I am having a crisis in my life of trying to ask people a particular question and have them try to answer a different question. Its painful. I just want to yell at people; “answer the question I asked! not the one you felt like answering that was similar to the one I asked because you thought that was what I wanted to hear about or ask about!”.
This has happened recently for multiple questions in my life that I have tried to ask people about. Do you have suggestions for either:
a. dealing with it
b. getting people to answer the right question
Assuming there isn’t something wrong with the question I originally ask and how I present it.
Do you have suggestions for either: a. dealing with it b. getting people to answer the right question
(a) Recognise that getting upset over it does not achieve your purpose.
(b) Have you tried asking for what you want? For example:
Elo: (question)
A.N.Other: (answer not addressing what you wanted)
Elo: That’s all very well, but what I really want to know is (restatement of the question)
etc., many variations possible depending on context.
Having answered your question, I shall now say something which is not an answer to your question. What is your experience of the other side of that situation, when someone asks you a question?
As a software developer, I spend a lot of time on both sides of this. When a user reports a problem, I need to elicit information about exactly what they were doing and what happened, information that they may not be well able to give me. There’s no point in getting resentful that they aren’t telling me exactly what I need to know off the bat. It’s my job to steer them towards what I need. And when users ask me questions, I often have to ask myself, what is the real question here? Questions cannot always be answered in the terms in which they were put.
That’s all very well, but what I really want to know is (restatement of the question)
I like this idea, but I fear that means my question asking process has to start including a “wait for the irrelevant answer, then ask the question again” process. Which would suck if that’s the best way to go about it. My question could include a “this is the most obvious answer but it won’t work so you should answer the question I asked” which is kind of what I was including with the statement, (“assuming there isn’t something wrong with the question...”). But for some reason I still attracted a -notAnswer- even with that caveat in there—so I am not really sure about it.
I expect to spend some time working on (a. as asked in the OP) dealing with it. I can see how the IT industry would be juggling both sides, and at times you may know the answer to their question is actually best found by answering a different question (why can’t I print; is your computer turned on?).
I suspect the difference is that in IT you are an expert in the area and are being asked questions by people of less expert-status, so your expertness of being able to get to the answer implicitly gives you permission to attack the problem as presented in a different way. You could probably be more effective by appealing to known-problems with known solutions in your ideaspace. In this case (and using my post as a case-study for the very question itself) there are no experts. There are no people of “know this problem better”. Especially considering I didn’t really give enough information as to even hint as to a similarity in problemspace to any other worldly problems other than the assumption statement. Perhaps not including the assumption statement would have yielded all people answering the question, but I suspect (as said in other responses) I would get 101 responses in the form of, “communicate your question better”.
Dealing with the lack of success in answering questions; doesn’t solve the problem of (b in the OP) getting people to answer the right question.
I have asked on a few of the response threads now; is there something wrong with the culture of answering a different question (I find there is)? and what can be done about it?
Assuming there isn’t something wrong with the question I originally ask and how I present it.
I wouldn’t assume this. Most of the time when I notice this in my conversations, it turns out I’ve made false assumptions about my conversational partner’s state (of knowledge, receptiveness, or shared priors). Identifying those mistakes in my communication choices then lets me rephrase or ask different questions more suited to our shared purposes in the discussion.
You literally did the thing that I asked the question about. There is a reason why I quoted that assumption—exactly because I didn’t want you to answer that question—I wanted answers to the question that I asked.
I feel like my question was strawmanned and the weakest part of it was attacked to try to win. I want to be clear that this is not a win-state for question-answering. This is a way to lose at answering a question.
I don’t mean to attack you; but you have generated the prime example of it. I feel like there is an oversight in lesswrong culture to do this often, I have noticed I am confused in my own life. I realised I was doing this to people and I changed it in myself. Now I want to deliver this understanding to more people.
The question should be steelmanned and the best part of it answered, not the weakest, softest, smallest, useless, irrelevant morsel that was stated as part of the problem.
The most important question: ” how do we fix it? ”
(closely followed by—does that make sense? as an also important question)
Right, but conversation and discussion isn’t about what you want. It’s what each of us wants. You can ask whatever you like, and I can answer whatever I like. If we’re lucky, there’s some value in each. If we’re aligned in our goals, they’ll even match up.
