People who know too much about a topic also know they are often wrong.
It's the people in the middle who have unlimited confidence and arrogance.
People who know too little don't know how to get to the happy path, let alone stay in there.
People who know too much know extensively where the happy path lies, it's neighborhood, how to go off-road out of the happy path and the dangers that lie therein.
People in the middle know how to get to the happy path and remain there, and know that steering away from the happy path leads to trouble and ambiguity. As they mastered the happy path then they feel unlimited confidence and arrogance.
It's entirely possible that it's correct depending on the specifics. Say for example one is trying to install MySQL 8.0 on a laptop with Catalina, which is still supported by Apple and getting security updates. This is actually unsupported and won't work. A somewhat unlikely situation but definitely not impossible.
https://www.mysql.com/support/supportedplatforms/database.ht...
Exactly what the crafty older person wanted. Get you to do the work. "It doesn't work on my computer" or some other claim of trouble or ignorance is an easy way to trick a smart energetic young person to do something for you.
Young smart people don't like to say "I don't know how" or "I can't get it to work." An older person will say that without hesitation if it will prompt someone else to do something that he doesn't want to do himself.
For many people, the notion of debugging a MySQL installation on Windows so that it works seems about as plausible as summitting K2 - they don't expect others nearby can simply do it, either. (Also, the suggestion of inter-generational manipulation is not attractive.)
Agreed.
The charitable interpretation is a lot more reasonable: a parent/elder wants to spend time with their child/younger, and is even taking an interest in their career/hobbies.
It’s kind of like the well known technique: “If you want the right answer to your question, confidently post the wrong answer and wait for the replies.”
As an aside, commonplace implicatures like these are a kind of what's called "pragmatics" in linguistics.