My guess is that if they spent the (fairly significant) time taken to learn and do rationalist things on just learning more maths, they’d do better.
I would take a bet against that, and do think that studying top mathematicians roughly confirms that. My model is that many of the top mathematicians have very explicitly invested significant resources into metacognitive skills, and reflected a lot on the epistemology and methodology behind mathematical proofs.
The problem for resolving the bet would likely be what we define as “rationality” here, but I would say that someone who has written or thought explicitly for a significant fraction of their time about questions like “what kind of evidence is compelling to me?” and “what kind of cognitive strategies that I have tend to reliably cause me to make mistakes?” and “what concrete drills and practice exercises can I design to get better at deriving true conclusions from true premises?” would count as “studying rationality”.
I would take a bet against that, and do think that studying top mathematicians roughly confirms that. My model is that many of the top mathematicians have very explicitly invested significant resources into metacognitive skills, and reflected a lot on the epistemology and methodology behind mathematical proofs.
The problem for resolving the bet would likely be what we define as “rationality” here, but I would say that someone who has written or thought explicitly for a significant fraction of their time about questions like “what kind of evidence is compelling to me?” and “what kind of cognitive strategies that I have tend to reliably cause me to make mistakes?” and “what concrete drills and practice exercises can I design to get better at deriving true conclusions from true premises?” would count as “studying rationality”.