
Tiers of answers to half-baked questions - epoch_100
https://blog.plover.com/misc/half-baked.html
======
TTPrograms
I often encounter (especially among academics) people who are quick to refute
questions or ideas on trivial grounds based on trivial formal description
errors of the type described in this post. To any non-expert the intent of the
ideas or questions is clear, but the formal thinkers are often quick to
dismiss based on these trivial inconsistencies. I have a strong aversion to
being dismissive or mean to people, especially in public, so by default I
reinterpret in those cases - "If by X you really mean Y (where the difference
between X and Y is only clear to an expert well-versed in formal descriptions
of the subject matter) then yes, that is an interesting idea - the pros and
cons are as such...". 99% of the time they actually mean Y, but they're just
not quite well-versed enough to phrase it that way - or, upon knowing that
swapping from X->Y converts their statement from trivial to meaningful, they
would often be happy with Y capturing the sentiment they wish to convey.

I have started proselytizing this approach to my colleagues, because some of
them are simply too formally minded to "pull themselves out" enough to
interpret such statements generously. I do think some subset do use this sort
of denigrating approach to cement their authority, which I find silly.

~~~
rmdashrfstar
Any tips for people who are quick to be dismissive? Asking for a friend, he
often is not generous with his interpretation of peoples’ questions.

~~~
n4r9
I don't think there's much better advice than what the OP has already said:
train yourself to wonder if there's a deeper question that the asker might be
asking. Ultimately it's a question of humility. I think dismissiveness is
often motivated by an assumption that the asker has made a simple rookie
thinking error, and that an involved answer isn't worth your time.

------
csours
Whenever I have to ask a semi-complicated question my brain does a mad
scramble to assemble what I already know, what I think I know, what the other
person knows, what I've already tried, my assumptions, why I want to know
it...

------
empath75
I think this is related to X-Y problems where someone wants to do x, thinks
that y is the way to accomplish it, but can’t do Y either, and so goes online
to ask about Y.

Everyone else knows that Y is a weird or unusual thing to be doing, but either
helpfully tries to explain how to do it, which won’t solve their real problem
anyway, or tells them that Y is dumb and they’re dumb for asking about it.

A really helpful answer would try and think about what could motivate someone
to ask about Y, and if unable to think of one, will ask why on earth they want
to do Y and what are they are really trying to do.

Similar to this situation is that they’re asking a question _because they want
to know something about the world_ and trying to meet them halfway or ask
clarifying questions is much more helpful than literally answering their
question as asked.

~~~
lainga
To their credit, the economics SE recently answered the question "why is the
price of oil negative?" with an explanation of futures, and not with "it
isn't"

~~~
analog31
The closest thing I've experienced is the value of a CRT computer monitor in
my locale, which is a negative 15 dollars because you have to buy a sticker
from the city in order to dispose of it.

------
prosaic-hacker
I have ask this half baked question many time in many places and I have
received the lower tier answers all the time.

Driving on a multi-lane highways with no traffic (yes it can happen, eg
upstate NY Adirondacks overnight ) you can straighten the road shifting lanes
to always be on the inside of the curve. Calculate the shortest path.

I once vaguely phrased this what shortest line that can be drawn between two
parallel curved line a constant distance apart. I think this is mathematically
half baked and could be restates.

~~~
dan-robertson
One thing to note is that this shortest path won’t typically be much shorter.
Consider a circular ring road. The circumference on the inside is pi * d and
on the outside is pi * (d + w), where w is the width of the road, so the
amount you save by driving on the inside is pi * w which is probably less than
100m.

In a more general simplified case where you always stick to the inside of
every curve and jump from left to right for free, the amount you save compared
to sticking to the middle lane is the line integral:

    
    
      \frac14 w \int k \mathrm ds
    

where k is the curvature (strictly speaking k should be an adjusted curvature
of 1/((1/K) - (w/2)) where K is the actual curvature).

Because roads are not very curvy, the integral of k will be small and so the
distance saved is very low. And note this is an overestimate because it
doesn’t cost in changing from side to side

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
In motorsports it’s known as the _racing line_.

You’re right, the gains are small for the average road user :)

Wikipedia article
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_line)

