Possibly because smart people with expertise, usually hard-won through years of focus and study, make the common fallacy that they are experts in unrelated areas, even if they haven't put in the effort to become experts.
Too many secretly believe they're Renaissance polymaths, instead of being humble enough to admit they don't know something.
Really well said. I would even go further and say that the "smart people with expertise" even disagree on matters like this and are operating on imperfect, vague information. Knowing that, it seems even more ridiculous to ask passersby about their opinion on this. Of course you can have an opinion, but keep in mind you're likely operating in 99% fog. Just my two cents.
In a landmark 20 year study, Professor Philip Tetlock showed that even the average expert was only slightly better at predicting the future than random guesswork. Tetlock’s latest project, an unprecedented government funded forecasting tournament involving over a million individual predictions has since shown that there are, however, some people with real demonstrable foresight.
Too many secretly believe they're Renaissance polymaths, instead of being humble enough to admit they don't know something.