> A lot of people fetishize cold, hard logic and would rather hold all emotion in contempt than do the work of understanding why it exists and what purpose it serves.

In the rationalist community we're discussing? Is that what you're claiming here?

> But there's often a certain ungrounded "vibe" to the conversation there.

This really sounds like evidence for my claim, that what you're saying is based on your feelings towards that community.

> One of the community's most well-known outputs is a 1000-page Harry Potter fanfiction which I can only describe as a fantasy of solving everything with big brains (it's weird, but it's fiction, so whatever floats your boat).

The point of that story is to make technical concepts more accessible and easier to ingest [0], not necessarily to make a point by itself. Framing it as a weird fantasy is disingenuous.

> part of you is going to clock that as weird nonsense even though you are not able to explain precisely what's wrong with the thought experiment.

This is again, feelings presented as evidence. The fallacy of appealing to emotion ("It must be false because it feels wrong"). Thought experiments are primarily meant to provoke thought, not as reliable predictions of reality. People are free to indicate where any thought experiment is lacking using well reasoned arguments. "It feels wrong" can be a great start for that, but never a good end.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_o...