I recently had a question asked of me that I’ll just charitably call “thoughtless”. I was telling someone about my spinal cord injury, specifically that i had retained full sensation everywhere throughout my body. The person stared at me for a sec, then looked down at my leg and poked my thigh, saying “So you can feel that?”
This thread reminds of a running gag in the movie Empire Records:
<employee answers phone>
Empire Records, open til midnight.
<pause while caller talks>
Til midnight.
<end of call>
It’s an interesting topic.
One might think, “You’re stupid for not already knowing that.” But I don’t feel that makes the question *itself *stupid, if it’s sincerely something the person didn’t know, yet wanted to. On the contrary, really. Seeking knowledge is wise.
The other category is asking something that one could easily find out oneself by reading the goddamn sign, or processing what I just said, or by giving it a second and a half of logical thought. I would categorize these as lazy questions, rather than stupid ones.
But calling them lazy questions suggests it’s always a failure to apply effort rather than the failure to reason effectively. If we accept that some people are stupid (e.g. they reason ineffectively), then we should also accept that questions from these people will reflect their stupidity.
I think I’m not answering any more of your questions until you return to the How did the universe and consciousness create themselves from nothing? thread and reveal the correct answer. The suspense is killing us.
I think there are rather stupid hypothetical questions. “What if cold was hot?”, etc.
My dad taught electrical engineering at the local community college. He would tell his students, “There is no such thing as a stupid question.” Inevitably, shortly after saying that, he’d get a question to which he’d say, “There are no stupid questions, but damn, that’s close.”
Teaching has demonstrated to me that many “stupid” questions are ones that were already answered, and if the questioner had been paying attention they wouldn’t be wasting our time.