[overgard]

I don't think it's disingenuous or ill-informed at all. Maybe people get sensitive when it comes to intelligence, but say I said something like "Drew Brees is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time despite being short for the position". It doesn't mean that height doesn't matter for the position (short stature is a disadvantage as a quarterback), it just means that he found other ways to succeed. I think you could make the same argument with intelligence: once you reach a baseline of "good enough", what you do with that intelligence is more important than just having a lot of it. Obviously Feynman applied his intelligence really well.

I think the argument of "so and so was a genius so don't bother you can't do what they did" is a really defeatist attitude.