Intuitively Obvious to the Casual Observer

A phrase that I am finding to be more and more common as I further my mechanical engineering education is "intuitively obvious to the casual observer". I am not a fan of this phrase for two reasons. First, hardly ever is the situation intuitively obvious, especially to a casual observer. The most recent example I have seen of this phrase was in one of my math books where it had a differential equation, which, as is supposedly intuitively obvious to the casual observer, could be simplified to a common form. But that simplification took 3 pages, and involved many algebra skills that I had long forgotten. Intuitively obvious. Sure.
The second reason that I am not a fan of that phrase is because I imagine the author, who, clearly, must be a genius, is just sitting there chuckling to himself as he writes it. He either knows it's not intuitively obvious and is just writing that to get under the skin of people like me, or it really was intuitively obvious to him and he knows that he is part of the 1% of America to which that phrase applies. Either way, the author is probably getting a good laugh knowing that people like me will spend far too much time trying to understand what is apparently "intuitively obvious to the casual observer"!

...and now I'm blogging about math phrases. I should get out more
-Storm