Pretending to e enthusiastic about an idea in which one doesn't believe for tactical reasons can come off as condescending. It not always a safe move.
If am a doctor and complain that my patients don't allow themselfs to be injected with a needle it would be pretty premature to call them "anti-medicine" if they take pills without objections. True you can't give pills to an unconcious person and some substanes don't really survive the stomach, so you can't replace needles with pills fully. However as a doctor I am to heal things and it would run counter to my objectives to insist to use only needles (especially if there are people that would not get any treatment). Even if I thought that needles...
I was reading reviews of HPMOR on Goodreads and I noticed that the people who didn't like the book were essentially "put off by the rationality". They thought Harry was arrogant and condescending.
Then I was thinking, a lot of people are "put off by rationality" for similar reasons. What a shame. There's a lot of value in spreading rationality, and this seems to be a big obstacle in doing so.
Any thoughts on how to make people less "put off by rationality"? I think the core issues are: