One thing to keep in mind is that even if it does seem likely that the suspected bluffer is smarter and more knowledgeable than you, the bar for actually working on the subject is higher than the bar for understanding a discussion about it. So even if you are not qualified enough to be an X researcher or an X lecturer, you should still be able to understand a lecture about X.
Even if the gap between you two is so great that they can publish papers on the subject and you can’t even understand a simple lecture, you should still be able to understand some of that lecture. Maybe you can’t follow the entire derivation of an equation but you can understand the intuition behind it. Maybe you get lost in some explanation but can understand an alternative example.
Yes—it is possible that you are so stupid and so ignorant and that the other person is such a brilliant expert that even with your sincere effort to understand and their sincere effort to explain as simply as possible you still can’t understand even a single bit of it because the subject really is that complicated. But at this point the likability of this scenario with all these conditions is low enough that you should seriously consider the option that they are just bluffing.
One thing to keep in mind is that even if it does seem likely that the suspected bluffer is smarter and more knowledgeable than you, the bar for actually working on the subject is higher than the bar for understanding a discussion about it. So even if you are not qualified enough to be an X researcher or an X lecturer, you should still be able to understand a lecture about X.
Even if the gap between you two is so great that they can publish papers on the subject and you can’t even understand a simple lecture, you should still be able to understand some of that lecture. Maybe you can’t follow the entire derivation of an equation but you can understand the intuition behind it. Maybe you get lost in some explanation but can understand an alternative example.
Yes—it is possible that you are so stupid and so ignorant and that the other person is such a brilliant expert that even with your sincere effort to understand and their sincere effort to explain as simply as possible you still can’t understand even a single bit of it because the subject really is that complicated. But at this point the likability of this scenario with all these conditions is low enough that you should seriously consider the option that they are just bluffing.