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Notes -
I would be curious if rationalists are even less "social conformity" biased. I'd guess the average rationalist grew up an outcast who became (often irrationally) suspicious of the ingroup, and gravitated to outgroups to fulfill their social needs and went on to justify their continual social exclusion via their own intelligence whether they were or not.
They are just as influenced by social conformity, but through an inverted/rejection/wound/resentment model that leaves them able to see through the blind spots of the normies, but just as biased when it comes to the particular outgroups they identify with. Which is still valuable to have, but the self congratulations are probably unwarranted.
This reminds me of how, it seems to me, a disproportionate number of people who make an identity out of being atheists (as opposed to just being atheists) are people who grew up in oppressive religious households and rebelled against it*. Similarly, there is a difference between people who just take some good ideas from rationalism, on the one hand, and people who make an identity out of being rationalists, on the other.
It does not help matters that rationalism was started by a guy who has what could fairly be called very extreme and dogmatic feelings about a certain topic (artificial intelligence) and that so many prominent rationalists are from the same Bay Area milieu, both of which things give the movement a sort of cloistered vibe that to some observers contrasts oddly (although not necessarily fairly) with its professed goal of pure reason.
*This is even more, and more obviously, the case for people who are into stuff like black metal and/or Satanism. Not that I think there is anything wrong with the vast majority of Satanism - which, from what I can tell, is mostly a fun hobby rather than some serious desire to do evil.
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