The most important question: ” how do we fix it? ”
We don’t. We accept it and work within it. Most communication is cooperation rather than interrogation, and you need to provide evidence for an assertion rather than just saying “assume unbelievable X”.
Only this is not an unbelievable X, its an entirely believable X (I wouldn’t have any reason to ask an unbelieveable—as would anyone asking a question—unless they are actually trying to trick you with a question). In fact—assuming that people are asking you to believe an “unbelievable X” is a strawman of the argument in point.
Invalidating someone else’s question (by attacking it or trying to defeat the purpose of the question) for reasons of them not being able to ask the right question or you wanting to answer a different question—is not a reasonable way to win a discussion. I am really not sure how to be more clear about it. Discussions are not about winning. one doesn’t need to kill a question to beat it; one needs to fill it’s idea-space with juicy information-y goodness to satisfy it.
Yes it is possible to resolve a question by cutting it up; {real world example—someone asks you for help. You could defeat the question by figuring out how to stop them from asking for help, or by finding out why they want help and making sure they don’t in the future, or can help themselves. Or you could actually help them.}
Or you could actually respond in a way that helps. There is an argument about giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish; but that’s not applicable because you have to first assume people asking about fishing for sharks already know how to fish for normal fish. Give them the answers—the shark meat, then if that doesn’t help—teach them how to fish for sharks! Don’t tell them they don’t know how to fish for normal fish then try to teach them to fish for normal fish, suggesting they can just eat normal fish.
Assuming there isn’t something wrong with the question I originally ask and how I present it.
More importantly—this is a different (sometimes related) problem that can be answered in a different question at a different time if that’s what I asked about. AND one I will ask later, but of myself. One irrelevant to the main question.
Can you do me a favour and try to steelman the question I asked? And see what the results are, and what answer you might give to it?
conversation and discussion isn’t about what you want. It’s what each of us wants.
Yes this is true, but as the entity who started a thread (of conversation generally) I should have more say about it’s purpose and what is wanted from it. Of course you can choose to not engage, you can derail a thread, and this is not something that you should do. I am trying to outline that the way you chose to engage was not productive (short of accidentally providing the example of failing to answer the question).
Only this is not an unbelievable X, its an entirely believable X (I wouldn’t have any reason to ask an >unbelieveable—as would anyone asking a question—unless they are actually trying to trick you with a >question). In fact—assuming that people are asking you to believe an “unbelievable X” is a strawman of the >argument in point.
Are you sure that’s how you want to defend your question? If you defend the question by saying that the premise is believable, you are implicitly endorsing the standard that questions should only be answered if they are reasonable. However, accepting this standard runs the risk that your conversational partner will judge your question to be unreasonable even if it isn’t and fail to answer your question, in exactly the way you’re complaining about. A better standard for the purpose of getting people to answer the questions you ask literally is that people should answer the questions that you ask literally even if they rely on fantastic premises.
Can you do me a favour and try to steelman the question I asked? And see what the results are, and what answer you might give to it?
A similar concern is applicable here: Recall that steelmanning means, when encountering a argument that seems easily flawed, not to respond to that argument but to strengthen it ways the seem reasonable to you and answer that instead. The sounds like the exact opposite of what you want people to do to your questions.
A lot of those examples aren’t “defeating the question”, they’re an honest attempt to understand the motivation behind the question and help with the underlying problem. In fact, that was my intent when I first responded.
You sound frustrated that people are misunderstanding you and answering questions different than the ones you want answered. I would like to help with this, by pointing out that communication takes work and that often it takes some effort and back and forth to draw out what kind of help you want and what kind your conversational partner(s) can provide.
You can be a lot less frustrated by asking questions better, and being more receptive to responses that don’t magically align with your desires.
Does it matter where the question comes from? Why?
Did you misunderstand my original question? It would seem that you understood the question and then chose a different path to resolving it other than the route I was aiming for the direction of the answer to cover.
Assuming that you now (several posts onwards) understand the question—can you turing-repeat what you think the question is; back to me?
I don’t think I fully understand the question (or rather, the questions—there are always multiple parts to a query, and multiple followup directions based on the path the discussion takes). I don’t think it’s possible, actually—language is pretty limiting, and asynchronous low-bandwidth typed discussion even more so. To claim full understanding of your mind-state and desires when you asked the question would be ludicrous.
