These remarks about how they'd agree with you if only they'd read more or how they aren't as superior to others as they think, these make your comment worse and emotional. Just make your case like you would in any other comment. If it's persuasive, then you look right and they look misinformed.

This kind of response is why we can't talk about all sorts of hot button topics on HN: people get personal. I'm sometimes guilty of it myself.

holy hell I enjoy an acerbic takedown as much as the next guy but this is beyond the pale.

given that we do now live in a society with a universal right to vote the need for an educated populace esp. regarding matters of civil society is more important than ever.

You've also misinterpreted the parent comment as they wrote nothing about contemporary intelligence. They're instead referring to structural forces that negatively impact critical thinking. See: the glut of commentary from otherwise highly intelligent and accomplished people reporting their own ability to focus being negatively impacted by social media and short-form content.

Furthermore, this is why the old school shared media outlets (the whole "back when everybody watched Walter Cronkite every night" thing) was so valuable. Few of us have the time to consider the issues with any degree of nuance or accuracy. So it's a real problem when the collective "source of truth" is poisoned by a horde of uncertified, often anonymous, charlatans spewing outright lies and incendiary half-truths, distributed at scale via algorithms designed to divide and inflame.

disclaimer: i'm fiercely anti-democracy, esp. with universal suffrage, for the exact reasons you cited.