With Scott Alexander I suspect it's tall poppy syndrome: he's a somewhat big name and that just naturally makes him an obvious target for criticism, and also he's famous enough that his writings find their way to people who don't see him as part of their in-group. I suspect the specific issue you're talking about here has a lot to do with in-group bias: people just naturally tend to be more charitable toward people they see as "one of my people," you can see it happening all over the political spectrum.
In general, I think the rationalist subculture is Like That because:
1) It grew out of that early '00s nerd culture where being a libertarian was cool.
2) It's full of people with a history of a particular kind of childhood trauma; that of being a "book-smart" but socially unpopular bullied child. That experience naturally tends to create a feeling that normal people are aliens, inferiors, and threats. Worse, when I was a "book-smart" but unpopular teenager in the late '90s and early '00s the most accessible "it gets better" narrative I had was "my peers hate me because they're jealous of my intellectual superiority, but when I grow up I'll be rich cause I'm smart and my abusers will be bagging my groceries and cleaning my toilet," and I suspect that was a common experience for "book-smart" but unpopular/bullied children/teenagers in the late '90s and early '00s (I hope it's gotten better since, I have reasons to think it might have but I don't know). I suspect a lot of people in rationalist subculture had childhood experiences something like mine and it really shows in their attitudes toward people who remind them of the people who abused them when they were children/teenagers.
Also I'd say something about class interests and it being full of relatively privileged laborers such as computer programmers, but that's a predictable take so I won't bother saying anything more about it.
no subject
In general, I think the rationalist subculture is Like That because:
1) It grew out of that early '00s nerd culture where being a libertarian was cool.
2) It's full of people with a history of a particular kind of childhood trauma; that of being a "book-smart" but socially unpopular bullied child. That experience naturally tends to create a feeling that normal people are aliens, inferiors, and threats. Worse, when I was a "book-smart" but unpopular teenager in the late '90s and early '00s the most accessible "it gets better" narrative I had was "my peers hate me because they're jealous of my intellectual superiority, but when I grow up I'll be rich cause I'm smart and my abusers will be bagging my groceries and cleaning my toilet," and I suspect that was a common experience for "book-smart" but unpopular/bullied children/teenagers in the late '90s and early '00s (I hope it's gotten better since, I have reasons to think it might have but I don't know). I suspect a lot of people in rationalist subculture had childhood experiences something like mine and it really shows in their attitudes toward people who remind them of the people who abused them when they were children/teenagers.
Also I'd say something about class interests and it being full of relatively privileged laborers such as computer programmers, but that's a predictable take so I won't bother saying anything more about it.