EY argues: "... your smart friends and favorite SF writers are not remotely close to the rationality standards of Less Wrong, and you will no longer think it anywhere near as plausible that their differing opinion is because they know some incredible secret knowledge you don't."

and you respond by saying that there have been people smarter than Eliezer that have suffered rationality fails when working outside their domain? Isn't that kinda the point?

EY wasn't arguing "My IQ is so damn high that I just have to be right. Look at my ability to generate novel hypothesis! It clearly shows high IQ!", which would indeed be foolish. It is understood here that high innate intelligence is not the same as real world effectiveness, which requires one be intelligent about how they use their intelligence.

The object of the game here is to evaluate hypothesis which have already been generated (ie SIAI claims). EY was showing that there are many very smart people that can't even evaluate the MWI hypothesis when it is handed to them and there is slam dunk evidence.

If you can't even get the right answer on simple questions, how the heck are you supposed to do better on tough problems than those that see the simple problems as, well... simple?

EDIT: It seems like my point did not come off clearly. I am not arguing that it is not an appeal to authority.

I am arguing that high IQ is different from "has lots of knowledge" which is different from "knows the fundamental rules of how to weigh evidence and evaluate claims", and that Eliezer was talking about the last one.