This is incredibly insightful! I might disagree with some of the particulars--for instance, I think you're too hard on the logical positivists not because they have everything so right but that in opposing them people have managed to come up with much worse nonsense--but I think the basic ideas are solid.

I don't personally much mind arrogance in proportion to ability, but the real problem there is that it's so often not in proportion: just comparatively smart social primates doing their dominance-hierarchy thing by pretending they can understand something that, actually, they really don't.