Problem with this PoV is that these things don't directly impart knowledge of a subject. You might be smarter than your doctor or lawyer, but they are decades a

Problem with this PoV is that these things don't directly impart knowledge of a subject. You might be smarter than your doctor or lawyer, but they are decades ahead of you in terms of training and practice. This includes not just their personal experience in the field but also access to the social stock of knowledge of their profession. Sure, there are problems like institutional bias and groupthink. But these are minor issues compared to the issue of having no grounding or education in the field as is usually the case when engineers opine their unconventional views in different subjects. So the fallacy behind the fake polymath is not the idea that being smart makes you better at analyzing information. It's the idea that being smart is a substitute for information and expertise. This mistaken assumption can lead smart engineers to beliefs that subject matter experts consider religious or delusional. Mars colonization is a great example in Elon Musk's case. Btw most of the general training you mentioned isn't part of STEM and is historically associated with humanities subjects like law and philosophy instead. In STEM you typically work with set epistemic frameworks with unambiguous correct and incorrect answers. In this sense, engineers actually learn the opposite of critical thinking and discourse.