Just my opinion, but I think that actually smart people appreciate the elegance of a simple solution to a problem that looks hard at first sight. It's the people that aren't so smart but want to sound smarter that are incentivized to make their results look harder than what they actually are.

I guess it's analogous to the phenomenon of some people feeling "ripped off" when they pay a tradesman (or other worker) to do something that (appears) physically easy. As the apocryphal story goes "you're not paying me to turn a screw, you're paying me to know which one to turn" or "I could call my apprentice and have him take longer to do it if you'd like"

This is the HN IQ bias: assuming that smart people are somehow less susceptible to cognitive biases etc. that the mere mortals have.[1]

Smart people can be incredibly biased and ideological. Some careers for smart people are even all about reasoning backwards from a given conclusion.

[1] redacted footnote