An undocumented benefit of public intellectualizing: the more smart things you’re perceived to have said, the more dumb questions you’re allowed to ask with no reputational damage (in fact you get a rep boost as in “wow, he’s smart but willing to look stupid”)
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Interesting how clueless knowledge-idealists turn it into politically dangerous prescription and pretend there’s no cost to dumb questions. Only true for children and only if age-appropriate. Adults kinda have to earn “stupid question tokens” by showing off smarts elsewhere
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Risky conversational gambit unless you can suggest with affect that it is in fact rhetorical. Online it reduces to a special case of Poe’s law I think.
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I actuallyrealized that but I often answer rhetorical questions for my own benefit anyway 😀
Never waste a dumb question even if you didn’t ask it
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