Well the issue is, JonahSinick doesn't come across to me as arrogant, hostile, or assuming any kind of relationship of superiority in the first place. He's sharing his domain knowledge with us for the sheer pleasure of doing so, and wants to be helpful to people who've gotten discouraged about learning mathematics. Given his motivations, his actions, and the context for all of them, I just don't see the rudeness. It looks to me like some very conceited LW regulars are reading a preaching into this article and JonahSinick's comments that just isn't there, by action or intention.

even people known as intellectual heavyweights in a certain context, like Scott or Eliezer around here, can usually expect to relate to people more in a first-among-equals kind of way. In fact it's not uncommon for them to receive more criticism.

I usually don't see that much vehement criticism of Scott; it helps that he behaves in a very egalitarian fashion. Eliezer tends to take somewhat heavy criticism, including sometimes from me, precisely because he adheres to the LW community norm of "We here at LW are smarter and know better than everyone else, and we don't need your stinking domain knowledge." Oh, and also because Eliezer is phenomenally bad at explaining his thoughts and intentions to people outside Bay Area techno-futurist circles, which probably comes of training himself to be good at explaining his thoughts and intentions to an incredibly narrow, self-selected, and psychologically unusual circle of people. Once you've been reading him for long enough to have a clear idea what he's trying to say, even he's really not that bad.

It's funny: when I got here, I thought Eliezer's Sequences were basically nothing special, just explaining some science and machine-learning stuff to people who apparently can't be arsed to read the primary sources. But the longer I'm here, the more I sometimes want to exasperatedly say to some or another "aspiring rationalist" who thinks they're being ever-so-clever, no, you are actually being a Straw Vulcan, read the fucking Sequences.