I don't think it's really this honestly. They have a domain of knowledge that they know about, but they can have blind spots and refuse to apply any critical thinking to other facets of life.

I know people who are smarter than me who are still stuck in the trump-hate bubble but can write a ray tracer and know and use high level mathematics that classically would show a lot of intelligence.

It's just too easy to confuse or dismiss ideas and to shut your brain off when you turn on colbert or read reddit or whatever. There's a lot of arguments from authority that go into it too, it's like "hey this professor has all his credentials and he believes this, so i'd be crazy to think otherwise".