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GabrielDuquette comments on The problem with too many rational memes - Less Wrong
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Conversational intolerance is just really, really hard. Very few people are good at it. I'd like to think that, if I'd been in your shoes and first heard the ground rules (criticism "expressly forbidden," etc) and then heard about Grandma's spoon tapping, I'd have been able to use the perfect, Sagan-esque mixture of body language, word choice, and tone of voice to plant a non-threatening seed of skepticism into the minds of all present.
But of course I'd have failed. I simply don't possess that kind of mastery, especially in social circumstances devoid of magical clickers. And I'd be even worse off than you, because I am not one to fume silently. I probably would've alienated a lot of people, and quickly.
So I think that you possess more mastery than you realize. But I don't think the level above yours looks like perfect, silent equanimity amidst the wrong beliefs you hear propagated around you. I think it looks more like walking carefully through a minefield because the other side is worth getting to.
I kind of tried to do that, by making sure all my comments in the discussion afterwards were about the actual physics content, and reductionism, and how scientific ideas are evaluated... But I'm not incredibly charismatic, or especially good at breaking physics down into easily-teachable segments on the spot, and I think most people's reaction was to assume I was really smart and then stop trying to understand anything. (At least six people asked me if I'd thought about switching my major to physics...I had to explain that I hadn't because I'm not actually really smart, at least not enough to be a good theoretical physicist, and if the choice is between being a mediocre-to-poor physicist or an awesome nurse, I'd pick being an awesome nurse any day.)
At least you get to choose between two careers that value empiricism. Being an artist and practicing good epistemic hygiene really puts a new spin on the "guy with one eye in the land of the blind" adage. That cyclopean bastard would probably be burned at the stake for heresy.
Unsuprisingly, there is a short story about that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Country_of_the_Blind.
Fixed link.
In your LW articles, you come off as both charismatic and intelligent. You have interesting insights, you're willing and able to post your thoughts (and they're frequently even not-in-sync with the general LW zeigeist), you use lots of engaging personal examples... Are you sure you're not being humble or maintaining a wrong self-image for some other reason?
I think my intelligence is above average (general population average, not LW average), but that's not at all the same thing as being intelligent enough to be a good physicist...although I think that may not be my true rejection, and I'm going to try and spend some more time finding out what my true rejection is.
Also, LW is an entirely written forum and I'm very confident in writing, and have a lot of experience. I'm not as good a public speaker: I don't have as much practice, and there's the added challenge of not having time to sit staring at a screen for five minutes trying to decide if my argument is phrased unclearly and I need to fix it. So stuff comes out a lot less elegantly when I'm saying it to people, and I tend to say "um" and "uh" a lot, or sound a bit incoherent because my brain isn't running at the same rate as my mouth.
You can be a very good experimental physicist if you're creative enough to devise good experiments, careful enough to implement them well, and persistent enough to then carry them out. Intelligence helps in the first two stages, but being an ace at math is not required.
I'm not sure if you'd want to pay money for negative reinforcement, but I've been thinking about trying out something like the Buzzword to help with my verbal tics.