This lesser minds effect has many manifestations, including what appears to be a universal tendency to assume that others’ minds are less sophisticated and more superficial than one’s own.
A lot of the stuff in this article runs rampant in various forums on the Internet and especially in interactions between programmers.
I think a simpler theory is that a lot of people in Internet societies like forums want to appear to be right above all else, even though they might intellectually realize that their "opponents" arguments are more solid.
My exact thought when reading the article. I've long termed this phenomenon "correctness at any cost"; a zero-sum game of "rightness" wherein one bludgeons another with overblown self-righteousness in having memorized the equivalent of a 20-second Google search. Emily Post would have labeled such people "boors".
A lot of the stuff in this article runs rampant in various forums on the Internet and especially in interactions between programmers.