I've been associating with rationalists for almost a decade. Their ideas were compelling and you can't deny their foresight. The founders of every superintelligence effort are all bound up in the rationality sphere. Sam Altman and Greg Brockman used to frequent the MIRI offices.
If MIRI was Sam Altman's old stomping ground, and the AI industry is so evil he can't work in it, isn't this an argument that MIRI was either a failure or bad all along?
The way I relate to rationalists is it's like the bizarre hypertrophied physiques on specialized athletes. In my opinion they have weirdly specialized minds that make them uniquely correct about topics removed from daily experience. These "specialized minds" can also make them off-putting to many people.
I don't know if I'd consider myself a rationalist. I am intuitively opposed to polyamory, veganism, and consequentialist intuitions. But I certainly trust them to be correct about factual questions.
"I'm intuitively opposed to culinary traditions that people have been developing for hundreds of years, but gosh dang it, when they talk about the Machine God torturing a billion simulated copies of me unless I tithe my income to a Harry Potter fanfiction writer, I'm sold!"
Every time this dorkus is in the news, remember, he's an absolute wanker.