Not only that, often people's goals require irrational thinking. If you're hoping to find a mate in a religious community, or if you're a businessman bringing the free market to the boonies there's an obvious rational incentive to believe irrational things.
Just read over that for the first time and it seems to me that Eliezer's argument relies heavily on the anthropic principle, that is, it underestimates the amount of resources it has taken the universe to produce a very small amount of life, so far as we know.
Could you elucidate what you intend with this gem?
"The Master of the Way treats people as straw dogs."
I also think we can think of "prejudices" or pre-judgments common in popular media which aren't necessarily bad. Star Trek, for instances propagates prejudices toward tolerance, rationality, exploration, etc. So I think there's a lot of popular media which is also "good." I guess I may have misread your point - I'm talking instrumentally and you mean aesthetically.
You've never thought about it that way before because it's completely silly. How on earth does Annoyance make these judgments? I'm not nearly prideful enough to think I can know others' minds to the extent Annoyance can, or, in other words, I imagine there are circumstances which could change most people in profound ways, both for ill and good. So the only thing judging people in this manner does is reinforce one's social prejudices. Writing off people who seem resistant to reason only encourages their ignorance, and remedying their condition is both an exercise and example of reason's power, which, incidentally, is why I'm trying so hard with Annoyance!
Annoyance, your argument has devolved into inanity. If you don't want to popularly cultivate rationality then you disagree with one of the core tenets of this community. It's in the second paragraph of the "about" page:
"Less Wrong is devoted to refining the art of human rationality - the art of thinking. The new math and science deserves to be applied to our daily lives, and heard in our public voices."
Your circular word games do no good for this community.
Someone should document and categorize the most common signaling tropes of this community. Maybe once I get up to 40 or whatever.
Why are we assuming these categories are mutually exclusive? Like Will points out, if we just accept that altruism and status-seeking are inextricable then we can design societies where altruistic behavior has high status returns. I guess I don't get the usefulness of the distinction.
Annoyance, you're still dodging the question. Joe didn't ask whether or not in your opinion everyone is a useless prole, he asked why it's useful to make people feel like that. Your notion that "social cohesion is the enemy of rationality" was best debunked, I think by pjeby's point here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/za/a_social_norm_against_unjustified_opinions/rrk
more flies with honey and all that.
Two links that might foster discussion:
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/
Fun online rationality and anti-bias oriented games. I particularly enjoyed "Staying Alive" (testing conceptions of selfhood). And
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/20086
Great discussion, I hadn't seen Gendler before but Bloom is always good. Reminded me a little of the IAT discussion here a few months ago.