Patent examiners all have degrees in science or engineering. See, for example, this job listing: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/545074300. They're also organized into art groups which become experts in narrow fields of inventions.
> simple incremental improvements.
Almost every patent issued is an incremental improvement of some other invention. By "simple" you probably mean non-obvious, which is one of the requirements for patentability.
> I did some "computer work" and a "novel" new ability emerged.
That's a different kind of novelty. It's not patentably novel if anyone, anywhere in the world, ever did it publicly before you.
> (and normies in general)
I don't think it would be controversial had you not condescendingly referred to "normies".
Edit: Not sure why that's controversial... Some time around 2009 I finally got my parents hooked up with cable internet vs the DSL they had before and wowed them by playing a movie over the internet from my home media server. I didn't invent "a method and process for transmitting a full length movie over a network without quality degradation", but my mom sure thought so. I did some "computer work" and a "novel" new ability emerged.
Edit: Changed whats in () to something less offensive.