[zahlman]

> We probably understand this word very differently, because as far as I'm concerned, rationality (rational behavior) is essentially an exercise in behaving optimally, one that is thus strictly relative to some particular context.

No, that's completely consistent with my understanding.

Adopting identity labels doesn't follow from that, however.

[perching_aix]

The parent comment has been talking about exactly people who have been turning this into an identity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community

If this doesn't apply to you, great, but then we're talking past each other.

[zahlman]

And my point is that according to the works that supposedly motivate them, they are explicitly not supposed to do that; furthermore, I'm not actually convinced that they are doing it on anything like the scale that critics allege.

(And no, forming a "community" does not make for an identity. I don't think of myself as a "HN user" and I would certainly never introduce myself that way offline. Similarly for Stack Overflow back when it was relevant, or anything else.)

[perching_aix]

I'd argue it's hard to have a community without something in common, so identity formation is kind of unavoidable (as there is an identifier), even if people resist it.

In some cases, that point of commonality is just the venue (like your HN example). Not the case for this.

That said, I do appreciate the distinction and you may very well be right. Like certainly, one can appreciate logical thinking and quality argumentation without adopting any kind of group identity.