> The type of people that would be embarrassed to not have an opinion on a topic or say "I don't know"
Is it really a rationality when folks are sort of out of touch with reality, replacing it with models that lack life's endless nuances, exceptions and gotchas? Being principled is a good thing, but if I correctly understand what you're talking about - surely ignoring something just because it doesn't fit some arbitrarily selected set of principles is different.
I'm no rationalist (I don't have any meaningful self-identification, although I like the idea of approaching things logically) but I've had enough episodes of being guilty of something like this - having an opinion on something, lacking the depth, but pretending it's fine because my simple mental model is based on some ideas I like and can bring order to the chaos. So maybe it's not rationalism at all, but something else masquerading as it, like probably being afraid of mismatching the expectations?
Is it really a rationality when folks are sort of out of touch with reality, replacing it with models that lack life's endless nuances, exceptions and gotchas? Being principled is a good thing, but if I correctly understand what you're talking about - surely ignoring something just because it doesn't fit some arbitrarily selected set of principles is different.
I'm no rationalist (I don't have any meaningful self-identification, although I like the idea of approaching things logically) but I've had enough episodes of being guilty of something like this - having an opinion on something, lacking the depth, but pretending it's fine because my simple mental model is based on some ideas I like and can bring order to the chaos. So maybe it's not rationalism at all, but something else masquerading as it, like probably being afraid of mismatching the expectations?