I think the gist of your query was around feeling frustrated that you often find yourself asking a question and someone answers in a way that doesn’t satisfy you. I intended to reassure you that this happens to many of us, and that most of the time, they’re just trying to be helpful and you can help them help you by adding further information to their model of you, so they can more closely match their experiences and knowledge to what they think you would benefit from hearing.
And in doing so, I was reminded that this works in reverse, as well—I often find myself trying to help by sharing experiences and information, but in such a way that the connection is not reciprocated or appreciated because my model of my correspondent is insufficient to communicate efficiently. I’ll keep refining and trying, though.
Sometimes what happens is that people don’t know the answer to the question you’re asking but still want to contribute to the discussion, so they answer a different question which they know the answer to. In this case the solution is to find someone who knows the answer before you start asking.
Sounds like it might be worthwhile accepting the fact that some answers are just rubbish, and ignoring them when I notice they are not answering the relevant question. This helps; but is a bit harder to do if it happens in person than online.
It’s a perennial problem. My method which kinda-sorta works is to get very, very specific up to and including describing which varieties you do NOT want. It works only kinda-sorta because it tends to focus people on edge cases and definition gaming.
If you can extend the question into a whole conversation where you can progressively iterate closer to that you want, that can help, too.
Thanks! I am not sure if this counts as a hilarious suggestion of, “ask the wrong question on purpose to get the answer to the question you wanted to find the answer to”
I just want to yell at people; “answer the question I asked! not the one you felt like answering that was similar to the one I asked because you thought that was what I wanted to hear about or ask about!”.
Try this, except instead of yelling, say it nicely.
One thing you could do as an example is some variation of “oh sorry, I must have phrased the question poorly, I meant (the question again, perhaps phrased differently or with more detail or with example answers or whatever)”.
I probably wasn’t clear about that—I never actually yell at anyone but it evokes the emotion of wanting to do so. And I notice the same pattern so often these days. Questions not getting the answer they ask.
Edit: also the yelling-idea-thing happens as a response to the different-question being answered, not something people could predict and purposely cause me to do, so should be unrelated.
Case in point—you are an example of not answering the question I asked.
Do you have suggestions for either: a. dealing with it b. getting people to answer the right question
I said
I just want to yell at people; “answer the question I asked! not the one you felt like answering that was similar to the one I asked because you thought that was what I wanted to hear about or ask about!”.
Try this, except instead of yelling, say it nicely.
and I also said
One thing you could do as an example is some variation of “oh sorry, I must have phrased the question poorly, I meant (the question again, perhaps phrased differently or with more detail or with example answers or whatever)”.
So I answered the question in detail.
Perhaps you aren’t very good at recognizing when someone has answered your question? Obviously this is only one data point so we can’t look into it too heavily, but we have at least established that this is something you are capable of doing.
Do you have suggestions for either: a. dealing with it b. getting people to answer the right question
And Artaxerxes wrote:
One thing you could do as an example is some variation of “oh sorry, I must have phrased the question poorly, I meant (the question again, perhaps phrased differently or with more detail or with example answers or whatever)”.
But if people don’t answer the right question, despite your formulating it as plainly and civilly as possible, it means they are either motivated to miss your meaning or you are not being specific enough.
Perhaps you could ask them a question which logically follows from the expected answer to your actual question, and when they call you out on it, explain why you think this version plausible; they might object, but they at least should be constrained by your expectations. Do you think this would work?
Perhaps the most famous worked example is Have you stopped beating your wife?, an instance of a rhetorical device called begging the question; strictly speaking, this is Dark Arts, but since you are assumedly willing to immediately take a step back and change your mind about the assumption (as in, ‘Oh, you’re single’ or ‘Oh, you’ve never beaten her’ or ‘Oh, you only beat other people’s wives’) it should not be that bad.
Assuming there isn’t something wrong with the question I originally ask and how I present it.
Aren’t you blocking, with this assumption, all the parameters you can intervene on to improve your communication?
As for dealing with it, you can try to see it this way: every time you ask a precise question with very stringent constraints, you are basically asking people to solve a difficult problem for you. You are, in a sense, freeloading on others’ brainpower. As with everything, this is a scarce resource, one that you cannot really expect people to give to you freely. Learn to accept that we are animals constantly doing cost-analysis, and so if you notice a question not being answered the way you want to, it’s probably because of this, and you need to supply a more adequate reward.
yes. Because I don’t want those answers right now. They help to answer a different question. one I am not asking this time.
