I was very opinionated and had a bunch of random knowledge to back up my opinions when I was young. I had a lot of confidence that I actually knew a lot.
Then at some point, some people started saying that I was almost right, but not quite. I didn’t have all the info. Just some. Sometimes I was just wrong. Was I getting stupider, or was I finally being called out?
I think learning you don’t have all of the answers and restraining your opinions is an important part of becoming a sensible adult.
It's fine to be opinionated if your opinion is backed up with experience. Young people by definition lack that experience.
It's not fine to be opinionated if your opinion would cause politics. Even if you're right - you're screwed.
There seem to be a few motivations for promoting someone else's (not just 22yos) self-image of being "brilliant". Ones I've seen so far:
* A teacher/mentor might offer encouragement, so that a person will keep working on learning/doing something that needs effort, rather than think they're not cut out for it. (Though it's maybe better to expressly attribute accomplishments to effort rather than innate qualities.)
* A manager might also do it for good morale/atmosphere, and even a genuine expression of appreciation for a positive contribution and effort.
* An employer, investor, or university might "recognize" and echo-chamber "brilliance", to attract people and extract work/tuition/rankings from them. (Don't you want to go where people are "brilliant" and, perhaps after hazing to reinforce that, they accept you as one?) (Also, flattery costs less to give than dollars do.)
This resonates me a lot. Ageing has made me very alergic to strong opinions, black and white approaches and naive enthusiasm.
It's no surprise that most 22 year olds think they're brilliant. But are they actually? Sometimes, yes, but usually, no.
I think with age comes a bit more humility about one's own brilliance. Perhaps because we find the limits of our own knowledge and we also meet others that truly are brilliant in some regard, which makes us question our own brilliance.
When looking back, it's normal to take our old high self-regard as real -- and compare it to our current, more realistic self-regard. But in fact, our youthful cockiness was often unearned.