Comment by nullc

It's my impression that geeks are prigs at a higher rate than society as a whole, but their priggishness is generally directed in random directions which makes it harmless and even quaint or endearing.

Surely you've experienced the one person on the team who will lecture endlessly on why robertson screw drive are so much better than torx, yadda yadda... or something similar. it's not a question of having a point or not-- they might or might not-- it's the haughty air of superiority, the perspective that countering perspectives don't exist or at least couldn't have any merit, that their pet issue couldn't ever be too irrelevant to worry about.

"System of rules that you can use to bludgeon people with instead of considering and empathizing? Sign me up!"

Maybe before you didn't notice it because more of them agreed with you or because enough of their priggishness was uncorrelated. Like a ferromagnetic material, if the domains are pointed in random directions you get no net field.

It's probably even just an effect of online forums in general. If you are of the view that many ideas are valid and that your preferences aren't so important, you tend to not comment at all.

In any case, if you're bothered by the net-prig-field there is a remark in PG's essay which might provide some advice: The priggishness is amplified when membership can be self selected by ideology rather than geography. If you just mix a diverse collection of people together their prig field will tends to cancel out, views will be normalized, extreme positions suppressed. So seek out venues where the structure of participation doesn't lend itself to polarization, or at least polarization incompatible with yours.