Comment by rotw

Your comment is exactly the attitude the person you were replying to was mocking. What that person saying is that a lot of reasonably intelligent people who are nowhere near geniuses like to think of themselves as geniuses as a form of narcissistic self-flattery. For people good at math, sciences and computing and other occupations considered "nerdy", capability in these fields and stereotypes of intelligence associated with them become a point of pride and they begin to identify with people far smarter than they are, despite actually being unexceptionally intelligent. HN has talented people, sure, but I think it's definitely fair to say there's a large population of people who flatter themselves thinking they're geniuses who regularly post, upvote, and comment on this kind of article with "me too!" sentiments. Pointing this out has nothing to do with the kids in this article, who are genuinely exceptional and certainly worthy of sympathy and nurturing.