Explicitly that statement was included because I didn’t want 101 answers that look like, “maybe you should find ways to ask clearer”. Because that’s not the problem or strategy I am trying to use to attack the puzzle right now.
Your model does help.
I have specific concern about the culture of answering questions in this way and the way it is not-productive at answering things. I noticed myself doing the thing and managed to untrain it, or train different strategies to answer that are helpful instead; I am looking for a method of sharing the policy of “answer the face value question +/- answer the question that is asked specifically first before trying to answer the question you think they want you to ask”. Any suggestions?
I think I will have to expand my asky-circles (4 above)
I am concerned for 2 (above) because part of me has already done that ad infinitum. Most things I ask have gone around my head for days and then gone over in circles multiple times before completing them. I am no longer sure how to best do that.
It seems like you want people to take your question at literal face value, instead of trying to solve the actual problem that caused you to ask the question.
Is that an accurate summary of your stance?
If yes, why do you want that?
If no, what’s a better summary of your reasoning for asking questions?
This is a reasonably good interpretation of the question. Yes.
Assuming a problem Px has happened to generated the question Qx. I have already processed from the problem state Px, to the question state Qx. I have eliminated possible solutions (Sa, Sb, Sc) that I have come up with and why they won’t work alongside the details of my entire situation. Where Px is a big problem space and explaining an entire situation would be to write the universe on paper (pointless and not helpful to anyone).
Or I decided that it is possible to work on a small part of Px with a question Qx. To ask the question Qx is to specify where in the problem space I am trying to work, and starting from there.
If I were to ask the problem question “why don’t people understand me?” I alone can generate hundreds of excuses and reasons for it, that is unhelpful. I have already narrowed Px down to a Qx strategy for solving it. I wanted to ask the specific, “getting people to answer the face-question” the one I chose to ask, not the entire problem set that it comes from.
If I asked the full problem-space at once, no one would read it because it would be too long, and then no one would respond.
At some point the responder should be assuming that the OP actually knows Px that they are asking about and are asking Qx for a good reason (possibly a long one not worth explaining in detail). How can I make that point happen precisely when I ask the question and not 5 interactions later? I would have thought it would involve a caveat of “don’t answer in this way because I considered Sa, Sb, Sc already”. (i.e. my use of the phrase—Assuming X...)
Also important: is the process of “answering the wrong question” (as I am trying to describe it) able to be reasonably defined as responding to a strawman of a question?
Is asking a literal-face-value question a bad idea? If that’s the question I want to be answered?
From my view, it’s absolutely a great idea to ask literal-face-value questions. I think we approach the problem from different angles—you’re looking to fill in specific holes in your knowledge or reasoning, by generating the perfect question to fill in that hole.
I think that’s great when it happens, and I also try to remember that I’m dealing with messy, imperfect, biased, socially evolved humans with HUGE inferential gaps to my understanding of the problem. Given that, my model of getting help with a problem is not Ask great question—get great answer. It usually goes more like this:
-Bring up problem I’m having >they bring up solution I’ve already tried/discarded (or which isn’t actually a solution to my specific problem)> I mention that > they mention some more> this goes back and forth for a while > they mention some new argument or data I hadn’t considered > continue some more > at some point one of us is getting bored or we’ve hashed out everything > move on to another topic.
I find that with this approach, given that I’m asking the right people, I have a high probability of getting new approaches to my problems, altering my existing perspective, and coming closer to a solution. Using this way of approaching advice getting many times gives me a much better understanding of the problem and it’s potential solutions, and allows me to cover the full problem space without overwhellmng people or sounding like a know-it-all.
Coming at it from this angle, I think it’s a great idea to start with a specific question, and still understand that I may move much closer to having my problem solved, without ever coming close to answering the question as I asked it (although oftentimes, we circle back around to the original question to the end, and I hear a novel answer to it).
With that in mind, there are several things I do when asking advice that I think may be helpful to you (or may not be).
I try not to say “I already thought about that and...” too much, as it ends these conversations before we get to the good stuff. Instead, I ask leading questions that bring people to the same conclusion without me sounding like a know it all.
I remain open to the fact that there might be evidence or arguments I’m not aware of in my basic logic, and therefore remain curious even when we’re covering territory that I think I’ve already covered ad nauseum.
