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You have it almost exactly backwards. The whole point of the "Rationalists should win" blog post you linked is that in some circumstances it can be rational to act in ways that are 100% guaranteed to have worse consequences, such as by cooperating in the one-shot prisoner's dilemma (cooperating has a worse result both if the other prisoner has cooperated and if the other prisoner has defected) or paying in Parfit's Hitchhiker. This is because, while the action itself has purely worse consequences, being the sort of agent who will take that action has good consequences. "Rationalists should win" is not at all "the whole idea behind learning to be rational", it is a contrast with the mainstream view among decision theorists in regards to Newcomb's Problem that one-boxers get better results, and they could easily choose to one-box if they wanted, but that the "rational" course of action is to two-box and then complain that the "irrational" choice was the one that won.
When applied to morality this will most obviously apply to situations where agents have a choice between abiding with a general principle and choosing the action that is better in the moment, where in some circumstances being the sort of agent that will abide by the general principle has good results even if the action itself doesn't. This is more likely to be relevant when the agent is a country, as discussed in my other comment, since countries are worse at deception. And obviously in iterated games, at which point you don't need any exotic decision-theory to justify it. (Of course, another way it relates to morality is that it's probably part of how we evolved moral instincts in the first place.)
Oh is this going to be one of those arguments.
Yeah, now its just a question of how recursive you want to get. Defecting makes sense in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma when you have no way of judging that the other party might be willing to cooperate. Iterated games, if they're of indefinite length present different strategic options.
I wasn't even agreeing with the premise of "moral principles force you to act in an irrational way." Just pointing out the potential contradiction if you want to 'win' you might have to bend or break certain moral principles, which was the gist of the original question.
Indeed, I think the whole point of invoking morals as principles rather than as 'mere' variables in a utility function, some principles exist because they DO create better outcomes in a systemic way, even if it leads to 'losing' a few local contests. As you say, 'being the sort of person' who does the Good thing even at personal cost will probably create many more utils over the long run.
But there are indeed some moral principles which can be systemically exploited and if your principles cause you to repeatedly lose, you're not being 'rational' on your own terms.
But then we're back to the question: what do you value and is it easier to maximize your utility by following certain moral guiding principles even when it leads to 'losing' a few isolated games, or by being completely unprincipled other than trying to maximize your own utility in every single game you encounter and adapt your strategy accordingly.
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