I’ll allow myself a bit of cynicism in this moment and just point out how hard that is to imagine sometimes, especially with today’s political / social climate in general. But this advice, repeated often by one of my creative writing professors in college, has a good point to make. If you don’t think your audience is intelligent enough to grasp the things you’re writing about, then what are you even doing? Besides tricking people out of their money / efforts and not actually creating a solid story, of course.
Are you debating changing a word that’s a little less common in everyday vernacular? Leave it in: if someone doesn’t understand it, they should take the time to look it up. Are you bogging down your plot with a lot of unnecessary details because you think you’re not being clear enough? Kill those darlings: readers will catch on. And if they don’t, then you’re not writing for them. Not sure if people will understand the underlying theme of your story? I’ve got news for you: most people don’t. A lot of readers just want an entertaining bit of escapism, and a lot of writers just want to tell a story, and there shouldn’t always have to be a ton of nuance in-between. But if you do put it there, then the right readers will see it—and the rest might, at the very least, be prompted to think about something new.
So, don’t cater to any hypothetical “reader” when it comes to your writing. If anything is confusing or not strong enough, that’s for your beta readers to help you figure out when the time is right. In the meantime, treat your audience like they’re smart.