~~~
GhostVII
The real gains come not from decreasing the distance travelled (sometimes the
racing line does the opposite), they come from limiting the radius of the turn
so you can carry more speed through. At least thats what I've learned from
playing Grid 2 for far to many hours.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Yep, that Wikipedia article talks about that, and one it suggests are further
too
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_braking](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_braking)

------
slx26
This is a good approach and good advice for better communication in general:
you have to listen to both the exact words and the intent behind them. Coming
from technical fields, many of us are rather biased to dismiss what others say
for technical reasons only, when if we cared a bit more to look into what they
are really trying to say or figure out, we could help them, understand them,
and start much more interesting debates. This is too often seen in political
debate too, though the bias here might come from a different side (if you can
nitpick on the form of an argument, you don't have to care about anything
else).

------
transitivebs
I really loved this breakdown.

Two useful related thoughts:

1\. [https://www.perspectiveapi.com](https://www.perspectiveapi.com) via
Google that rates comments based on their utility and toxicity

2\. Generally adding emotional intelligence and psychology into the picture
instead of focusing solely on answering the top-level question directly. Being
able to emphasize with the person asking the question is invaluable in
figuring out the best way to frame your answer.

Sooooo many developers could use a healthy dose of improvement in #2.

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
This illustrates more than anything the Dunning–Kruger effect. Dilettantes and
dabblers with a little knowledge often tend to be the more nasty on online
forums, while actual experts have the humility of not just knowing the limits
of their knowledge but more importantly have enough information to
contextualize even those questions which might appear dumb to an untrained
mind.

~~~
Uhuhreally
and often people answer not to help the questioner (and future readers) but to
show off the little knowledge they have

------
Jun8
On the Physics SE a similar cluster of questions are asked about the
finiteness of the speed of light e.g
[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/230703/do-we-
kno...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/230703/do-we-know-why-
there-is-a-speed-limit-in-our-universe), why the Principle of Least Action
exists, and the “paradox” of size of the universe being larger than it’s age x
c

~~~
ShamelessC
The linked question on "why is C finite" is a good example. Each answer is
basically just "the speed of light is finite because the field I know most
about (cosmology, relativity, etc.) breaks in this specific way when it's
infinite".

Having said that, I do believe the correct answer is some form of "we don't
know". But that would be considered a half baked answer according to the
author. It's also deeply unsatisfying on an emotional level.

So all the answers are basically modifying the intent of the asker in order to
answer related questions which _are_ satisfying. This is compounded by the
StackExchange community upvoting highly knowledgeable answers. Fortunately you
can see the disputes on these answers also get upvotes in the answer's
comments.

~~~
knzhou
In theoretical physics, "why X" stands for absolutely nothing more than
"please derive X from some other principle". Some people will use Y to derive
X. Others will say that's not a _real_ explanation, you really should use Z to
derive X. And yet others will flip the derivation around and say that X really
_is_ the fundamental principle, and use it to derive Y and Z! (The route one
takes depends on what one views as "more fundamental", a metaphysical notion
that nobody agrees on.)

It's completely fair if you don't think any of the answers were satisfying,
but it's not like there's another option on the table.

A lot of laypeople think that a _truly_ satisfying answer must be mechanistic
-- something like "there's an invisible jelly everywhere and it wobbles at a
finite speed, and that is the speed of light" \-- but the 20th century taught
us that this completely natural desire is actually counterproductive, because
you have to add piles of epicycles to hide the jelly's other effects.

~~~
ShamelessC
Yeah. I think answers which aren't technically correct but are highly
knowledgeable and deeply related are still very useful.

