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Lumifer comments on Open thread, 16-22 June 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Put yourself in their shoes. Why should they spend their time on answering "a lot of questions" from a random person? You will need to provide them with reasons to talk to you. What can you offer that they value?
Excellent question. What sort of things do you think experts (professors, generally) might value that a less-expert person like myself might be able to offer?
I have had the experience that when I actually do get to meet with and talk to experts one-on-one, then we usually do strike up a relationship of sorts, and they are then more than happy to help me in all sorts of ways. But the very same people were hard to get anything out of before we met in person.
Lots of things, of course: adoration, bacon, sexual favors, etc. etc. :-D
In practice, I suspect that some attention, gratefulness, and a demonstration that you're not a clueless idiot with some agenda will go a long way towards making the expert willing to answer your questions. The last part is the problematic one in online communications -- by default you're just "another guy from the internet" and we all know what the average of that looks like.
However something in this vein seems like not a bad start to me: "Dear Professor X, I read your papers/books Y and Z and was amazed how you figured out A, B, and C. However I have a question about D because while E it seems to me that F." Demonstrate cluefulness and use flattery :-)
P.S. Another important issue is scope. Ask questions that can be concisely answered in a couple of paragraphs. Do not ask questions the answers to which are a graduate degree, a shelf of books, and a really tall stack of printed-out papers (e.g. "What should I eat for health and fitness?").
I get people emailing me math questions every once in awhile. I never answer them (I strongly prefer to answer math questions in a public forum like Quora or StackExchange), but some of them are at least tempting. I am actively turned off by any attempt on their part to use flattery, and those are never tempting. It always sounds fake to me. (Also, some of them call me a professor on accident and that's annoying too.)
Same here.
Journals will call me professor on accident and it's also incredibly annoying.
Though in this case iarwain1's questions aren't "the type that [...] can get answers by posting on Quora or even specialty forums", at least in their own judgement.
As another data point, I'm open to (mild, proportional) flattery but am also annoyed when people call me a professor by accident (it compels me to point out I'm not a professor, and demonstrates a lack of the cluefulness Lumifer refers to).
Thanks!
Offer them publicity. If you're a journalist in the middle of preparing a piece on their field of study (while carefully making sure to get the facts right, unlike many science reporters), some of them will jump to the chance of having their replies quoted.