Ask HN: Essay on adults being bad at asking questions?

[ydau]

Looking for a great essay posted on here ~1 year ago.

It’s about how children ask questions vs adults. Children get to the heart of the question whereas adults often couch their questions with long preambles / caveats / assumptions to avoid looking stupid.

Would appreciate your help finding it!

[Pick-A-Hill2019]

Took a while to find but I think this might be what you were after?

"Small children are great at asking questions. Their questions are simple, direct, and utterly without ego. If you spend time with 2-5 year olds, you’ll find yourself answering a near infinite series of progressively more challenging questions. This is one of the main paths by which children learn about the world.

Adults are generally bad at asking questions. Adult questions come with long preambles, caveats, and agendas. Adult questions don’t seem to be designed to learn about the world, they seem to be designed to avoid looking dumb."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22729028

https://www.aaronkharris.com/asking-questions

[afarrell]

Part of the problem is that when you get to be an adult, people start to assume things like:

1. Your question has an ulterior motive.

2. You actually do know the answer to your question, but are playing dumb somehow.

3. You would be upset at being given an answer to the question.