I used to hear strangers who were confident and talkative ramble on about certain subjects in a social setting and be wowed by their expertise, but I have a totally different opinion on that now. Since I retired and don’t have to be at my desk at certain hours, I’m free to enjoy long leisurely meals at my favorite restaurants and sit and blog. That means I can’t help but overhear people who want everyone else to know they’re an expert in a particular subject. It’s almost always a man in his 50s. Seldom younger, sometimes older. I’ve never seen a woman do this. Always someone for whom it might be plausible that he’s truly an expert in that subject and has the years to prove it.
I know, I know. That’s my generation.
I see this at least once a week, these older guys holding court, spouting their truths. Some of these guys are really impressive. Or would be, if I weren’t sitting there, thinking, WTH???
If I listen long enough or someone has enough questions, I’ll learn that they derive their “expertise” from something they read online or something a brother-in-law’s second cousin said at a family picnic. The thing is, I often recognize this expertise as confident ignorance because they’re talking about something I’ve worked on in my long career.
Today, it was AI in military technology, something I was first working on 8 years ago. This guy was about 10 years behind. Also, he, um, has never used an LLM and doesn’t understand how they work. I could’ve taken five minutes to explain it to him but, hey, not my circus, not my monkeys, even if his circus was encroaching on my dinner.
Yesterday, it was Reagan’s STAR WARS. The “expert” was definitely old enough to know about it, but he didn’t. Not first-hand. If he had, we might have had a great discussion about the contracts I wrote for the Strategic Defense Initiative/BMDO and field trips I took out to Site A-15. Or we might have made comparisons together about the Golden Dome. But, alas, the young men at his table bowed to his experience, awed by his…awesomeness…and ordered more drinks for him.
Occasionally one of these men in a public space will notice something I’m writing that I didn’t show them and find it in their hearts to explain it to me, based on their “research,” which usually includes far more questionable sources than Wikipedia. I’ve had this happen with dozens of men, and only once with a woman. Usually, it’s an article I’m writing on software acquisition or missile defense strategies.
This is common to see in the comment sections online, all these experts, and half of them bots. I’m not sure if I didn’t used to see this often in offline social settings because it wasn’t common, because I didn’t place myself in those settings, or because people weren’t claiming to be experts in things that I had lived.
All I know is that a bunch of people are claiming expertise in areas they know nothing about personally.
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