Often I am annoyed when I ask someone (who I believe has more information than me) a question and they say “I don’t know”. I’m annoyed because I want them to give me some information. Such as:
“How long does it take to drive to the conference venue?”
“I don’t know.”
“But is it more like 10 minutes or more like 2 hours?”
“Oh it’s definitely longer than 2 hours.”
But perhaps I am the one making a mistake. For instance, the question “How many countries are there?” can be answered “I’d say between 150 and 400″ or it can be answered “195”, and the former is called “an estimate” and the latter is called “knowing the answer”. There is a folk distinction here and perhaps it is reasonable for people to want to preserve the distinction between “an estimate” and “knowing the answer”.
So in the future, to get what I want, I should say “Please can you give me an estimate for how long it takes to drive to the conference venue?”.
And personally I should strive, when people ask me a question to which I don’t know the answer, to say “I don’t know the answer, but I’d estimate between X and Y.”
It seems like, instead of asking the objective lvl question, asking a probing “What can you tell me about the drive to the conference?” And expanding from there might get you closer to desired result.
Alternatively, if information retrieval and transmission is expensive enough, or equivalently, if finding another source quick and easy, “I don’t know” could mean “Ask someone else: the expected additional precision/confidence of doing so is worth the effort.”
Is this in a situation where you’re limited in time or conversational turns? It seems like the follow-up clarification was quite successful, and for many people it would feel more comfortable than the more specific and detailed query.
In technical or professional contexts, saving time and conveying information more efficiently gets a bit more priority, but even then this seems like over-optimizing.
That said, I do usually include additional information or a conversational follow-up hook in my “I don’t know” answers. You should expect to hear from me “I don’t know, but I’d go at least 2 hours early if it’s important”, or “I don’t know, what does Google Maps say?”, or “I don’t know, what time of day are you going?” or the like.
I know this seems like a question with an obvious answer but it is surprisingly non-obvious: Why do you need to know how long it takes to drive to the conference venue? Or to put it another way: what decision will be influenced by their answer (and what level of precision and accuracy is sufficient to make that decision).
I realize this is just an example, but the point is it’s not clear what decision you’re trying to weigh up is even from the example. Is it a matter of whether you attend the event at the conference venue or not? Is it deciding whether you should seek overnight accommodation or not? Do you have another event you want to attend in the day and wonder if you can squeeze both in? etc. etc.
Another thing is I’m the kind of person to default to “I don’t know” because I often don’t even trust my own ability to give an estimate, and would feel terrible and responsible if someone made a poor decision because of my inept estimation. And I get very annoyed when people push me for answers I do not feel qualified to answer.
A common experience I have is that it takes like 1-2 paragraphs of explanation for why I want this info (e.g. “Well I’m wondering if so-and-so should fly in a day earlier to travel with me but it requires going to a different airport and I’m trying to figure out whether the time it’d take to drive to me would add up to too much and also...”), but if they just gave me their ~70% confidence interval when I asked then we could cut the whole context-sharing.
Often I am annoyed when I ask someone (who I believe has more information than me) a question and they say “I don’t know”. I’m annoyed because I want them to give me some information. Such as:
But perhaps I am the one making a mistake. For instance, the question “How many countries are there?” can be answered “I’d say between 150 and 400″ or it can be answered “195”, and the former is called “an estimate” and the latter is called “knowing the answer”. There is a folk distinction here and perhaps it is reasonable for people to want to preserve the distinction between “an estimate” and “knowing the answer”.
So in the future, to get what I want, I should say “Please can you give me an estimate for how long it takes to drive to the conference venue?”.
And personally I should strive, when people ask me a question to which I don’t know the answer, to say “I don’t know the answer, but I’d estimate between X and Y.”
It seems like, instead of asking the objective lvl question, asking a probing “What can you tell me about the drive to the conference?” And expanding from there might get you closer to desired result.
Alternatively, if information retrieval and transmission is expensive enough, or equivalently, if finding another source quick and easy, “I don’t know” could mean “Ask someone else: the expected additional precision/confidence of doing so is worth the effort.”
Is this in a situation where you’re limited in time or conversational turns? It seems like the follow-up clarification was quite successful, and for many people it would feel more comfortable than the more specific and detailed query.
In technical or professional contexts, saving time and conveying information more efficiently gets a bit more priority, but even then this seems like over-optimizing.
That said, I do usually include additional information or a conversational follow-up hook in my “I don’t know” answers. You should expect to hear from me “I don’t know, but I’d go at least 2 hours early if it’s important”, or “I don’t know, what does Google Maps say?”, or “I don’t know, what time of day are you going?” or the like.
I know this seems like a question with an obvious answer but it is surprisingly non-obvious: Why do you need to know how long it takes to drive to the conference venue? Or to put it another way: what decision will be influenced by their answer (and what level of precision and accuracy is sufficient to make that decision).
I realize this is just an example, but the point is it’s not clear what decision you’re trying to weigh up is even from the example. Is it a matter of whether you attend the event at the conference venue or not? Is it deciding whether you should seek overnight accommodation or not? Do you have another event you want to attend in the day and wonder if you can squeeze both in? etc. etc.
Another thing is I’m the kind of person to default to “I don’t know” because I often don’t even trust my own ability to give an estimate, and would feel terrible and responsible if someone made a poor decision because of my inept estimation. And I get very annoyed when people push me for answers I do not feel qualified to answer.
A common experience I have is that it takes like 1-2 paragraphs of explanation for why I want this info (e.g. “Well I’m wondering if so-and-so should fly in a day earlier to travel with me but it requires going to a different airport and I’m trying to figure out whether the time it’d take to drive to me would add up to too much and also...”), but if they just gave me their ~70% confidence interval when I asked then we could cut the whole context-sharing.
Would you say that as a convention most people assume you (or anyone) want a specific number rather than a range?
I’d say most people assume I want “the answer” rather than “some bits of information”.
To be honest I’m not sure on the difference? Could you phrase that in a different way?
And do you think they feel they ought give you a specific number rather than a range that the number could exist in?