I agree with the other commenters, and I want to add that something like correspondence bias is probably making your judgments of LWers' intelligence higher than they should be.
From your perspective, a smart comment or post is a fait accompli - it's just handed to you with no clue as to its origin in the writer's mind. That origin is probably pretty damned humble. Behind most smart comments and posts on LW are, likely, several occasions of saying something dumb (here or elsewhere), being called on it (hopefully in a friendly way), and growing that wee bit smarter.
By the way, I think I recognize in your post the same exhilaration I remember feeling when I was first exposed to the rationality/science/philosophy corpus.
If I'm right about that, your concerns about your intelligence & educational background are probably irrelevant anyway. You, sir, are hooked. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. ;)
If this post is inappropriate, I apologize.
I stumbled upon this site after reading "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". The story so far has really moved me on multiple levels and sent me here in a quest to learn more about rationality as a philosophy/way of thinking about the world. I have read Ayn Rands published works and loved the stories and most of the message. The characters always seemed like titans that were far and above me, but now, I've seen a character that is a bit more approachable.
I've started to go through the "Map and Territory" section of the "Core Sequences" and this whole project and community makes me ecstatic. I'm currently working my way through the Bayes's Theorem article with some success. The more I read, the more I realize I may have a problem.
I'm pretty dumb.
Is higher level reasoning "use it or lose it" ? I like learning new things and love reading but any new ideas require a ton of thought and re-reading. I think I have enough interest to keep plugging away at it, but I'm not sure I'm going at things the right way. Is there a "Kid's Table" for lesswrong.com?
For "Priors": I'm 28 years old, white male, married, no children, poor economic upbringing, solid emotional upbringing, currently lower to middle class, high school diploma, US Navy, currently a civilian electronics technician, raised Baptist currently Agnostic/Atheist (recently).
I guess that's it. Thanks!
--John