Counterpoint: Electricians don't go around bragging about how they're gonna build a mass-based political movement around their speciality

Also: Bullshit. My uncle was an electronics engineer. He was also capable of explaining what we were doing, in ways my autistic ADHD brain could understand, when I "helped" him rewire his house as a kid. (mostly I handed him tools and asked too many questions.)

It's not about academia producing gurus, it's about understanding both what you're doing and the inferential gap between you and the rest of the world when it comes to your specialty.

If you don't even understand how specialized your work is, how well can you really understand the work?