Well, turnabout is fair play. I'm not an old fart, but I've been in a position known for pleading inability to convey their knowledge to the unwashed masses until they they get roughly the same experience. Specifically, that of a graduate student (in control systems), working on a problem at the boundary of current knowledge.

I was very interested in learning what it would be like to get to a state where I literally could not explain the problem I'm working on to people far outside my field (though of course that was not why I went to grad school).

And you know what? It never happened. To an intelligent person, I was always capable of bringing them up to speed on the problem I was on and the related mathematical tools and formalisms. It certainly took some time as I had to fill in the gaps in their mathematical background, but absolutely not on the order of years. Maybe an hour or two instead.

I might one day find strong enough evidence to reverse my position, but for now, as best I can tell, the excuse of "you have to gain years of experience to understand my position" has been so overused, that it is extremely weak evidence whenever someone offers such a self-assessment.

I think what's happening is a combination of the "unwilling" and "unable" factors:

Unwilling: You take a deep hit to your status anytime you provide others with enough knowledge to obviate your sage wisdom.

Unable: If you haven't gotten into the programmer's mindset, you're all too quick to assume any problem has to be done manually and can't be converted into steps so simple that a machine could do it. "Nah nah, to play good chess requires special intuition, there's no way you can just break it down into a rulebook."