jooyous comments on Privileging the Question - Less Wrong

102 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 29 April 2013 06:30PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (311)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: jooyous 28 April 2013 05:17:21AM *  0 points [-]

I will experience an increase in utility from the process of finding out the answer? I will bask in the good feeling of having my question answered? I will gleefully tell like-minded friends about it, thus infecting them with my enthusiasm?

I guess it's hard to tell the difference if you haven't encountered the second type of question, where you think, "Oh well, I better develop an opinion on this whole gay marriage thing because everyone is talking about it and I'm the type of person that has opinions." It feels kinda like a chore you should do. (It's even worse when you feel pressure to make the opinion unique and interesting.) The difference between that feeling and realizing you don't know something and then checking it on wikipedia and going "ohhhh" is really big.