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Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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