I precommit to trying the best specific solution they offer that I haven’t tried, even if I think it has a low probability of success.
I keep them updated on trying their suggested solutions, and express gratitude even if the suggestion doesn’t work.
Over the long term, as these relationships build up more, the people you get advice from will get a better idea of how you think, and you’re more likely to get the “specific answer to specific question” behavior, but even if you don’t, you’ll still get valuable feedback that can help you solve the problem.
I am having a crisis in my life of trying to ask people a particular question and have them try to answer a different question. Its painful. I just want to yell at people; “answer the question I asked! not the one you felt like answering that was similar to the one I asked because you thought that was what I wanted to hear about or ask about!”.
This has happened recently for multiple questions in my life that I have tried to ask people about. Do you have suggestions for either: a. dealing with it b. getting people to answer the right question
Assuming there isn’t something wrong with the question I originally ask and how I present it.
(a) Recognise that getting upset over it does not achieve your purpose.
(b) Have you tried asking for what you want? For example:
Elo: (question)
A.N.Other: (answer not addressing what you wanted)
Elo: That’s all very well, but what I really want to know is (restatement of the question)
etc., many variations possible depending on context.
Having answered your question, I shall now say something which is not an answer to your question. What is your experience of the other side of that situation, when someone asks you a question?
As a software developer, I spend a lot of time on both sides of this. When a user reports a problem, I need to elicit information about exactly what they were doing and what happened, information that they may not be well able to give me. There’s no point in getting resentful that they aren’t telling me exactly what I need to know off the bat. It’s my job to steer them towards what I need. And when users ask me questions, I often have to ask myself, what is the real question here? Questions cannot always be answered in the terms in which they were put.
I like this idea, but I fear that means my question asking process has to start including a “wait for the irrelevant answer, then ask the question again” process. Which would suck if that’s the best way to go about it. My question could include a “this is the most obvious answer but it won’t work so you should answer the question I asked” which is kind of what I was including with the statement, (“assuming there isn’t something wrong with the question...”). But for some reason I still attracted a -notAnswer- even with that caveat in there—so I am not really sure about it.
I expect to spend some time working on (a. as asked in the OP) dealing with it. I can see how the IT industry would be juggling both sides, and at times you may know the answer to their question is actually best found by answering a different question (why can’t I print; is your computer turned on?).
I suspect the difference is that in IT you are an expert in the area and are being asked questions by people of less expert-status, so your expertness of being able to get to the answer implicitly gives you permission to attack the problem as presented in a different way. You could probably be more effective by appealing to known-problems with known solutions in your ideaspace. In this case (and using my post as a case-study for the very question itself) there are no experts. There are no people of “know this problem better”. Especially considering I didn’t really give enough information as to even hint as to a similarity in problemspace to any other worldly problems other than the assumption statement. Perhaps not including the assumption statement would have yielded all people answering the question, but I suspect (as said in other responses) I would get 101 responses in the form of, “communicate your question better”.
Dealing with the lack of success in answering questions; doesn’t solve the problem of (b in the OP) getting people to answer the right question.
I have asked on a few of the response threads now; is there something wrong with the culture of answering a different question (I find there is)? and what can be done about it?
I wouldn’t assume this. Most of the time when I notice this in my conversations, it turns out I’ve made false assumptions about my conversational partner’s state (of knowledge, receptiveness, or shared priors). Identifying those mistakes in my communication choices then lets me rephrase or ask different questions more suited to our shared purposes in the discussion.
You literally did the thing that I asked the question about. There is a reason why I quoted that assumption—exactly because I didn’t want you to answer that question—I wanted answers to the question that I asked.
I feel like morpheus in this scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mdy8bFiyzY
I feel like my question was strawmanned and the weakest part of it was attacked to try to win. I want to be clear that this is not a win-state for question-answering. This is a way to lose at answering a question.
I don’t mean to attack you; but you have generated the prime example of it. I feel like there is an oversight in lesswrong culture to do this often, I have noticed I am confused in my own life. I realised I was doing this to people and I changed it in myself. Now I want to deliver this understanding to more people.
The question should be steelmanned and the best part of it answered, not the weakest, softest, smallest, useless, irrelevant morsel that was stated as part of the problem.
