jimmy comments on Privileging the Question - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: [deleted] 28 April 2013 12:02:38AM 9 points [-]

Often, my mother will ask me "what do you think about [some issue that's been discussed in the media lately]?" and I'm like "how the heck should I know, and why should I even care?" It usually irritates her -- "you surely must have an opinion about that! How can you have no opinion?" (Sometimes I retort by asking for her opinion about some unanswered question about physics or something like that, but then she usually says something to the effect that her question, unlike mine, is so intrinsically important that any good citizen has a duty to form an opinion on it.)

Comment author: jimmy 28 April 2013 07:40:22AM 1 point [-]

but then she usually says something to the effect that her question, unlike mine, is so intrinsically important that any good citizen has a duty to form an opinion on it.

Have you tried responding to that and taking the conversation a step or two further to see if you can resolve it?

Comment author: [deleted] 28 April 2013 09:06:32AM 1 point [-]

Not that I remember of. By now, she's probably accepted my aloofness as yet another weird quirk of mine, and I'm OK with that.