It makes my skin crawl to say this*, but the answer for most people on HN is probably "yes, they are."
* both because people in tech are prone to Paul Graham style 'nerd martyr' arrogance, and because I often read views that disappoint me here and I do not like to admit that an intelligent person can hold them
By a mathematical necessity, half the people can say “Yes, most people are stupider than me." without lying.
In politics, it's a red flag because it is often used to defend bad policies that only appear good when one doesn't have the fortitude to understand the better policy.
Journalists have spilt a lot of ink recently about arrogance in the tech community. They point out tech figures who mistakenly think their aptitude in one knowledge domain means they know better than experts in other domains.
That's one reason.
To produce plausible sounding statements on a complex topics without regard to their actual truth is almost a necessity for the opinion journalist (the predominant type of journalist of the modern era).
To be criticized for intellectual hubris by that class should be meaningless.
What gnaws at me is when someone has a system of beliefs that, to my mind, seems based on nonsense.
Smarter than most isn't an exclusive club. It's a massive class.
A lot more "intellectuals" defended Pol Pot and Milosevic compared to ordinary chums. The denial of the Cambodian genocide was known as the "Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia".
I can't think of a position on anything that someone couldn't twist into an appeal to 'common sense'
There are different cheap rhetorical devices that some intellectuals use. I don't like that either.
I really wanted to avoid leaving the reader with any impression that I think (1) intelligence is easy to quantify, and (2) HN readers are some kind of nietzschean elite who have all the answers.