I think that as a metaphor, this video somewhat describes what it's like to work with somebody who is far beneath your expertise level in the same field. The obvious bikeshedding aside ("It's just 7 lines, anyone can draw that Anderson, you're an EXPERT"), working with people who haven't had the same exposure or experience to problems within your domain before might make you feel the same way Anderson's character did when he tried to explain why the task was not (in the most direct sense) possible.

I assume this probably goes both ways. In the eyes of an expert, they'll probably have difficulties or at the very least get frustrated that people are making judgment calls when they're obviously wrong. On the other end, non-experts might actually feel frustrated feeling that the expert doesn't know what they're talking about, when task X is so obviously a possibility and they're just viewing the world inside their own tiny box. From both sides, they lack/forget/have lost the context to see the other sides' perspective. It's not so much that haughty managers and salespeople are too quick to say 'yes' all the time, but rather that what's obvious to you is clearly not 'obvious' or may not even register within their perception of the world. Ultimately, the root cause of the problem here is that there are unspoken assumptions, and neither party is willing to communicate what those are.

Take for example, the assumption that "you're an expert." In reality, you may be the best in your field, or at the very least you might be well-versed in it, but an expert in astrophysics isn't going to fare well in a discussion about civil engineering. In the same way, there are people who make the assumption that there is no distinction between engineers, and that electrical engineers are the same as geomatics engineers are the same as chemical engineers. While the specific field of engineering may be different, small assumptions that go un-communicated like this are how these sorts of problems start.

That said, even communicating these assumptions to others may not solve the problem. In my own experience, I've had problems getting team members up to speed, if only because there's no hard and fast way to do so. As an example, when working on a Javascript project with a partner once, my team member kept complaining that they didn't "get" how to write code in Javascript, despite having gone through the same education (same degree/program) that I did. Certainly I had more experience with the language than they had, but I was confused as to why they would find the language hard. To give some context as to why I couldn't understand why my team member was suffering, we take courses in programming with C++ / MATLAB in our first few years within our degree. Furthermore, I had sent multiple links to courses such as CodeAcademy, and many others, which I had assumed would have given my partner the information necessary to transfer their skills to the constructs of the new language.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out as I had expected. They continued to struggle with Javascript, for reasons beyond my understanding. The intent to learn was there, but for some reason there was no way to explain the language in a commutable way to them. And here's where I noticed the problem of being an "expert" who's "surrounded by idiots": I couldn't get figure out why someone who had the same basic training/purported skills as me couldn't manage something as simple as learning a new programming language. At the end of the day, there was definitely a communication barrier, but the "unspoken assumptions" I spoke of before didn't even help alleviate that once they were revealed. I guess in this case, once I had set that barrier, it wasn't coming undone. The attitude that "this is too hard" or "I can't do this" had already set in, so there was little left I could do about it. Even attempting to help teach after the fact was only met with disdain and harsh attitudes.

If anyone else has some tips for dealing with this sort of behaviour / attitude / whatever in the workplace, I'd love to hear them. Too often am I approached by a colleague who tries to convince me of the impossibility (or possibility, in the case of the video) of some task that is not such. What do you do when you're the expert and you can't get people to work up to the level you're on, and what do you do when you're the non-expert and feel like the level you need to work up to is impossible?