The other night I spent half an hour in a bar waiting for friends, eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table. It was two young guys (mid-20s) talking about search engines, both obviously comfortable with business concepts, one with a decent technical understanding and the other not so much. I gathered that they lived in the neighborhood, and I knew they needed to be extremely well-off to do so, so I was naturally curious about what kind of people make so much money so fast in technology. Were they, I wondered, extremely bright?

I figured out quickly that the technical guy was pretty bright, but I never got a hand on the other guy. He exhibited behaviors that I associate with idiocy or flat-out frat boy douchebaggery: making things up, pretending to understand things he didn't, ridiculing ideas that he didn't even pretend to understand (I'm not making that up), bragging about himself, continuing stories after his listener had pointed out that their premise was factually untrue, and so on. Yet occasionally he said something that made me think no, a stupid person could never have said that. Plus the technical guy, who apparently knew him well, was taking all of this douchebaggery in stride and was talking to him as if he were an intellectual equal, not holding back or simplifying at all. The technical guy had apparently known this guy long enough to realize that he was much smarter than he seemed.

Even the fact that the technical guy consistently, quietly corrected the other guy's facts -- and then sat patiently while the guy finished his story despite the fact that the correction removed both the point and the credibility of the story -- seemed to indicate that they had a considerable level of mutual comfort and respect. I mean, if the guy had really been a complete idiot, the technical guy would not have bothered correcting him so often. Not to mention that an arrogant idiot would not have been so tolerant of correction as this guy was.

Anyway, that whole story was just to illustrate that there is a huge cultural gap between technical people and nontechnical people. The way that guy acted, I would not have trusted him to feed my goldfish. Apparently, though, he was a bright guy who had learned a different set of social mores.