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Tetronian comments on What epistemic hygiene norms should there be? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I hate, hate social situations where I have to take big status hit to ask a simple clarifying question; it would greatly promote understanding to have the social norm that dumb-sounding questions are considered acceptable.
Train your social environment to expect trivial clarifying questions from you (and so to stop making inferences of any significance from individual instances of this behavior), by asking them frequently.
I try to keep in mind something I remember reading about the eminent mathematician David Hilbert. Supposedly he would constantly and shamelessly ask questions during math presentations, and once even asked what a Hilbert space was.
I usually use “Sorry for the stupid question, but X is [answer I think most likely], isn't it?”. I will learn the same thing as if I asked “What is X?”, but I won't sound like an idiot.