From personal experience, I can tell you that really really smart people are wrong all the time. They’re much more likely to be wrong when talking outside of their domain of expertise, but even a physics professor talking about physics will inevitably get stuff wrong in regular conversation.
If someone says something that doesn’t make sense, you should of course try and understand their argument and see if you’re missing something. But “this person made a mistake” should always be a hypothesis under consideration, and it’s often the most likely explanation.
From personal experience, I can tell you that really really smart people are wrong all the time. They’re much more likely to be wrong when talking outside of their domain of expertise, but even a physics professor talking about physics will inevitably get stuff wrong in regular conversation.
If someone says something that doesn’t make sense, you should of course try and understand their argument and see if you’re missing something. But “this person made a mistake” should always be a hypothesis under consideration, and it’s often the most likely explanation.