Asking good questions is harder than giving great answers | Hacker News Reader

Asking good questions is harder than giving great answers

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161 pointsspeckx24 comments

That question regarding why orchestra performances are subdue affairs came up recently when I attended a Lord of the rings concert in NYC. It wasn’t particularly rowdy, but people were certainly enjoying themselves. When I had posted about this on Reddit, there was a lot of attitudes about how it’s a uniquely American thing and at the European concerts people didn’t clap or laugh or audibly enjoy themselves as much as the NYC concert goers did. I’ll have to bookmark that link for later.

Unrelated to the article, but related to the topic, the compliment that gives me the most dopamine is when somebody I respect and is above my level of knowledge tells me “that’s a great question”. It just makes me realize that I’m closer to their level if I’m asking questions that stumped them or that they are already thinking of but surprised I asked.

I agree completely.

When I was a kid, I would ask my parents questions all the time, and usually they knew the answer to my questions, but occasionally they would say something like "that's a really good question", which usually meant "I don't know but I should probably find out". It made me feel like a grown-up.

I also wasn't sure what they meant by a "rowdy orchestral crowd".

I don't see a problem with audibly expressing one's appreciation for the composer, conductor and performers during intermissions or at the close of a piece, but IMHO it would be downright disrespectful to carry on during the performance itself.

Quoth Franz Liszt to Nicholas I, emperor of Russia, who apparently had the temerity to talk during a performance, "Music herself should be silent when Nicholas speaks".

I always love how Reddit views the world as the US and Western Europe.

Slightly OT, but Leonard Bernstein alludes to this in his book The Joy of Music.

There's a chapter about how America was long looking for something musical to differentiate itself from the classical European orchestral concerts, and they went through a number of different formats (think Vaudeville, Variety Shows, etc), before they at last culminated in what we consider the modern American Musical.

(This has evolved again since the late 1900s with much of the genre being integrated into animation - primarily Disney - and live shows needing to evolve in new ways to keep live shows fresh and interesting).

All of which is to say that I quite like the idea that music in the European tradition is nonetheless experienced and enjoyed differently in non-European countries. The musical tradition might be the same, but the culture around it is different.

> Unrelated to the article, but related to the topic, the compliment that gives me the most dopamine is when somebody I respect and is above my level of knowledge tells me “that’s a great question”. It just makes me realize that I’m closer to their level if I’m asking questions that stumped them or that they are already thinking of but surprised I asked.

I don't know this for a fact, but, I'm thinking there must be a lot of books on public speaking that tout this "trick".

Once, I noticed that an exec started constantly prefixing her every answer with "Yeah that's a great question" and I said to myself, huh she must have just finished some leadership book!

Of course, it quickly becomes pretentious, if used on every mundane question.

I always respond to people who ask me 'any questions?' with 'what question should I be asking?'. I have never had anyone honest enough to give me a real answer (this is always in business environments). From now on I think I'll switch to 'what question are you afraid I will ask you right now?'.

Now I'm going to go try it on various AIs (Looks like I have to explain to them who 'they' are, that 'they' includes the training data and reinforcement built in, guardrails, thinking style. The AI added 'Your Input (The Mirror Effect)' makes them them in the moment).

People respond to me that way sometimes, and it always confuses me. I’ve already addressed everything that I know or believe that you want. I’m asking “any questions” or “anything I missed?” out of humility, because I know I may have done an incomplete job of satisfying your questions since my mental model of your perspective is incomplete.

I’m asking “any questions” as an invitation or an offer—it feels weird and vaguely hostile when my conversation partner rebuffs that offer like that.

(Not that I take it in a mean spirit—like I said, more confusion than anything)

Some people seem to think they are really clever by such rebuffs. I on the other hand just start wishing to never work with them again.

I haven't presented for a while, but one thing I do is try to anticipate the questions people may have.

Then if I'm really prepared I'll have extra slides (if showing slides) that delves into the answers for those questions.

If you find people ask the "what should I be asking" question, you can make it a little humourous by having a slide prepared with that exact wording and delving into something you'd like to talk about.

"Anything I missed?" is better than "any questions?" but even better would be "what have I missed?" because it makes you question open and can't easily be answered with yes or no and therefore requires more engagement. I usually ask "what have I missed?" or, more often, "which questions do you have?" -- both require more than a silent treatment as an answer and the "which" question in particular is very open and invitational.

Good on you for expressing all the downsides/uncomfortable/so complicated you sometimes simplify bits. I have never been in a situation where I addressed every question in advance, and normally there are negatives that aren't flushed out. That's all I'm asking for. What uncomfortable thing aren't you saying, and is our relationship/discussion one where you are willing to volunteer them. I find it a sign it's not a strong discussion when people don't volunteer a real answer to my legitimate question.

Comic on questions vs answers, "A Day At The Park", https://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park

I really enjoyed that, thank you for posting. It reminded me of a similar conversation with my dad many years ago.

"Good questions" require understanding, a uniquely human concept as it exists strictly within the mind of a person.

"Great answers" can be identified as such by entities possessing understanding of the question posed. As defined above, this is a uniquely human concept.

Central to the above assertions are two words within the article's title; "good" and "great." These are valuations ascribed by a person, not an algorithm.

Hence why an algorithm can never create a better and better version of itself in perpetuity.

I've noticed this blind spot — people pay more attention to a good answer than a good question — in forums. Specifically forums with post-level voting like reddit/twitter/hn. There are many cases where a downvoted question has an excellent answer in response, sometimes the best post in the whole thread. I think people perceive the questioner as annoying, obnoxious, petulant, or some such and the answer as "correcting" their foolishness. The key is recognizing that, while the answerer had to follow through, they got the perfect layup by the questioner.

I realized this a while ago so I just invert the bias: If every excellent answer was set up by a good question, I take the question to be good by definition if the answer is good, even if the question seems mediocre from my perspective. The question has to have some kind of inner spark that makes the answer possible or fuel that makes the answer brighter, something in it that enabled the answer to shine, whether I happen to see it or not. Practically this means that whenever an answer post is good enough to upvote, I seek out the parent question post for consideration and evaluate it generously.

Same idea conveyed in this excellent PyCon talk as well: https://youtu.be/Iq9DzN6mvYA

"Humanity’s Last Exam" may be a rigorous test of fact-check and pattern recognition, but does it truly measure intelligence, or just a model's ability to absorb and regurgitate structured knowledge?

I mean it's one thing doing maths, and finding historical facts and figures(Google made that very easy), but a whole other thing to ask meaningful, novel questions.

I think true AGI isn’t about scoring an A on an exam, but about the moment an AI starts asking questions humans never thought to ask.

Claude already does this sometimes. It follows up with a question which is to gather more info, or to sometimes even lead me towards a solution. May it be synthetic, its still very useful

The idea is whether the AI can come up with ideas independently, is curious to develop questions, and find answers. In the case of Claude or any AI model, the first input is always from a human. The prompt given is more valuable because, without it, AI would have all the data and computational strength in the world, but wouldn't know what to do with it.

More relevant than ever in the age of LLM’s

i agree completely

yaa!

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