Tech people are pretty smart, on average. It's a somewhat demanding professional career. There's a hell of a lot of difference between "smart" and "infallible".
They can solve complex open-ended tasks, and formulate long term plans that take into account information from multiple sources.
I understand that this is not a very high bar to set in comparison to other working professionals, but nearly everyone in the tech industry, and most other people who have a desk in a company's head office, are working at a level above the average person. Many of the posters on HN are biased by their personal and professional contacts and have an incorrect impression of what an IQ of 100 looks like, or how smart the average person is.
Going back to what I said originally, being smart is not the same as being infallible. Smart people can get themselves into all sorts of trouble that everyone else would have the humility and common sense to avoid.
If you are implying those attributes are unique to coders, or that all coders have them, i'd have to politely disagree with both points.
Coding might imply a capacity to do other complex jobs, but not to become an expert in said field. There's only one way to do that, with time and effort.
They're attributes that are common in somewhat demanding professional careers, and related to having an above-average IQ, e.g. being smart.
My main problem with the original comment was that it implied tech people aren't actually smart, when they are usually well above average. The problem is confusing general intelligence with knowledge in specific areas, not that they're secretly stupid. I think this is close to what you're saying as well.
I would respectfully disagree with your premise that there is such a thing as "smart". Ie. if you can do one thing well that requires a specific skillset, you can do another thing well too.
That's why Elon Musk got asked about COVID and Kayne about foreign policy. We need to stop doing that. Musk is great at building companies, knows nothing about virology. Kayne is a good at music, end of list.
Death to the halo effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect