This is broadly the same people who bemoaned the idea that the "smartest people in a generation" were all just working on adtech without any reflection about maybe that's not actually an exclusive set of the smartest people... or that a lot of the people in that set were the same one who might, twenty years ago, otherwise be chasing money as middlemen in finance vs doing productivity-expanding things anyway...

You can be smart and chase the money, but it's crazy hubris to assume that only your peer set of money-chasers are smart.

It's a small leap from there to "since we're the only smart people, we should get to have the most influence."

I’ve heard people say variations of, “Clever people can easily convince themselves of just about anything, if they’re inclined to. And then it’s nearly impossible to talk them out of it.”

Kinda seems true. And the worst people in history often don’t seem super dumb, despite their various other defects.

I'm confused by this comment, can you explain?

"Supposed" is doing a lot of work there. Compare, say, Yudkowsky et al. to the people who actually changed the world with mRNA vaccines.