The most important question: ” how do we fix it? ”
(closely followed by—does that make sense? as an also important question)
Right, but conversation and discussion isn’t about what you want. It’s what each of us wants. You can ask whatever you like, and I can answer whatever I like. If we’re lucky, there’s some value in each. If we’re aligned in our goals, they’ll even match up.
We don’t. We accept it and work within it. Most communication is cooperation rather than interrogation, and you need to provide evidence for an assertion rather than just saying “assume unbelievable X”.
Only this is not an unbelievable X, its an entirely believable X (I wouldn’t have any reason to ask an unbelieveable—as would anyone asking a question—unless they are actually trying to trick you with a question). In fact—assuming that people are asking you to believe an “unbelievable X” is a strawman of the argument in point.
Invalidating someone else’s question (by attacking it or trying to defeat the purpose of the question) for reasons of them not being able to ask the right question or you wanting to answer a different question—is not a reasonable way to win a discussion. I am really not sure how to be more clear about it. Discussions are not about winning. one doesn’t need to kill a question to beat it; one needs to fill it’s idea-space with juicy information-y goodness to satisfy it.
Yes it is possible to resolve a question by cutting it up; {real world example—someone asks you for help. You could defeat the question by figuring out how to stop them from asking for help, or by finding out why they want help and making sure they don’t in the future, or can help themselves. Or you could actually help them.}
Or you could actually respond in a way that helps. There is an argument about giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish; but that’s not applicable because you have to first assume people asking about fishing for sharks already know how to fish for normal fish. Give them the answers—the shark meat, then if that doesn’t help—teach them how to fish for sharks! Don’t tell them they don’t know how to fish for normal fish then try to teach them to fish for normal fish, suggesting they can just eat normal fish.
More importantly—this is a different (sometimes related) problem that can be answered in a different question at a different time if that’s what I asked about. AND one I will ask later, but of myself. One irrelevant to the main question.
Can you do me a favour and try to steelman the question I asked? And see what the results are, and what answer you might give to it?
Yes this is true, but as the entity who started a thread (of conversation generally) I should have more say about it’s purpose and what is wanted from it. Of course you can choose to not engage, you can derail a thread, and this is not something that you should do. I am trying to outline that the way you chose to engage was not productive (short of accidentally providing the example of failing to answer the question).
The original question again -
Are you sure that’s how you want to defend your question? If you defend the question by saying that the premise is believable, you are implicitly endorsing the standard that questions should only be answered if they are reasonable. However, accepting this standard runs the risk that your conversational partner will judge your question to be unreasonable even if it isn’t and fail to answer your question, in exactly the way you’re complaining about. A better standard for the purpose of getting people to answer the questions you ask literally is that people should answer the questions that you ask literally even if they rely on fantastic premises.
A similar concern is applicable here: Recall that steelmanning means, when encountering a argument that seems easily flawed, not to respond to that argument but to strengthen it ways the seem reasonable to you and answer that instead. The sounds like the exact opposite of what you want people to do to your questions.
A lot of those examples aren’t “defeating the question”, they’re an honest attempt to understand the motivation behind the question and help with the underlying problem. In fact, that was my intent when I first responded.
You sound frustrated that people are misunderstanding you and answering questions different than the ones you want answered. I would like to help with this, by pointing out that communication takes work and that often it takes some effort and back and forth to draw out what kind of help you want and what kind your conversational partner(s) can provide.
You can be a lot less frustrated by asking questions better, and being more receptive to responses that don’t magically align with your desires.
Does it matter where the question comes from? Why?
Did you misunderstand my original question? It would seem that you understood the question and then chose a different path to resolving it other than the route I was aiming for the direction of the answer to cover.
Assuming that you now (several posts onwards) understand the question—can you turing-repeat what you think the question is; back to me?
I don’t think I fully understand the question (or rather, the questions—there are always multiple parts to a query, and multiple followup directions based on the path the discussion takes). I don’t think it’s possible, actually—language is pretty limiting, and asynchronous low-bandwidth typed discussion even more so. To claim full understanding of your mind-state and desires when you asked the question would be ludicrous.
I think the gist of your query was around feeling frustrated that you often find yourself asking a question and someone answers in a way that doesn’t satisfy you. I intended to reassure you that this happens to many of us, and that most of the time, they’re just trying to be helpful and you can help them help you by adding further information to their model of you, so they can more closely match their experiences and knowledge to what they think you would benefit from hearing.
