all the really rich people in this world must be irrational.

In other words, it is possible to have situations where being rational increases your expected performance, but at the same time reduces your changes of being a super achiever. Thus, the claim that "rationalists should win" is not necessarily true, even in theory, if "winning" is taken to mean being among the top performers. A more accurate statement would be, "In a world with both rational and irrational agents, the rational agents should perform better on average than the population average."

And this is why I am not so impressed by Eliezer's claim that an x-rationality instructor should be successful in their non-rationality life. Yes, there probably are some x-rationalists who will also be successful people. But again, correlation 0.1. Stop saying only practically successful people could be good x-rationality teachers! Stop saying we need to start having huge real-life victories or our art is useless! Stop calling x-rationality the Art of Winning! Stop saying I must be engaged in some sort of weird signalling effort for saying I'm here because I like mental clarity instead of because I want to be the next Bill Gates! It trivializes the very virtues that brought most of us to Overcoming Bias, and replaces them with what sounds a lot like a pitch for some weird self-help cult...

I think the truth is non-symmetrical: rationalism is the art of not failing, of not being stupid. I agree with you that "rationalists should win big" is not true in the sense Eliezer claims. However, rationalists should be generally above average by virtue of never failing big, never losing too much, e.g. not buying every vitamin at the health food store, not in cults, not bemoaning ancient relationships, etc.

Both my husband and I have cognitive challenges (don't we all, we imperfect results of evolution, us) that constantly threaten to sour our relationship. We strongly credit our study of cognitive science and rationality for keeping our relationship sane and enjoyable. We make conscious decisions about how we manage our moods relative to each other. We work hard to recognize cognitive biases and to tease out objective fact from fallacy. We have a very strong, twenty year relationship because of that.

Then again, one of the things that attracted each of us to each other was the fact that we were both rationality-seeking and valued that in the other. I believe, however, I can make a rational case that our approach towards mutual anger management, anxiety management, and so on, has helped our relationship to remain strong, fruitful, and enjoyable.

For certain, understanding the philosophy of science -- minimally, the concept of "confounding variables", along with other concepts and practices -- has helped us get and keep my husband's bipolar in control. For about a year he was hallucinating due to some medication imbalances. His understanding of experimental methods and rational thinking helped him differentiate hallucination from reality during that period. Our understanding of science has also helped us make some pretty good decisions about our health, and even about our dog's health (the little tyke is 17).

I want to master x-rationality because I want to teach it. I value rational behavior in my fellow human because the historical record is clear: rational behavior is correlated with increased safety, health, and wealth of a society. I want to live in an increasingly safe, healthy, and wealthy society. I understand that "rational" behavior has a saturating plateau, or that it is only so effective, but the masters of rationality must continue to exist in every society, scientific skeptics must be cultivated. I enjoy working with the rational arts because, frankly, I grew up with a very irrational mother and I have lived ever since to do everything in my power (of almost a half a century now) to be everything she was (and still is) NOT. I want to be one of the rationality masters and teachers in my society because I enjoy those arts, find value in them, and find value in safety, health, and wealth.

Pretty selfish, but there it is.