The way the original posted phrased this, I don't believe he meant so much asking questions to clarify something obscure, but more accurately to stress something inconsistent or inaccurate. There are two aspects to this: noticing the inconsistency, and then notifying others. As I understand it, pattern recognition is something at least moderately related to intelligence. Revealing that pattern to others, and choosing when and how, is much more a matter of following social protocol, which may go even as far as to dictate that such patterns never be revealed.

Difficulty in dealing with average people is a social skills issue, but 'average' and 'below average' people might have that same problem.

This leads to a what I think difficult question that in general seems to have a suspiciously certain answer: when is it appropriate to disregard social etiquette and protocol? The obvious answer is: never, because no good ever comes from people being annoyed and offended.

This seems suspiciously clear-cut, and historically inaccurate. I can think of a number of very detrimental philosophies that would still be adhered to today if everyone's foremost goal was to never cause offense, far more detrimental than the offense fighting against them may have been.

Provided that there is some correlation between intelligence and noticing abnormalities in patterns, this point ties back to the first, in that the person deemed difficult may just be seeing a pattern that few others are able to see, and as a result of continually bringing up aspects of that pattern are considered difficult and a lackluster teammate.

I don't think just saying "stop being such an anti-social dickhead" is an all-inclusive solution. Further more, I don't think we want it to be when thinking about long-term concerns.