We're talking about a language you're going to be using almost every day, and for a lot of us here, presumably get paid for using. Those working in other industries have a lot of other things to memorise too. From that perspective, refusing to learn is definitely anti-intellectualism. To get good at anything you need to realise that you need to expend effort, and not just walk away at the first sign of difficulty thinking it's "too hard".

On the other hand, combination of + and | are rare enough that the benefit of such conventions doesn't outweigh the confusion it could cause.

Maybe for you it is, but for others it isn't.

I suspect a lot of this "refusal to learn" sentiment is actually driven by management attempting to turn developers into easily replaceable, expendable "resources". From that perspective, lower-common-denominator dumbing-down barely-literate workers is their goal, and so we should definitely strive to fight against that and the degradation of our craft.