Comment by notacoward

I've found that pretending to know someone's profession, or one related to it, is generally a very bad approach. It's easily seen through, at which point you're worse off than before. Instead, what I do with members of other professions is try to impress on them that I do not know their business but respect its complexity and our roles within the scenario. Whether it's a doctor or a plumber or even a computer technician (a field which I probably do know better than they do), I explicitly steer away from diagnoses even when I have a pretty clear idea what the problem is. Instead I describe as clearly as possible symptoms, timing/frequency, possibly related changes, things I've tried and results I've gotten, etc. This has generally worked much better for me than deceptive or manipulative hacks. Often I get thanks or compliments for having made their job easier, which makes me happy. YMMV