Do humans have an inherent tendency to want to answer/respond to questions?

cheese_greater@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 43 points –
52

No.

Really?

Psst. That's the joke.

I quickly responded to your question with no, but the only people who would do that are people who really want to answer questions.

In any case, I think you're correct enough for this joke. At least some people really want to answer questions, and I have a questioning 5 yo.

There IS an extent to which this seems true for everyone, tho... Like, we were all "parented" in some way and that almost always involves answering and learning to defend oneself...

Can you clarify this a bit more? I'm not understanding this yet.

So everyone with parents/adult figures (almost everyone except wolf-children) they had to answer to, instilled a low-key compulsion to answer questions or any sentence with that lift at the end indicating questioning. Cuz you were in trouble if you didn't. Childen have no 5th amendment aha

Are you feeling ok? Can you share some more of your feelings?

...

As an anonymous Internet person, I want you to know that I care about you.

I also want you to know that I've gone through a lot of struggles, and I support you.

Can I ask what the deal here is? Do you think my comments are inordinate within the context of "having been parented + human)? Do you think its unusual that I generalize feeling a proclivity towards feeling it necessary to respond satisfactorily in the face of external inquiries? Is that not a normal thing?

I'm approaching all of this purely from the vantage point of curiosity :)

Your idea makes perfect sense, though I think it's not only embedded in culture (parenting), but also in our nature as humans.

I'm tempted to say that humans are born curious, and by extension, most humans like to share their knowledge or more often their opinions. I know I do.

Just say you're not going to hurt yourself or anyone else.

@cheese_greater@lemmy.world's thought process seems perfectly rational. Contrary, your continued belittling of and attempts to force OP into the role of a mentally ill person appears almost like a superiority complex or obsession, uncannily so.

You're likely a wonderful person who just formulated yourself in a very unlucky way, but OP would surely have spoken up if they needed help.

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You won't hear from the ones that don't.

When you're a dad, you have no choice but answer questions all damn day long.

Yes. Variously called an occupational habit or a lowkey OCD one (though you definitely won't hear me say that), questions are akin to a verbal vacuum (and not ironic at all I of all people give this answer, oh no).

All humans? No. There are plenty of people who couldn’t care less what you want to know.

Yup. I work at a huge home improvement store and people think I know the details on every product!

I’ve just started pulling out my phone to ask chatgpt for lots of these questions.

“What kind of spackle should I use on the surface of the moon?”

“Sorry sir we have 50,000 products in this store. I’m gonna ask GPT-4”

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If you have ever seen a police interregation, you may notice the detectives ask a question and then, after either no answer or insufficient answer, they will just look at the suspect expectantly. This is done to put phsycological pressure on the suspect to answer the question. Given this info, I would say so, at least in a face to face situation.

Online, I am not so sure. How many posts did you scroll past in the last week on Lemmy that ask a question that you did not answer? How many did you answer? Even if you answered most, you would be in the minority, as if you were not, we would expect far higher engagement rates on posts.

I think I do.

[Prof. Snape] Clearly ;)

'obviously', I tend to correct wrong answers, instead of feeling inclined to answering straight out haha

I appreciate your response to this and also as a confirmatory source more than you could ever know.

I think you mean that you follow Cunningham's Law. /s

(I tried to phrase that as a correction)

Can you like summarize even if its an edit when youre citing a long wikipedia article

Edit: i get tired of playing "Where's Waldo" with facts/referenced content at the end of a long day

Cunningham is credited with the idea: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."[17] This refers to the observation that people are quicker to correct a wrong answer than to answer a question.

I'd go with yes, as rising intonation conveys questioning (at least in the languages I somewhat know). We even have a '?' symbol.

In and of itself, all that shows to me that, if not answer, making questions is very much part of our nature!

And questions, such as yours, incite discussion and create cultures. Even if not accurate, myths were a way of answering why we're here and why seasons exist(ed).

I think it is trained into us in school where kids are given lots of praise and recognition for providing answers, and kids who stop to think are laughed at.

Also in our media, someone who knows what they’re doing is presented as confident and quick in their responses. We don’t have any images of people saying “Well I’m not sure” and then later being the heroes.

Wisdom is always portrayed as immediately knowing exactly what to do.

I’m hoping that with all the negatives, at least WW3 will force our culture to adopt a more workable model of decision making given our decisions will now be life or death decisions.