This sort of far-mode thinking is usually [1] evidence of an attempt to signal not-"Straw Vulcan Rationality" while simultaneously earning warm fuzzies in those possible worlds in which [DELETED] (ed. Explaining the reason for this edit would either reveal excessive information about the deleted content or require mentioning of true ideas which are considered abhorrent by mainstream society.) and is ultimately the result of having a brain which evolved to have hypocritical akrasia regarding skepticism and to guess the teacher's password [2].
[1] p(parent post is mere signalling | p-zombie Mary in a Chinese room would claim that "semantic stop-signs are red" is a map-territory-map-mapitory confusion) = .7863, but I may have performed an Aumann update with a counterfactual-me who generalized from fictional fictional-evidence.
[2] The password is Y355JE0AT15A0GNPHYG.
I was attempting to parse that comment seriously at 8AM in the morning before drinking any coffee. Never again.
I've spent so much time in the cogsci literature that I know the LW approach to rationality is basically the mainstream cogsci approach to rationality (plus some extra stuff about, e.g., language), but... do other people not know this? Do people one step removed from LessWrong — say, in the 'atheist' and 'skeptic' communities — not know this? If this is causing credibility problems in our broader community, it'd be relatively easy to show people that Less Wrong is not, in fact, a "fringe" approach to rationality.
For example, here's Oaksford & Chater in the second chapter to the (excellent) new Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, the one on normative systems of rationality:
Is it meaningful to attempt to develop a general theory of rationality at all? We might tentatively suggest that it is a prima facie sign of irrationality to believe in alien abduction, or to will a sports team to win in order to increase their chance of victory. But these views or actions might be entirely rational, given suitably nonstandard background beliefs about other alien activity and the general efficacy of psychic powers. Irrationality may, though, be ascribed if there is a clash between a particular belief or behavior and such background assumptions. Thus, a thorough-going physicalist may, perhaps, be accused of irrationality if she simultaneously believes in psychic powers. A theory of rationality cannot, therefore, be viewed as clarifying either what people should believe or how people should act—but it can determine whether beliefs and behaviors are compatible. Similarly, a theory of rational choice cannot determine whether it is rational to smoke or to exercise daily; but it might clarify whether a particular choice is compatible with other beliefs and choices.
From this viewpoint, normative theories can be viewed as clarifying conditions of consistency… Logic can be viewed as studying the notion of consistency over beliefs. Probability… studies consistency over degrees of belief. Rational choice theory studies the consistency of beliefs and values with choices.
They go on to clarify that by probability they mean Bayesian probability theory, and by rational choice theory they mean Bayesian decision theory. You'll get the same account in the textbooks on the cogsci of rationality, e.g. Thinking and Deciding or Rational Choice in an Uncertain World.