As I have been lamenting for a while now, we live in an age that confuses education with literacy, and higher education with information gathering and skills training. And so we encounter pundits who specialize in data collection (spun around as 'knowledge') but who have no insights into any of it whatsoever. They have information on all kinds of topics oozing out of their ears but are conceptually callow, unable to hold a line of reasoning, or even to follow it when it is put before them. They enjoy ephemeral moments of victory when they manage to stop your argument in its tracks by throwing arcane information at you (including facts, figures, quotes and whatnot) that you were either unaware of or did not consider germane to the point under discussion. By the time you recover your ground to point out a fallacy or the lack of relevance, they're already feeling smug in the belief that they've made their point. More often than not, this is the only weapon in their armory.
A lot of this has to do with the quiz culture - the race to prove that one's brain has a larger memory bank (coupled with a more efficient data archival and retrieval capability) than the next guy. No fault of theirs, really. This is just an extension of the evaluation methodology embedded in our 'education' system. Cram, cram, cram and 'give' your exam (as opposed to 'take'). I generalize, of course. I also know exceptional individuals who are conceptually sound, with sharp minds augmented by a vast storehouse of information, and with wisdom beyond their years. These are produced in spite of the system being what it is, and not because of it. So even more credit to them.
OK, back to being a snob. Here's my version of the old adage: never argue with voracious data-gatherers - they bring you down to their level and beat you with minutiae.
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