You've describing the justification for lifelong hubris, not intelligence. I've known a lot of very stupid people who assumed they were doing exactly that when in reality they jumped to a conclusion because they didn't understand the topic's complexities.
Whenever I hear things like "understand the topic's complexities" from people they are unable to articulate these supposed complexities and we almost always land on exactly the solution I proposed in the first place.
Don't get me wrong other intelligent people are on board with me during these episodes, and they are sometimes able to present their specific concern with the solution and that is valuable. I've been wrong before of course. On the other hand the "think of all the complexities" crowd just spout nuggets of wisdom like that until they are able to comprehend the solution, and that takes about 15 minutes in my experience.
He was just describing his experience which indeed only a sliver of people knows about, because it’s a very high IQ situation. The study you linked is just one study and cannot be said to encapsulate everyone’s experiences. I can confirm from my own experience that his experience is very possible.
Anecdotally, according to my 3 WISC tests and 10 years working in a research environment along with faculty and staff at a famously rigorous ivy league grad school, I assure you my sample size of interactions with people that have IQs that are several orders of magnitude higher than average is much larger than most. Do you have a specific criticism of the study's methodology or data?
A article shared on HN recently: https://www.bihealth.org/en/notices/intelligent-brains-take-....