often what people say is influenced by emotions they don't truly understand. you could say, duh, that's obvious. but almost no one actually analyses what and why they say things.
you could call it irrationality. someone will say something related to what they feel, regardless of whether its relevant, important, or a good idea in context. you may be wondering by now, what's the point, how does this relate to morons thinking geniuses are morons and vice versa. well often they will say they are morons because A: it makes them feel better for being a moron, B: the genius is smart at some things and dumb emotionally or in a social context, or C: geniuses feel easy to make fun of, because surely, the morons think, anyone above us couldn't feel too bad (and if they do morons feel empowered) for being harassed or made fun of by someone dumb. I trust you'll make the connections and realize relevance.
but I think the most important factor, is other people. if your in a room by yourself with a genius, you probably wont make fun of them. there's no one else to laugh and you get very little out of it. put yourself in a different situation with people, you will say things that you maybe don't fully believe because you get something out of it, human approval. that's all people want these days anyway, we are a social species after all.
so anyway, you explored the how, I somewhat over complicated the why. but I'm glad people these days are realising even the why even if it is relatively surface level, because I was beginning to lose hope.
For a long time, I was confused by others belittling geniuses as morons, and glorying morons as geniuses. Then it hit me: genius is not about genius. It's about status. Duh.
When you call someone a genius, you are making a claim that they should be viewed as high-status. And vice versa when you call someone a moron.
Which wouldn't be a big issue when it comes to evaluating whether someone were a genius if it were not for a couple of unfortunate facts. First, it is hard to evaluate expertise, outside a few areas like weight-lifting, where everyone can verify that that sure is a big guy lifting a big rock. Which plays into the second issue: genius is spiky. You can be the world's greatest chip architect and still believe in nonsense anyone can see is false, like astrology.
Together, this means that when someone is called a genius, you can be in a situation where:
1) Sees a bid being made to make someone high status,
2) For work whose value, you have to take on faith,
3) All the while, you see said genius spouting moronic statements.
And then it becomes perfectly natural to reject this bid.
Only, there's a bit of an issue with this story. Why exactly are you seeing many inane statements by this supposed-genius? For instance, Newton is widely recognized as a genius, but we don't often hear of his (in retrospect) silly statements on theology.
The answer is that the moron/genius is (often) a public intellectual. Public intellectuals opine on every topic under the sun. Worse yet, they opine on matters sacred and profane to you and I. Public intellectuals want their views to have influence. Which makes them dangerous.
Naturally, the sacred takes precedence over mere truth. And recall that the sacred is partly characterized by being ~ every good thing, having no internal contradictions or incoherence. So we see that a public intellectual associated with the sacred gains a halo of virtue that washes away any sin. That silly remark they made? Irrelevant.
Whereas the profane can never be good. Someone espousing a profane view, why, they must be a moron. Genius is forever out of their reach, no matter whether they've achieved feats no man ever has before.
OK, that's about it for this post. But I wanted a little digression at the end on humour. Very often, it becomes impossible for haters to understand that the object of their hate could have been joking. Why is that?
Well, because humour is composed of two things: status regulation and suprisal. If the object of your hate can regulate other people's status, that confers status on them in turn. But that's impossible, because they're literally The Devil, and how can The Devil be high-status? (Bad example, I know. I blame Milton.) And as for suprisal, that implies a certain level of intelligence. Again, one cannot ascribe a positive quality to the object of blackest hatred. So, hatred kills laughter.
Somewhat ironic, given how profane humour can be.