>"there's an invisible jelly everywhere and it wobbles at a finite speed, and
that is the speed of light"

As a layperson, is this analogous to "the electromagnetic field is everywhere
and wobbles at a finite speed"?

~~~
knzhou
"Field" is the abstraction we use in physics to say "there is a value
associated with each point, and we're just _not going to say_ whether it's
representing the displacement of some invisible jelly, or the rotational
velocity of some invisible tiny gears, or if it doesn't even make sense to ask
the question". When we say the electromagnetic field wobbles, we just mean
some abstract value is going from positive to negative and back.

I know that sounds unsatisfying, but there's good historical reason for doing
this. Maxwell, for example, had a rich intuitive understanding of the
electromagnetic field as a set of many invisible jellies and gears pushing on
each other. His original equations were also 5x longer than the modern form
and impossible for anybody else to understand, plus all the extra ingredients
made tons of predictions that played poorly with relativity. The sheer
butchery one needs to make intuitive pictures like this compatible with
relativity is so high that we've basically collectively decided to give up. We
now say fields _make up_ real jellies and gears, they're not _made of_ jellies
and gears. They're just fields.

~~~
ShamelessC
I gotcha. Not the right way to think about it. To be clear, you're saying
fields are essentially virtual mathematical notions from which emerges actual
stuff?

Given the premise that fields are explicitly not consisted of an "invisible
jelly", I'll ask what is definitely a "half-assed question" -

How and where _do_ fields "exist"? Where are they in the standard model?
Intuition says maybe they reside in spacetime near particles. I have a hunch
from QFT that the fields are technically "everywhere" and are merely highly
excited into particles when energy transforms the field in certain spots.

I doubt either of my guesses is the right answer but I'm mostly just curious
how literally you mean to take the viewpoint that fields are "virtual" in
nature.

Since this is a half-assed question, feel free to give a half-assed answer.

~~~
knzhou
> To be clear, you're saying fields are essentially virtual mathematical
> notions from which emerges actual stuff?

Perhaps, but I think that's a bit unfair. There's no dividing line between
"mathematical notions" and "actual stuff". For example, when you poke a bowl
of jello, it springs back, so it feels like "actual stuff". But in terms of
the mathematics, it's because the configuration of fields that corresponds to
compressed jello has a higher energy value than when uncompressed. In other
words, while we don't assign intuitive properties like "solidity" and
"elasticity" to fields, the relation between the fields and those properties
in macroscopic objects is quite direct!

> How and where _do_ fields "exist"? Where are they in the standard model?
> Intuition says maybe they reside in spacetime near particles. I have a hunch
> from QFT that the fields are technically "everywhere" and are merely highly
> excited into particles when energy transforms the field in certain spots.

Indeed, they're technically "everywhere". You commonly hear that for the Higgs
field, but it's true for all others as well, such as the electron field, whose
excitations are electrons.

------
neoncontrails
Earlier today, on the subject of why I made a particular design choice, I went
straight for tier 6. I absolutely could have promoted my response to tier 5,
or even 4, but I was too focused on prevailing as correct to see that one can
affirm the reasons why someone is asking a question without necessarily
seizing on the more absurd aspects of the question. I think I'll be more
mindful of this in the future.

Terrific article.

------
hartator
I don’t know. My main gripe with StackOverflow is question getting closed for
being opinion based or not worth debating. When constant debate is actually
fun and interesting. (And you don’t have to watch the threads if you don’t
care.)

~~~
enitihas
If you like constant debates and open ended questions, why not use Quora, or
maybe even reddit.

~~~
sl1ck731
Has Quora gotten any better for content? Maybe I just don't use it right. It
is on my list with Technet for sites that are entirely garbage. Every time I
was led to Quora the answers were always 3 top comments of different companies
advertising something.

~~~
enitihas
It has begun resembling the real world, just like any platform that gets too
many users. But I doubt if you ask things like open ended debate questions you
are not willing to see 1-2 ad answers, as long as there are other high quality
answers. Many people are on quora posting high quality answers. Some examples:
1\. Cliff Click 2\. John Romero

------
thinkingemote
I think people may give half hearted questions to get better answers. Maybe
half hearted questions get more interaction by people trying to clarify
things, or perhaps the answers are written with more common language than
jargon?

Could there be other reasons (apart from "Questioner Is Stupid" or Troll) to
ask vaguely formatted questions?

------
ganzuul
6\. I can't do it, so nobody can.

I am much too emotionally invested in intellectual honesty...

------
mjd
It's “tiers of answers”, not “tired of answers”.

~~~
dang
Fixed. Thanks!

