Highly intelligent people have their own version of “I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and so can anybody.” It’s their refusal to believe that intelligence is as genetically heritable as height. They want to think that they can take full credit for their brain power and feel robbed of a stellar achievement when it turns it that it’s not an achievement at all.
Even more annoying is their incapacity to fathom that not all brains work like theirs do. And trying to force people to perform intellectual tasks they are incapable of performing is as ridiculous as trying to get adults to change their height (or any other inherited trait) by the force of their willpower.
A lot of suffering, shame and misery stems from this utterly unscientific and vastly idiotic belief that intelligence is a) something that is completely within your control and b) something that doesn’t exist.