The Drunk That Stumbled Into a Roomful of Experts

This is a story I've told from time to time on social media.  I find it necessary to re-tell it at times, and have decided to put it here, where I can link to it as the need arises.

I was once a commercial refrigeration mechanic.  As with every profession I plied during my working life, I endeavored to be the best in that profession I could be.  So as soon as I had heard of them, I joined a group called the Refrigeration Service Engineers Society (RSES).

It is primarily an educational group dedicated to continuing education for those who actually work in the trade.  Local chapters hold monthly meetings at which the main event is a talk given by some expert in some aspect of the trade.  And in that trade, there are lots of aspects:  you have to be a mechanic, a pipefitter, an electrician, a controls technician, understand your Seven Properties of Air, a little bit of a physicist, understand thermodynamics, and so forth.  I thoroughly enjoyed working in that trade, because there is always something new to learn -- right up to the day the Government decided they know more than I did about how to do my job.

And I thoroughly enjoyed the meetings, not only learning something new about what I did for a living, but hanging out with the other guys (later we had both genders) and swapping stories.  The social times were as fulfilling as the lectures.

Once a year, all of the RSES chapters in the Pacific Northwest would meet somewhere for a regional conference, and I always went.  Not only to hear higher-powered speakers than what we had in our town, but to meet others in the trade who lived farther away.  They were always held during our slow time of year:  spring.  Or was it fall?  Either way, not many refrigeration systems break down that time of year.

It was at one of these conferences where this story happened.  There was a social hour in the evening, after the day's learning sessions, in one of the venue's meeting rooms.  Some equipment vendor had supplied little snack-y things and we were all just standing around munching little sandwiches, holding our little (non-alcoholic) drinks, and talking about thermostatic expansion valves, and superheat, and that one leak that evaded us for months, and so forth.

A drunk walked in.  Maybe he was in the place for another meeting and stumbled into the wrong room; I did that once and went, "Why is everyone here gay?" so I s'pose it could happen to anyone.  Maybe he just walked into the hotel off the street and picked a room at random.  I'll never know.  But this guy was about as out of place as I was in that roomful of swishes.

Except that it only took me a number of seconds to realize I was in the wrong place, and leave.  This guy stayed, listening to our conversations.  None of us knew him, but we refrigeration men are a friendly sort and always willing to see a new face willing to learn.  We didn't quite figure out what he was until he started trying to talk.

Let's just say that he knew nothing -- NOTHING! -- about thermostatic expansion valves, or superheat, or finding leaks.  And when he finally did say something, it was "Thish shtuff ish all a bunsch of bullshit."  Meaning, of course, that he didn't understand anything being said.

I wanted to say, "Yeah, you'll think it's all bullshit when your beer doesn't get cold," but I kept my mouth shut.

He stuck around, mooching away at the food, until one of our group told the hotel staff that "This person is not part of our group" and they took care of getting him out of there.

Many has been the time that I've been in an online conversation with others of like mind and similar education / experience / knowledge when someone not-one-of-us, who knows nothing, tries to barge in and lecture us.  It always reminds me of this story, because it's the same feeling:  someone who knows nothing, thinking he knows everything, trying to lecture those of us who really do "know everything."  They really stand out, but are completely unaware of how far out of their league they are.

I see it when Creationists try to hijack a conversation about evolution; I see it when Global Warming true believers try to come into a conversation among skeptics; I see it when Marxists or Keynesians try to barge into a discussion of economics; I see it when hoplophobes try to argue in a 2nd Amendment discussion.  In every case, they don't even know the basics.  And they don't know that they don't know.  And when you mention Dunning-Kruger, they think that they are the smart ones -- just as Dunning-Kruger predicts.

Sigh.

And now, instead of retelling this story every time that happens, I can just link here.