I'm sure he can defend himself, but i didn't quite take it the way you did. No doubt he is torquing fasteners (& spark plugs!) that are called out and normal practice. But there are an awful lot of bolts on an AC that might not be torqued to typical limits because doing so would affect the structure or such under it. One reason to have so many versions of anti-loosening nuts in so many places on AC, for one thing.
I'm pretty sure it was in one of the aviation rags (Light Plane Maintenance, maybe?) that reported a study (elsewhere) of skilled mechanics' sense of torque. Most were quite good at it and hit rather precise limits. Unfortunately, for good or bad, what most accurately sensed was the torque-to-yield regime, which is not always applicable, say in the other areas of an AC mentioned above.
Probably similar with pool tables. At max limit, you might sense when the slate gave or nut started to pull; bolt yield would be almost an order of magnitude higher. Then you would learn to never get that close again, and might under-strain the bolt for optimal table performance.
Torquing table bolts would never have occurred to me, but it makes perfect sense and seems the only prudent method for any well designed system. (one in which the components are uniform, repeat precisely in function, and are stressed to near the limit of one or more of the components)
Always worth having more info and another tool in the arsenals, metaphoric and practical.
smt