And in doing so, I was reminded that this works in reverse, as well—I often find myself trying to help by sharing experiences and information, but in such a way that the connection is not reciprocated or appreciated because my model of my correspondent is insufficient to communicate efficiently. I’ll keep refining and trying, though.
Sometimes what happens is that people don’t know the answer to the question you’re asking but still want to contribute to the discussion, so they answer a different question which they know the answer to. In this case the solution is to find someone who knows the answer before you start asking.
Sounds like it might be worthwhile accepting the fact that some answers are just rubbish, and ignoring them when I notice they are not answering the relevant question. This helps; but is a bit harder to do if it happens in person than online.
It’s a perennial problem. My method which kinda-sorta works is to get very, very specific up to and including describing which varieties you do NOT want. It works only kinda-sorta because it tends to focus people on edge cases and definition gaming.
If you can extend the question into a whole conversation where you can progressively iterate closer to that you want, that can help, too.
Thanks! I am not sure if this counts as a hilarious suggestion of, “ask the wrong question on purpose to get the answer to the question you wanted to find the answer to”
I wonder how I can actually do that...
Yeah, this happens.
Try this, except instead of yelling, say it nicely.
One thing you could do as an example is some variation of “oh sorry, I must have phrased the question poorly, I meant (the question again, perhaps phrased differently or with more detail or with example answers or whatever)”.
I probably wasn’t clear about that—I never actually yell at anyone but it evokes the emotion of wanting to do so. And I notice the same pattern so often these days. Questions not getting the answer they ask.
Edit: also the yelling-idea-thing happens as a response to the different-question being answered, not something people could predict and purposely cause me to do, so should be unrelated.
Case in point—you are an example of not answering the question I asked.
You said
I said
and I also said
So I answered the question in detail.
Perhaps you aren’t very good at recognizing when someone has answered your question? Obviously this is only one data point so we can’t look into it too heavily, but we have at least established that this is something you are capable of doing.
But he did answer your question. You wrote:
And Artaxerxes wrote:
Isn’t that an answer to your point b?
But if people don’t answer the right question, despite your formulating it as plainly and civilly as possible, it means they are either motivated to miss your meaning or you are not being specific enough.
Perhaps you could ask them a question which logically follows from the expected answer to your actual question, and when they call you out on it, explain why you think this version plausible; they might object, but they at least should be constrained by your expectations. Do you think this would work?
I am confused by this:
Can you provide a worked example? Or explain it again? Or both?
Perhaps the most famous worked example is Have you stopped beating your wife?, an instance of a rhetorical device called begging the question; strictly speaking, this is Dark Arts, but since you are assumedly willing to immediately take a step back and change your mind about the assumption (as in, ‘Oh, you’re single’ or ‘Oh, you’ve never beaten her’ or ‘Oh, you only beat other people’s wives’) it should not be that bad.
Aren’t you blocking, with this assumption, all the parameters you can intervene on to improve your communication?
As for dealing with it, you can try to see it this way: every time you ask a precise question with very stringent constraints, you are basically asking people to solve a difficult problem for you. You are, in a sense, freeloading on others’ brainpower.
As with everything, this is a scarce resource, one that you cannot really expect people to give to you freely.
Learn to accept that we are animals constantly doing cost-analysis, and so if you notice a question not being answered the way you want to, it’s probably because of this, and you need to supply a more adequate reward.
yes. Because I don’t want those answers right now. They help to answer a different question. one I am not asking this time.
Explicitly that statement was included because I didn’t want 101 answers that look like, “maybe you should find ways to ask clearer”. Because that’s not the problem or strategy I am trying to use to attack the puzzle right now.
Your model does help.
I have specific concern about the culture of answering questions in this way and the way it is not-productive at answering things. I noticed myself doing the thing and managed to untrain it, or train different strategies to answer that are helpful instead; I am looking for a method of sharing the policy of “answer the face value question +/- answer the question that is asked specifically first before trying to answer the question you think they want you to ask”. Any suggestions?
I feel that
and
are contradictory requirements.
What am I missing?
Yeah, I get that a lot. Some random suggestions:
Ask in a more friendly and open-ended way
Tailor your question to the crowd’s interests and biases
Accept the tangents and try to spin them into other interesting conversations
Find a different crowd to ask
Thanks!
