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How To Know Everything

markgreville.ie

155 pointsgHeadphone38 comments

There is a common thing people do in the Q&A after talks/lectures where instead of asking a question, they try to make a point, often using rhetoric and hyperbole in their question to discredit the speaker. And rarely is the question boiled down to something simple, instead a long rambling goes on and (in some cases) baffles the speaker/lecturer who is left to distill the question down to more simple terms. Don't do this!

I encountered this behavior at many meetups and conferences.

One good trick is to ask people to make their questions as short as possible.

One speaker asked to use up to 8 words per question (and he actually counted the words and rejected the long questions;)

Another speaker had a list of pre-submitted questions, and he deliberately ignored long questions, and only answered the short ones.

"the answer to life, the universe and everything"

Just because it's short doesn't mean it's not exceptionally vague.

But it does raise the difficulty of grandstanding, which is the point.

I've always preferred the format where the speaker or moderator asks for several questions in one round, then the speaker can pick off each question in one go.

This approach puts the onus on the questioner to be as concise as possible, which is not too much to ask in consideration of the audience.

It becomes more difficult to grandstand when the audience recognizes that the objective is to collect a set of questions as quickly as possible and you taking 5 minutes to set your question up is at best tedious and at worst insulting to everyone in attendance.

Often the point they wish to make is "I am very knowledgeable about this subject too" but the point they actually make is "I am jealous of the speaker's prestige." One of the reasons I usually try to sneak out before the Q&A regardless of how good the speaker was...

The social expectation for speakers to tolerate these kinds of questions should be fought. Anyone putting together a lecture and invite a speaker should set the right kinds of expectations - even if it means cutting off the mic

ah you mean the famous "Not-Really-A-Question-More-Of-A-Comment-Guy"

It reminds me of this [0] video of Steve Jobs responding to a heckler.

This is also very common on Twitter. Someone states a generic observation and people nail them with exceptions.

[0] https://youtu.be/oeqPrUmVz-o

When I joined Google in late 2005, I had the idea of asking every famous visitor the same question, and someday editing them all together into a video on that subject. It had to be a question where they did NOT have a pat answer all focus-group-tested and ready, not a hot button or culture war question, and yet demand some real thought.

The question was "It's often said that the U.S. won the Cold War. Do you agree or disagree, and why?"

I asked it of Michael Kinsley, Strobe Talbott, and Bernard Henri-Lévy. You'll have to watch the YouTube videos to find it. I remember Kinsley immediately got all political and said that Reagan didn't deserve the credit.

For some reason, I stopped. I don't know why. It would have been fun to ask Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift, for instance.

Eventually, the guests would have gotten wise to it and had an answer ready.

If I came and gave a technical talk, and got asked a completely irrelevant question like this, I would try very hard to dismiss it.

"Disagree. There was no war."

Ah, but you missed the word "famous."

Eric Schmidt asked both John McCain and Obama, "How would you sort a million 32-bit numbers in 1K of memory?"

McCain laughed and said "I guess I should have studied for this!"

Obama had been tipped off on that question. He stroked his chin and said "Well, I don't think the bubble sort is the right choice here."

A question like that is either a joke, or an effort to establish dominance.

I think the correct response would be, "Why are you asking me a question to which you presumably already have an answer, or at least an opinion on? Why don't you just share your views on this with the audience?"

I still think about what a ridiculous question that is to ask a politician. Programming as a new form of literacy was a much bigger idea then, i suppose.

> Ah, but you missed the word "famous."

Umm ... when I browse Google Tech Talks, there are lots of famous people there. It still wouldn't make sense asking them this question.

you really are missing a sense of humor, aren't you?

> Eric Schmidt asked both John McCain and Obama, "How would you sort a million 32-bit numbers in 1K of memory?"

"I'd call up Jon Bentley."

This is actually quite a nice book review, or advertisement for it. I'd quite like to read more reviews like this. It's not like I haven't looked for book reviews before, but they're never quite as pragmatic as this one.

I had a professor once who used to pause and say, "Questions? Comments? Smart remarks?"

My teacher in fifth grade used "Questions? Comments? Needs‐wants-desires?" Was distinctive enough that it is the only thing I remember about that teacher.

> For whom? — this is for anyone interested in getting smarter, learning more, and not being a closed-minded oaf.

The best way to learn isn't to ask questions, but to make bold statements and then listen carefully when people correct you. People put in much more effort to tailor their explanations to you personally when they try to convince you that you are wrong than when they try to teach. The only drawback is that people will prove you wrong from time to time, so only people who aren't afraid of being wrong can do this properly.

I don't intend any criticism of you personally but I wouldn't appreciate a friend or coworker who behaved this way. Making bold, wrong statements all the time is bound to annoy people and drive them off, not entice them to tailor the conversation to your own needs. I prefer social interactions built not on hacks and manipulation, but on respect and mutual understanding.

It's not to be done with acquaintances otherwise you're right it would be way too obnoxious way too fast.

That said, in a non friendly setting.. it's one of the most efficient way to get things done. Those contexts (like work) are often adversarial and full of opposite incentives, and tapping into people's deep desire to either assert their skills or express deep belief is just way too efficient.

I've tried the friendly honest way.. it was a catastrophe, nobody wants to give you friendliness, it's a currency. Proving you wrong is an intrinsic self-reward.. it comes in abundance.

> I don't intend any criticism of you personally but I wouldn't appreciate a friend or coworker who behaved this way.

