1. Does he have training or experience in the subject?
2. Does she try to explain everything with one idea?
3. Does he show nuance?
4. Is she able to change her mind?
5. Does he lean toward conspiracy explanations and/or blaming the government?
6. Does she cite evidence that isn’t representative of the literature as a whole?
7. Does he portray experts who disagree with him as corrupt, stupid, or dishonest?
8. Does the topic relate to personal identity, or is it otherwise highly political or controversial?

• Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was appealing, in part, because it gave the message that it was okay to be, not just good, but better than others
  • but it also said that the reason for one's own failure is the "looters" who don't approve of that excellence, and that there is a conspiracy of mediocrity
• Rationality can be seen through a reasonableness-based view or a winning-based view
  • the reasonableness-based view silently blames the rest of the world's unreasonableness for failures
• Rationality should adapt to others' strategies and not depend on them
• when faced with a probable failure, some people will start to impose handicaps on themselves to give an excuse for failure
• this does not mean that there aren't legitimate barriers to success, but it can also mean that failure is partially self-created
• "...what good does a sense of *violated entitlement do? At all? Ever? What good does it do to tell ourselves that we did everything right and deserved better, and that someone or something else is to blame? Is that the key thing we need to change, to do better next time?
  Immediate adaptation to the realities of the situation! Followed by winning!"

One thing I like about rationality is that it is flexible. It does not prescribe any particular object-level belief or action.