I think I will have to expand my asky-circles (4 above)
I am concerned for 2 (above) because part of me has already done that ad infinitum. Most things I ask have gone around my head for days and then gone over in circles multiple times before completing them. I am no longer sure how to best do that.
Could you give two examples of questions you asked and the answers you got? Context matters a lot here.
Can I give you one for now:
This question in Dagon’s answer below.
Happy to share other examples but I believe that should be clear.
It seems like you want people to take your question at literal face value, instead of trying to solve the actual problem that caused you to ask the question.
Is that an accurate summary of your stance?
If yes, why do you want that? If no, what’s a better summary of your reasoning for asking questions?
This is a reasonably good interpretation of the question. Yes.
Assuming a problem Px has happened to generated the question Qx. I have already processed from the problem state Px, to the question state Qx. I have eliminated possible solutions (Sa, Sb, Sc) that I have come up with and why they won’t work alongside the details of my entire situation. Where Px is a big problem space and explaining an entire situation would be to write the universe on paper (pointless and not helpful to anyone).
Or I decided that it is possible to work on a small part of Px with a question Qx. To ask the question Qx is to specify where in the problem space I am trying to work, and starting from there.
If I were to ask the problem question “why don’t people understand me?” I alone can generate hundreds of excuses and reasons for it, that is unhelpful. I have already narrowed Px down to a Qx strategy for solving it. I wanted to ask the specific, “getting people to answer the face-question” the one I chose to ask, not the entire problem set that it comes from.
If I asked the full problem-space at once, no one would read it because it would be too long, and then no one would respond.
At some point the responder should be assuming that the OP actually knows Px that they are asking about and are asking Qx for a good reason (possibly a long one not worth explaining in detail). How can I make that point happen precisely when I ask the question and not 5 interactions later? I would have thought it would involve a caveat of “don’t answer in this way because I considered Sa, Sb, Sc already”. (i.e. my use of the phrase—Assuming X...)
Also important: is the process of “answering the wrong question” (as I am trying to describe it) able to be reasonably defined as responding to a strawman of a question?
Is asking a literal-face-value question a bad idea? If that’s the question I want to be answered?
From my view, it’s absolutely a great idea to ask literal-face-value questions. I think we approach the problem from different angles—you’re looking to fill in specific holes in your knowledge or reasoning, by generating the perfect question to fill in that hole.
I think that’s great when it happens, and I also try to remember that I’m dealing with messy, imperfect, biased, socially evolved humans with HUGE inferential gaps to my understanding of the problem. Given that, my model of getting help with a problem is not Ask great question—get great answer. It usually goes more like this:
-Bring up problem I’m having >they bring up solution I’ve already tried/discarded (or which isn’t actually a solution to my specific problem)> I mention that > they mention some more> this goes back and forth for a while > they mention some new argument or data I hadn’t considered > continue some more > at some point one of us is getting bored or we’ve hashed out everything > move on to another topic.
I find that with this approach, given that I’m asking the right people, I have a high probability of getting new approaches to my problems, altering my existing perspective, and coming closer to a solution. Using this way of approaching advice getting many times gives me a much better understanding of the problem and it’s potential solutions, and allows me to cover the full problem space without overwhellmng people or sounding like a know-it-all.
Coming at it from this angle, I think it’s a great idea to start with a specific question, and still understand that I may move much closer to having my problem solved, without ever coming close to answering the question as I asked it (although oftentimes, we circle back around to the original question to the end, and I hear a novel answer to it).
With that in mind, there are several things I do when asking advice that I think may be helpful to you (or may not be).
I try not to say “I already thought about that and...” too much, as it ends these conversations before we get to the good stuff. Instead, I ask leading questions that bring people to the same conclusion without me sounding like a know it all.
I remain open to the fact that there might be evidence or arguments I’m not aware of in my basic logic, and therefore remain curious even when we’re covering territory that I think I’ve already covered ad nauseum.
I precommit to trying the best specific solution they offer that I haven’t tried, even if I think it has a low probability of success.
I keep them updated on trying their suggested solutions, and express gratitude even if the suggestion doesn’t work.
Over the long term, as these relationships build up more, the people you get advice from will get a better idea of how you think, and you’re more likely to get the “specific answer to specific question” behavior, but even if you don’t, you’ll still get valuable feedback that can help you solve the problem.