Aspiring to rationality is choosing to be a purist

I’m choosing to be an aspiring rationalist. That means that I’m choosing to be a purist on a particular dimension.

It’s like honesty. Someone who is honest 99% of the time, but very occasionally (when it seems particularly high value or just when they feel like it) decides to lie to people instead is *not* an honest person. A big chunk of the value of being honest comes from being a purist about honesty. If they’re object, “but I only lie 1% of the time! That can’t doesn’t matter that much”, I think they’re missing the point about why honesty is a good idea.

The reason why I’m an aspiring rationalist, instead of just “a smart guy who generally reasonable, but that doesn’t mean that I have to be strict about what exactly what my best guess should at all times”, is because it seems like there’s value in being a purist about rationality in the same way that there’s value in being a purist about honesty.

Indeed, it does seem to me that the smart and generally reasonable people that I know who are willing to sometimes make exceptions or who are comfortable being epistemically sloppy when they could do better, end up believing importantly crazy or false stuff.