[Enginerrrd]

I think the phenomenon you're describing is just a big part of the engineering skill set.

In my field, Civil Engineering, I get paid mostly to figure out all those things that could go wrong and mitigate or account for them within the budget and constraints available.

Experience is valued in engineering because you can see the probable future on things are likely to break/fail/go wrong, BEFORE they actually do.

It's not surprising to me then that a bunch of engineers who spend all day thinking in this way do the same in different contexts where it may be less appropriate because they are less knowledgeable.

I don't think it's necessarily a way to try to look smart or something.

[sangnoir]

> It's not surprising to me then that a bunch of engineers who spend all day thinking in this way do the same in different contexts where it may be less appropriate because they are less knowledgeable

Bingo! On HN, the "I am very smart" often becomes "I can reason about any unfamiliar ${complex field} from first principles in the time it takes to write a 2-paragraph comment based on only TFA". Such comments elicit confirmation bias from other non-experts and you may have a completely wrong (or not even wrong) comment at the top. It's a frustrating failure-mode of HN.