I give up, after many, many years!

Le Chaud Lapin writes:

Here you have, a giant in the field, listening to someone who is so
green that he botches the Biot-Savart Law, not being condescending,
not interrupting me saying, "You got it all wrong, dummy", just
smiling. I never pursued the idea, but I will never forget that Prof.

If experienced pilots, especially in real life, would adopt this
attitude, young pilots would be more inclined to finish flight
training, I think.

The problem is that the vast majority of pilots aren't even remotely "giants
in their field." A true world-class expert has nothing to prove to anyone and
isn't likely to be insecure, but a low-time pilot with more ego than
competence is likely to be very insecure and very eager to prove that he knows
more than other people do. It's not limited to aviation, of course.

There is also another option, which one pilot at my flight school
refused to use, which is, when asked something that is not understood,
like the internals of VOR tranmitter/receiver, to simply say, "I don't
know."

A person has to be pretty secure to be able to say that. Many people aren't.