When someone works really hard on a problem and then puts it out there openly, you have to respect their work. And from their perspective, they've put weeks/months/10 years into a piece of work, and it can come off really bad if you approach them and ask them to explain it to you so that you can understand it in a fraction of the time. For complex ideas, you can talk at somebody and they can get the general gist of it, but for many technical things you don't understand it until it "clicks" from gears moving in your own head. I understand this case is pretty drastic, but his claim that one needs to break down the barriers in their mind shows how much he expects from an individual to understand his work.