An undocumented benefit of public intellectualizing: the more smart things youâre perceived to have said, the more dumb questions youâre allowed to ask with no reputational damage (in fact you get a rep boost as in âwow, heâs smart but willing to look stupidâ)
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Interesting how clueless knowledge-idealists turn it into politically dangerous prescription and pretend thereâs no cost to dumb questions. Only true for children and only if age-appropriate. Adults kinda have to earn âstupid question tokensâ 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 Poeâs law I think.
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I actuallyrealized that but I often answer rhetorical questions for my own benefit anyway đ
Never waste a dumb question even if you didnât ask it
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speaking of dumb questions it's kinda worth asking what makes a dumb question dumb
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Thatâs an example of not-dumb
I think a question is seen as dumb (besides the trivial case of not knowing shit you are expected to based on resume) when it exhibits cluelessnesss about something foundational where the conventional understanding is both sound and commonly known
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