Having the right goals is somewhat separate from (my view of) rationality in that rationality is a set of methods oriented towards achieving one’s goals and can be applied to any sort of goal, right or wrong as that goal may be. While “selecting the right goals” can itself be a goal that you can use rationality to help with, in principle the methods of rationality can be applied to assist you in any goal.
One might (rightly) point out that applying the methods of rationality to goals that are not desirable may be hazardous for you or for those around you, but this is true for nearly any tool. Increasing one’s ability to influence the world will always carry a risk of you influencing the world in a negative direction. Luckily, rationality can be used to help verify that what you’re doing is likely to have positive consequences—it is hence one of very few tools that can actually help the user use it better!
Having the right goals is somewhat separate from (my view of) rationality in that rationality is a set of methods oriented towards achieving one’s goals and can be applied to any sort of goal, right or wrong as that goal may be. While “selecting the right goals” can itself be a goal that you can use rationality to help with, in principle the methods of rationality can be applied to assist you in any goal.
One might (rightly) point out that applying the methods of rationality to goals that are not desirable may be hazardous for you or for those around you, but this is true for nearly any tool. Increasing one’s ability to influence the world will always carry a risk of you influencing the world in a negative direction. Luckily, rationality can be used to help verify that what you’re doing is likely to have positive consequences—it is hence one of very few tools that can actually help the user use it better!