Crazy People, Quantum Nonsense, and Why I’m the Dumbest Guy in the Room on Purpose
- Rich Washburn
- 47 minutes ago
- 4 min read


You ever notice how every era has its buzzword bullshit? Like, back in the day, every computer was bragging about its clock speed. “1.4 gigahertz!” “2.0 gigahertz!” It was the language of power. Nobody actually knew what it meant, but it had a number, and bigger numbers meant better computers, right? Same with RAM. Same with hard drives. Same with every tech label we could slap on a box. “Intel Inside” was practically gospel — and it didn’t matter if anyone understood it. Marketing figured out early that confidence beats comprehension.
Then came 4K. Oh boy. 4K TVs, 4K cameras, 4K drones, 4K doorbells, and — I swear — I once saw “4K audio” on a pair of headphones. What does that even mean? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But by then, the system was baked: train consumers to associate bigger numbers and shinier buzzwords with better quality, and they’ll stop asking what it actually means. It worked for clock speeds, it worked for screen resolution, and now it’s happening all over again.
Because now everything is “AI.” Or “quantum.” Or my personal favorite — “AI-empowered quantum synergy.” I sat in a meeting last week where a client used the word quantum so many times I thought they were having a seizure in the thesaurus aisle. It got to the point where I tuned out completely. Like, genuinely checked out. Thank God I record my calls, because at some point my brain said, “Nope, we’re done here,” and just went to another room to get work done while they kept quantimizing their nonsense.
It’s embarrassing, man. Marketing has turned into a parody of itself. Words that used to mean something — technical, specific, earned — have been beaten into mush because they sell better that way. And that’s when I remembered this old movie from the ’90s called Crazy People.
Dudley Moore plays this marketing guy who has a breakdown and ends up in a mental institution. Long story short, he and the other patients start writing ad campaigns — and they’re brutally honest. No fluff, no focus groups, no “brand synergy.” Just straight-up truth bombs.
Stuff like, “Volvo: They’re boxy, but they’re good.” It’s so ridiculous it’s genius. Because for the first time, people heard marketing that didn’t insult their intelligence. It didn’t try to manipulate. It just told the truth.
That’s what we’re missing today — truth. Honesty. The willingness to say, “Yeah, it’s not perfect, but it’s real.” Instead, we’ve built this entire industry of smoke and mirrors that’s more concerned with sounding smart than being useful. We’ve got companies tripping over themselves to slap “AI” on everything, from toothpaste to thermostats, because it sounds advanced. The result? Everyone’s talking, nobody’s communicating. Words have stopped meaning anything.
And that’s where I’ve landed with this whole AI thing. Look, I’ve been in tech my whole life — infrastructure, cybersecurity, digital forensics, all that stuff. I’ve seen trends come and go. But when AI hit the scene, I was just as dumb as everyone else. Let’s be real: nobody really knew what they were doing at first. The only reason I got any kind of head start is because I jumped in early and started messing with it. I treated it like a big, shiny machine full of knobs and levers and I wanted to see what every single one did. I broke things, I experimented, I learned.
And that’s when I realized something: it doesn’t matter how much you know. It matters that you’re curious enough to ask. Because for the first time in tech history, you can walk into a room where you’re not the smartest person — and that’s the whole damn point. That’s the gift. You’re not supposed to outsmart AI. You’re supposed to learn how to think with it.
Everyone’s out here trying to sell AI expertise. “Master ChatGPT in 5 easy steps.” “Become a prompt ninja.” Whatever. I’m not doing that. I’m not here to sell tools. I’m here to teach the mindset. Because this isn’t about memorizing the right prompts or finding some secret hack. It’s about learning to collaborate with something that’s smarter than you — and letting that make you better. Every question you ask, every problem you throw at it, every challenge you set up… it levels you up. Incrementally, quietly, but constantly.
So yeah — I’m the dumbest guy in the room, and I love it. Because when you finally accept that, you stop pretending. You start learning. You stop posturing like you’ve got it all figured out, and you start exploring like a kid again. That’s where real innovation happens — in curiosity, not certainty.
And here’s my Crazy People-style pitch, straight up, no marketing bullshit:
Learn AI from me. Everyone else will teach you how to use a tool. I’ll teach you how to think like an AI user — so you don’t have to keep thinking with the same little mind you’ve been using up to now.
That’s it. That’s the product. Honesty. Curiosity. Clarity. The rest is just noise.
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