[pleasebehonest]

That attitude is abrasively condescending.

Why not just say, "people who spent a lot of their time studying cryptography strongly recommend this approach. They feel the approach that you are considering is simply insecure."?

Framing things in terms of intelligence isn't going to win anyone over, if that's your goal. And it probably isn't accurate, either.

[tptacek]

Sounds pretty close to accurate to me. Do you want to feel good, or do you want to choose good crypto? Pick one or the other.

[dhimes]

He's probably using "smart" in the sense of "accumulated knowledge in a particular space" instead of in the sense of raw mental horsepower. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3583985

[smacktoward]

Yes, that's right. It doesn't mean that you are hopelessly non-cognitive if you can't understand the complexities of cryptography. (As I said, I certainly can't.) It just means that unless you are one of the very few people who are 1) exceptionally mathematically talented and 2) able to have spent your entire life studying the subject, it's unlikely that you could make an informed choice.

[smacktoward]

By all means, use different wording when passing this message along if you're worried about hurting the recipient's fee-fees. But you won't be doing them any favors if you change the message to a Stuart Smalley-style "You can do it! You're good enough! You're smart enough! And gosh darn it, people like you!" Because on this specific subject, the odds are very, very, very unlikely that they actually are.

[jiggy2011]

it's not necessarily about intelligence per se.

I think "smarter" in this context means more well read about the particular subject of crypto, although people good at that are likely to very intelligence all round too.

A different approach is not necessarily "less secure" it's just that it may have had less people banging on it trying to figure out ways to break it.