I agree with your assertion that pure factual questions are cheaper and easier than (correct) answers. I fully disagree with the premise that they’re currently “too cheap”.
I see many situations where questions and answers are treated as symmetric.
I see almost none. I see MANY situations where both are cheap, but even then answers are more useful and valued. I see others where finding the right questions is valued, but answering is even more so. And plenty where the answer isn’t available, but the thinking about how to get closer to an answer is valuable.
The examples you give all seem about social power and harassment, not really about questions and answers. They’re ABSOLUTELY not about questions and answers being symmetric, they’re explicitly about imposing costs on someone who feels obligated to answer. Fuck that. The solution is not to prevent the questions, but to remove the obligation to generate an expensive answer. Anyone’s free to ask any question, and most of the time they’ll be ignored, if they’re not providing some answers of their own.
I dunno, I feel like there’s often a reason that there’s considered to be obligations to generate answers. Like if someone pushes a claim on a topic with the justification that they’ve comprehensively studied the topic, you’d expect them to have a lot of knowledge, and thus be able to expand and clarify. And if someone pushes for a policy, you’d want that policy to be robust against foreseeable problems.
I can definitely see how there can be cases where there’s an unreasonable symmetry in how questions vs answers can be valued compared to how expensive they are, but it seems wrong to entirely throw out the obligation to generate answers in all cases.
If he can’t answer it, he will lose some status. That’s probably good—if his position in the OP is genuine and well-informed, he should be able to answer it. The question is sort of “calling his bluff”, checking that his implicitly promised reason actually exists.
Public discourse norms, especially in the twitter age, are funny. Hanania has a lot of options, none of which really change his status much.
he can ignore you. There’s enough volume that he doesn’t respond to most comments, so this isn’t him dodging a particularly harsh criticism, it’s just not worth his notice.
he can answer cheaply, by rephrasing (or just reposting) previous texts.
he can answer a different question that’s vaguely related.
Yeah I mean, I’m not claiming it has a big sense of obligation, only that it illustrates a condition where discourse seems to benefit from a sense of obligation.
I agree with your assertion that pure factual questions are cheaper and easier than (correct) answers. I fully disagree with the premise that they’re currently “too cheap”.
I see almost none. I see MANY situations where both are cheap, but even then answers are more useful and valued. I see others where finding the right questions is valued, but answering is even more so. And plenty where the answer isn’t available, but the thinking about how to get closer to an answer is valuable.
The examples you give all seem about social power and harassment, not really about questions and answers. They’re ABSOLUTELY not about questions and answers being symmetric, they’re explicitly about imposing costs on someone who feels obligated to answer. Fuck that. The solution is not to prevent the questions, but to remove the obligation to generate an expensive answer. Anyone’s free to ask any question, and most of the time they’ll be ignored, if they’re not providing some answers of their own.
I dunno, I feel like there’s often a reason that there’s considered to be obligations to generate answers. Like if someone pushes a claim on a topic with the justification that they’ve comprehensively studied the topic, you’d expect them to have a lot of knowledge, and thus be able to expand and clarify. And if someone pushes for a policy, you’d want that policy to be robust against foreseeable problems.
I can definitely see how there can be cases where there’s an unreasonable symmetry in how questions vs answers can be valued compared to how expensive they are, but it seems wrong to entirely throw out the obligation to generate answers in all cases.
Good suggestion.
Here’s an example of a cheap question I just asked on twitter. Maybe Richard Hanania will find it cheap to answer too, but part of the reason I asked it was because I expect him to find it difficult to answer.
If he can’t answer it, he will lose some status. That’s probably good—if his position in the OP is genuine and well-informed, he should be able to answer it. The question is sort of “calling his bluff”, checking that his implicitly promised reason actually exists.
Public discourse norms, especially in the twitter age, are funny. Hanania has a lot of options, none of which really change his status much.
he can ignore you. There’s enough volume that he doesn’t respond to most comments, so this isn’t him dodging a particularly harsh criticism, it’s just not worth his notice.
he can answer cheaply, by rephrasing (or just reposting) previous texts.
he can answer a different question that’s vaguely related.
Yeah I mean, I’m not claiming it has a big sense of obligation, only that it illustrates a condition where discourse seems to benefit from a sense of obligation.