[voidhorse]

Fair point. I wholeheartedly agree. The issue is, it is not the humanities profs, in this case, or at this time, that are claiming intellectual superiority. (funnily enough, it's not even a physicist that's claiming the intellectual superiority for physicists, but rather a venture capitalist computer scientist--this should be nice flag as to the dubiousness of the claim).

[inimino]

One of the very awkward things about things you can't say is they often come in opposite pairs.

So for example, you can't say that physicists are on the whole clearly working with more intellectual horsepower than literature majors. You also can't say that STEM folks tend to be some of the most blindly religious (though not about "religion") and closed-minded folks in the academy, with some of the most strongly held unexamined beliefs at the core of their epistemology and personal identity. Despite being unsayable, both these things are true.

Skepticism, self-awareness and self-doubt, leading to contemplation, thoughtful uncertainty, wisdom or enlightenment... it may be just as possible to find all these things through pure mathematics or physics as through comparative religion, literature, or philosophy, but it surely isn't as common. Regardless, wherever you look, they will be rare.