You mention trying to establish rationalist norms in the group by yourself. Do you think that if there were two, three, four, or more people trying to do that, you would’ve seen more success? I’m reminded of this video:
See how everyone at the start is staring at the guy like he’s crazy?
One person engaging in a set of norms in a group is just a weirdo.
Two people engaging in a set of norms in a group is just two weirdos.
But somewhere between three and ten weirdos creates a cascading effect, and then they aren’t weirdos anymore.
I know first hand that making a non-rationalist space into a rationalist one is nearly impossible on your own, as I attempted to teach a political group of my leanings the use of rationalist principles, to zero success.
The other treatment I would attempt is having the organizers tell everyone to be as deliberately disagreeable as possible while still remaining intellectually rigorous. All of a sudden all this talk about fallacies and epistemology isn’t just techno-babble by an annoying social misfit, but instead somebody just following the rules laid out at the start. From there you can push your values from a socially safe position, and possibly get other people who see your example onboard.
I’m putting these forward as hypotheses, I think there’s a good chance that you’re right and that most people are incapable of internalizing these principles.
I think the main question of whether or not people turn to stealing will be how the disaster in question affects the ability of the government (or other authorities authority) to stay intact and enforce its power, and thus prevent alternatives (i.e. bandits)
A siege is pretty bad, but usually there’s martial law in effect while it happens. A hurricane might make it hard for the federal government to enforce its power, but the local police and community leaders are still around. They might miss a few days, but they’ll be back around before things start looking like Mad Max.
But something like the Iraqi Civil War, where most of the government, military, and police were disbanded, lead to a lot of crime, both organized and unorganized.
I think the rule or thumb should be this: if a disaster would make the both the military and police ineffective for a long period of time, then there will be mass stealing. Other than a civil war, what could make this happen? Maybe an economic/supply chain collapse of unprecedented proportion, but nothing else comes to mind.