I disagree. The quote only mentions that the median user should be smart, which means that you can also learn from them if you are inexperienced. I also see no

I disagree. The quote only mentions that the median user should be smart, which means that you can also learn from them if you are inexperienced. I also see no pretentiousness. With smart people hundreds of useless discussions are avoided in the first place. If you work in a popular language like Python that attracts all sorts of people, you have 10 preposterous technical and social discussions per day. I think this essay isn't supposed to be anything comprehensive about Lisp, it's just encouraging his target audience to consider other options.