Ask HN: Are people only smart until they talk about things you know more about?

> and they spoke bullshit with a mild air of authority instead of running away, which a sensible person should have done.

I think often they're asked because they've expressed interest in a topic or cause, and they realize that any benefit their name and the exposure they have at the moment is wasted if they ignore questions about it.

That they misstep is probably no different than any fledgling PR person the first day on the job, and sometimes I don't doubt it's media baiting them with questions to expose their lack of knowledge of some areas of the topic, as it makes for good coverage.

A lot of the times I give celebrities a lot of leeway in their knowledge, because most the time it's obvious that they just want to help because they feel fortunate for their current situation and want to give back. Sometimes that seems to be misapplied because of their lack of deep understanding on the topic, but at least their hearts seem to be in a good place.

Indeed. In my experience, the bad feeling gets even worse when noticing something wrong in something you are not specialised at all.

However to your point, Michael Crichton describes the rather sad "Gell-Mann amnesia effect": One tends to still trust the other pages of the magazine.

Genuinely smart people are the ones who ask lots of questions when talking about an unfamiliar topic.

I think you misunderstand what "smart" means. More likely what you think by "smart" is actually "smart, knowledgeable and wise".

Smart is only capacity for noticing and understanding new things. It does not mean the person has presently a lot of understanding of things (knowledge) or that it has good judgment to not say untrue things in area they have no idea about (wisdom).

A person that is smart but has little knowledge will not be able to keep up in discussion with you in your area of expertise even if they are actually more intelligent than you.

Give them some time and see if they can pick up things fast or are slow to understand new concepts. This is better way to judge if somebody is or is not smart.

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Imagine following situation: you are talking about something you know a lot about with a person that has no knowledge in your field of expertise.

That person decides to learn your field.

Let's say, in 2 years they know more in your field than you will ever know and they even are able to get a lot of original insight that leads to some astounding accomplishments.

Ask yourself, was that person "not smart" when you first talked to him/her? Or maybe they were always smart but they still needed to invest at least some time and effort to learn the field?

I generally found that smart people keep calm and it is discovered slowly, with more and more interaction. People who showed off and bragged a lot were generally found to be shallow in my experience