A general principle that I think is sufficient for this case (there are alternative reasons also sufficient on their own) is that in most situations, you should only assert things when you expect justified agreement from nontrivial portion of your target audience. So when you say "I'm not going to apologize for who I am", this assumes the context of your assertions about who you are, and I don't think you've given good arguments about that.

Environmental conditions don't reliably determine the outcome, so even though you might correctly have private knowledge about that, pointing out environmental conditions doesn't communicate sufficient evidence for your audience to accept the conclusion (whose meaning/application also wasn't very clear, but that seems secondary in this case). There are many high-status geniuses trained in excellent environments who are both confident and confused in particular domains outside of their areas of brilliance, such as reasons for their success or correctness of some non-mainstream theory.

Without establishing agreement on such details, you can't rely on their influence on social norms that you'd expect in situations where they can be communicated. The acting social norms are implied by what was successfully communicated, not by what you privately know. If you follow the norms implied by your private knowledge, you break the acting social norms.