Chauffeur Knowledge

Imagine a person listening to a lecture or presentation on a difficult topic outside their field repeatedly. They do this so often in fact that they memorize all the words. Moreover, they do that so well that they eventually volunteer to give that presentation themself. What is their relationship to the knowledge conveyed in the words? Here is an anecdote that Charlie Munger relayed during at least one of his speeches. By the way, there’s a famous story about Max Planck that is apocryphal: After he won his prize, he was invited to lecture everywhere, and he has his chauffeur who drove him around to give public lectures all through Germany. And the chauffeur memorized the lecture, so one day he said, “Gee, Professor Planck, why don’t you let me try it by switching places?” So he got up and gave the lecture. At the end of it, some physicist stood up and posed a question of extreme difficulty. But the chauffeur was up for it. “Well,” he said, “I’m surprised that a citizen of an advanced…