). In fact I'm strongly suspecting pattern-completion here -- inferring other things you think the person would say, but aren't actually present in the cited text.
Hmm, this is a good point. It is possible that I'm engaging in pattern completion or reading more negativity in than is present. It is also possible that that is connected to my own pretty negative attitude towards much of spectator sports. (What is this cognitive error called? If it doesn't have a name I'd suggest The Modest Proposal Bias.)
Whereas it seems to me that someone who actually thought others' interests were worth looking down upon wouldn't have much hesitation about changing them.
I don't think that's a correct reading of his remarks. The point is precisely the opposite as I read it, Mass Driver doesn't want to change their hobbies even as he looks down on them.
That seems like a realistic, non-pejorative description of a fairly large number of actual living people. What part of that description did you find disparaging?
It is realistic for a certain subset, but there's extraneous details that render it disparaging. There are a lot of smart people who went to very good universities who also are fanatics about their local sports team. The apparent working assumption is that those people don't exist or exist in negligible numbers.
It is also possible that that is connected to my own pretty negative attitude towards much of spectator sports. (What is this cognitive error called?
It sounds like it may be a case of Generalizing from One Example.
...Whereas it seems to me that someone who actually thought others' interests were worth looking down upon wouldn't have much hesitation about changing them.
I don't think that's a correct reading of his remarks. The point is precisely the opposite as I read it, Mass Driver doesn't want to change their hobbies even as he looks down on them.
Less Wrong is as a community extremely nerdy. That's true for almost any definition of "nerd" that captures anyone's intuition for the word. However, to a large extent, many aspects of nerdiness are not connected to rationality at all, even though nerdiness may be associated with more rationality in some limited aspects. For example, fantasy literature is probably not in any deep way connected to either intelligent or rational thinking except for historical reasons.
Yet LW is full of references to science fiction, fantasy literature, anime and D&D. In one recent example, a post started with an only marginally connected tidbit from Heinlein. Moreover, substantial subthreads have arisen bashing aspects of other subcultures. For example, see this subthread where multiple users discuss how spectator sports are "banal" and "pointless". I suspect that this attitude may be turning away not only non-nerds but even the somewhat nerdy who enjoy watching sports, and see it has harmless tribalist fun, not very different than friends arguing over whether Star Wars or Star Trek is superior which has about the same degree of actual value here.
There's a related issue which is a serious point about rationality and human cognition: Our hobbies are to a large extent functions of our specific upbringings and surrounding culture. That some people prefer one form of fantastic escapism involving imaginary spaceships isn't at some level very different than the escapism of watching some people throw and catch objects. Looking down on other people because of these sorts of preferences is unhelpful tribalism. It might feel good, and it might be fun, but it isn't helpful.