I had the experience in the other direction. I was in a team of experts (me not being one of them). My work required occasionally consulting them for their expertise (i.e. I was not expected to become deeply knowledgeable in that domain). Whenever I'd ask a question, I'd either get no response, or a quick, short response that was either incomplete, didn't address at all what I was asking, or plainly wrong given the context.

I got quite frustrated and eventually had to resort to the tactic your parent talked about: When I wouldn't get a proper answer, I would send an "update" laying out the course of action I was about to take - and it was clearly the incorrect one. Suddenly I'd get a lot of useful responses explaining why what I was doing was wrong and how to do it properly.

So yes - this is a bad tactic to do in general, but there are times when it's called for. If you're in a team where you feel the need to do this, find another job. I did as soon as I completed the project.

> Suddenly I'd get a lot of useful responses explaining why what I was doing was wrong and how to do it properly.

Editing a draft is easier than creating from scratch. If you ask an expert open ended questions, you are creating a lot of work for them. But if you take a stab and ask for feedback, that’s much easier.

I get where you're coming from, and I should have clarified in my original comment.

> If you ask an expert open ended questions, you are creating a lot of work for them.

True, but my questions were pretty direct, and black and white.

> But if you take a stab and ask for feedback, that’s much easier.

That's true in that it's showing that I'm attempting to solve a problem, etc. However, for the scenario with this team, the work involved in answering was the same before and after. These weren't open ended issues.

The questions were typically "Should I do A or B?" Eventually, with no response, I'd announce "I'm going with C" where C is clearly wrong. I always then got emails telling me which of A or B was correct.

Oh, and I didn't ask for feedback. I learned that would not elicit a response. Just a straight up "FYI, this is the plan and I've begun execution." That led to urgency in responding.

No one could complain they didn't have a heads up as I often had weeks of unanswered queries to refer them to.

As I said: Crappy thing to have to do, but this was one team where more reasonable approaches just weren't working.

Don't need to do it in real life, just posting stuff on anonymous forums seems to work really well in my experience.

In real life you should mostly just remember to not be afraid to say what you think is true. If you are right then all is well, if you are wrong then it is good that someone helped correct and make you a little bit less ignorant.

One use case where this does not work: when attempting to learn if someone understood you properly. I find myself asking short, direct questions, often in a managerial capacity, to confirm that other people have the correct understanding. Making a statement and then asking an individual “do you understand?” does not suffice to confirm if someone has the correct understanding.

Are you referring to Cunningham’s Law?

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cunningham%2...

Not exactly, but it is similar. I've found that people who focus on asking questions usually are more ignorant than people who make statements and learn from the following debates. In a debate you are more involved as you both try to understand the other side and try to make up arguments that are convincing, this is extremely efficient for learning. In addition debates is a good way to find errors you don't know you make, questions can't help fix unknown unknowns, it only helps clear known unknowns, while the bold statement method helps bring up and clarify lots of unknown unknowns.

Some think that internet arguments are a waste of time, they must either do it wrong or they don't realize how well it works. The most important thing is to not go into arguments you know you will win, you don't learn anything if you go through the same argument over and over so just don't do that and instead focus on things you don't already know well.

Also I don't feel that these arguments are off topic either, you learn a lot from just watching others argue, that is the main reason I prefer reading forums over reading articles, as the forum has people arguing with each other while articles are mostly just long monologues.

I don't think you should make a bold statement about a topic you expect to be corrected on. Some people will say everything as if it's fact, including things where they're just speculating. It's really annoying to be around.

> Some people will say everything as if it's fact, including things where they're just speculating.

Depends how you view it. To me every statement every person makes is speculation or anecdotes unless they preface it with "factually" together with some reference or similar. That way conversation flows much better than when everyone has to preface everything they say.

that's a bold statement to make. QED.

I hear this a lot "don't share similar experiences" when reading sort of articles about this. I agree saying "the same thing happened to me so its not really a special experience" with a positive experience then you are being sort of grating.

But if its a negative experience or something where you are trying to actual support someone or relate to them in a time of trouble, then empathizing by expressing a similar experience is actually helpful. In the depths of grief it is nice to be able to relate to something, because in those times it can feel very very lonely.

Anyway, I am not saying the author is wrong. I think it's important to know the difference, but I am wary of the advice saying to never share your similar experiences in conversation.

> "A good question doesn’t give advice, check hypotheses, impose a perspective, share an opinion, make a suggestion or leave the other person feeling judged or cornered."

By this criterion there are rarely any good questions asked at academic talks. The structure there is more like questioners firing tennis balls at the speaker who then tries to knock them back.

There are exceptions, and some good questions involve restating something the speaker said, and asking the speaker to expand on it or explain it in more detail, which they're usually happy to do.

a lot of people recognize the annoying person who asks long rambling questions or just takes a q&a as the opportunity to make a comment on the speaker's statements- but i've also commonly noticed questions that are phrased intentionally to lead the person they are asking to their own pre-made conclusion. don't ask a question if you already have your own answer. especially if you go on to argue/disagree with the speaker's answer.

Why not? Depending on the venue this is even the expected behavior. At a scientific conference I would expect all attending scientist with views that differ from the talk just given to speak up. That should be done politely and to the point and rambling on, but it is in my opinion not a bad style to argue against the speaker of a talk, it it is in the interest of deepening the common understanding of the topic.

A conference talk at which you are not allowed to voice criticism is not a scientific event, but a sermon.

> How To Know Everything ?

Just, be a man. You will look like you know everything constantly.

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