Generally it's the assumption that people who don't view a thing the way you do don't have experience with a thing. Or, frankly, even doubting/questioning that someone who has a different view has no/less experience with it.
Let's look at this. The other options are to assume they do have experience -- clearly a non-starter, or to ask. I've try asking and had posters get weirdly defensive and cagey, and sometimes even end up hostile because of the question. Or being told that the game doesn't matter, RPGs work the same way. I mean, damned if you do.
Because lack of experience may be the reason they view it differently, when you guess that and you're wrong you will absolutely come across as elitist and closed-minded, because you dismiss the experiences of others before you even engage them.
Let's look at this. I was posting in response to someone else, that does appear to have no experience outside of D&D, when you responded to me initially. My response to that was that I think that most people lack experience, to which you responded with an accusation of elitism. If the argument is that I should be careful, then this seems like it didn't work. It's pretty obvious most people do lack a lot of experience. It's also clear that I allowed that some people have it, and I did not characterize you in either category, leaving it up to individuals to self-sort. But, this carefulness still netted my an accusation. So, I've followed your advice, but still ended up in the same place.
Do you, perhaps, see the difficulty?
Let me present a different case, that has some similarities, and see if it sparks any comments: I'm an electrical engineer, with a focus on communications, and a decades long career. You almost certainly have a system I helped design in your pocket or nearby. I'm pretty savvy about comms stuff. I just had my ISP provider out to update my service and correct an intermittent disconnect issue we've had for a few months. I suspected that my router was failing or that the wiring had gone bad, but not completely failed. When the tech came out, I didn't tell him my education or work history, but told him about the issues I was having. He suggested it might be the wireless home phone base station that was about a foot away from the router. I knew that this was pretty far fetched -- sure they can operate on the same bandwidths, but they don't use the same modulation schema, so interference is slight and wouldn't cause the issues I had without something badly being wrong with the phone (which there isn't, because I had recently moved the base station and the problem predated that move). Turns out the tech traced the problem to the wiring and ended up having to replace the exterior connections, the walljack, and the interior cabling to fix the issue. Point being, I didn't get upset because the tech treated me like I didn't know anything, even though I did. The vast amount of experience the tech has is with people who legit don't know anything. I'm not due special exception because I buck the trend until and unless I make it politely clear that I do so.
In other words, do I bear all responsibility in these interactions, or do other posters also have some duty?
