What do I plan on doing with an answer to this question? With the worst privileged questions I frequently find that the answer is “nothing,” sometimes with the follow-up answer “signaling?” That’s a bad sign.
Do you mean by this that one should always have a non-”nothing” answer to this question, or just that the “nothing” answer frequently (though not always) indicates a privileging problem?
I think if the answer is literally “nothing” then that is bad, but “nothing” to many people could mean “nothing, I’m just curious” and then you can expand that to “I think this is an interesting question and I enjoy thinking about it on an intellectual level,” which is not in fact nothing; what you’re doing is satisfying your intellectual curiosity. (This might apply to a random math or physics question you ask yourself, for example.)
My initial reaction to your question was ‘what about curiosity-driven research?‘, it seems like this was true of other people too. I would suggest editing to make clear that ‘curiosity’ is an acceptable response.
I think this post is covering a superset of the unhelpful questions that I pointed out here, because the ones that I mentioned are also dissolved by “What do you plan to do with the answer?” Sometimes, you do have a goal in mind, but you don’t realize that the question you’re asking isn’t going to yield an answer that’s relevant or helpful with respect to that goal (which is a mini lost purpose in the form of expended clock cycles but maybe also yelling at a tiny child.) Meanwhile, I think the signalling ones are usually when you feel like you need to formulate an opinion on something just because it’s in the media even though it doesn’t affect your daily life.
I think the answer “I’ll be like whoaaa, because this question is interesting!” is a helpful, non-nothing answer, but something like “then I’ll put it in this paper and eventually it will lead to more papers, but not much else” is indicative of larger lost purposes.
I think the answer “I’ll be like whoaaa, because this question is interesting!” is a helpful, non-nothing answer
But that is a ‘nothing’ answer. Just finding a question and answer interesting isn’t doing something with the answer. And while I agree that having really bad reasons for trying to answer questions is really bad, I’m still not sure what to make of the original ‘nothing’ comment. Is ‘nothing’ indicative of a bad reason for trying to answer a question? If it is, is it merely evidence for, or does it (or the motivations it reflects) constitute a bad reason?
I will experience an increase in utility from the process of finding out the answer? I will bask in the good feeling of having my question answered? I will gleefully tell like-minded friends about it, thus infecting them with my enthusiasm?
I guess it’s hard to tell the difference if you haven’t encountered the second type of question, where you think, “Oh well, I better develop an opinion on this whole gay marriage thing because everyone is talking about it and I’m the type of person that has opinions.” It feels kinda like a chore you should do. (It’s even worse when you feel pressure to make the opinion unique and interesting.) The difference between that feeling and realizing you don’t know something and then checking it on wikipedia and going “ohhhh” is really big.
Do you mean by this that one should always have a non-”nothing” answer to this question, or just that the “nothing” answer frequently (though not always) indicates a privileging problem?
I think if the answer is literally “nothing” then that is bad, but “nothing” to many people could mean “nothing, I’m just curious” and then you can expand that to “I think this is an interesting question and I enjoy thinking about it on an intellectual level,” which is not in fact nothing; what you’re doing is satisfying your intellectual curiosity. (This might apply to a random math or physics question you ask yourself, for example.)
My initial reaction to your question was ‘what about curiosity-driven research?‘, it seems like this was true of other people too. I would suggest editing to make clear that ‘curiosity’ is an acceptable response.
Done.
My problem is that “curiosity” is not a discriminating feature for me at all. I am automatically extremely curious about any research question.
I think this post is covering a superset of the unhelpful questions that I pointed out here, because the ones that I mentioned are also dissolved by “What do you plan to do with the answer?” Sometimes, you do have a goal in mind, but you don’t realize that the question you’re asking isn’t going to yield an answer that’s relevant or helpful with respect to that goal (which is a mini lost purpose in the form of expended clock cycles but maybe also yelling at a tiny child.) Meanwhile, I think the signalling ones are usually when you feel like you need to formulate an opinion on something just because it’s in the media even though it doesn’t affect your daily life.
I think the answer “I’ll be like whoaaa, because this question is interesting!” is a helpful, non-nothing answer, but something like “then I’ll put it in this paper and eventually it will lead to more papers, but not much else” is indicative of larger lost purposes.
But that is a ‘nothing’ answer. Just finding a question and answer interesting isn’t doing something with the answer. And while I agree that having really bad reasons for trying to answer questions is really bad, I’m still not sure what to make of the original ‘nothing’ comment. Is ‘nothing’ indicative of a bad reason for trying to answer a question? If it is, is it merely evidence for, or does it (or the motivations it reflects) constitute a bad reason?
I will experience an increase in utility from the process of finding out the answer? I will bask in the good feeling of having my question answered? I will gleefully tell like-minded friends about it, thus infecting them with my enthusiasm?
I guess it’s hard to tell the difference if you haven’t encountered the second type of question, where you think, “Oh well, I better develop an opinion on this whole gay marriage thing because everyone is talking about it and I’m the type of person that has opinions.” It feels kinda like a chore you should do. (It’s even worse when you feel pressure to make the opinion unique and interesting.) The difference between that feeling and realizing you don’t know something and then checking it on wikipedia and going “ohhhh” is really big.