It’s almost exclusively a matter of vocabulary: people identify speaking in a particular register with being that kind of person as they understand that ideal

This, so much this

My god some spectacularly bad takes on here. The top-rated one is just bananas-level stupid:

While there may be a substantial worldview gap, I suspect the much larger difference is that most Sneer Clubbers are looking to boost their status by trying to bully anyone who looks like a vulnerable target, and being different, as LessWrong is, is enough to qualify.

Yes, that's right. I spend my time boosting my status by (checks notes) commenting on the internet.

I'll go one further: "intelligence" as conceived by "IQ" is a mostly meaningless concept and the word, when used in everyday English, mostly just means "agrees with me"

This shit is just as bad, frankly. The quest to quantify and then rank All The Things is inherently dangerous.

Why is it so hard for these dorks to admit that they don’t actually care about being smart or rational and that they just want a bunch of other dorks to be friends with?

(Not to be trivially reductionist, but...) Because admitting you want friends is unmasculine. IBTP