...smarter than me...

I think this is a largely overestimated concept, especially on LW. I doubt most people here are "smarter" than average Joe. A lot of it is due to education, a difference of interest, and a little more ease when it comes to symbol manipulation. Surely there are many more factors, like the ability to concentrate, not getting bored too quickly, being told as a child that one can learn anything if one tries hard enough etc., but little has to do with insurmountable hardware limitations.

Eliezer Yudkowsky recently wrote:

You know how there are people who, even though you could train them to carry out the steps of a Universal Turing Machine, you can't manage to teach them linear algebra...

I haven't heard of any evidence that would suggest that there are human beings who can't understand linear algebra. I myself have not yet arrived at linear algebra, because I didn't bother to learn any math when I was a teenager, but I doubt that it is something only superhuman beings can understand. I would go as far as to bet that you could teach it to someone with down syndrome.

Take for example the number 3^^^^3. Can I hold a model of 3^^^^3 objects in my memory? No. Can I visualize 3^^^^3? No. Does that mean that I am unable to fathom some of its important properties, e.g. its scope? No.

Someone who has no legs can't run faster than you. Similar differences are true about different brains, but we don't know enough about brains, or what it means to understand linear algebra, to indiscriminately claim that someone is "smarter"...