I will always remember grade 4 because that was the year when I was forbidden from asking questions. I don't recall if they were dumb questions, but there sure were a lot of them.
It's okay though, because I didn't learn anything from that experience. ;D In my second year of engineering, I took a cognitive science class, and asked a ton of questions. At the end of the course, the professor recommended me for a fourth-year research course in a cogsci lab!
In an academic environment, for example, there can be prerequisite knowledge for particular courses, and within a course, you are expected to form a foundation of knowledge upon which later material is based. Questions that betray lack of prerequisite or foundational knowledge rather than topical are often considered unhelpful.
More generally, there is the matter of social context, and the relevance of your question to the people who will be listening to its answer. People value their time, and dislike spending it in a Q&A they consider to be without any value, either informative, personal or entertaining. If you can be pretty sure a question is only relevant to you, it's more appropriate to ask in private than in front of a large audience.
That is a toxic environment rife with intellectual insecurity, most likely. Either ask questions and not give a shit about "looking dumb", or leave. If someone thinks you are dumb because you asked some questions, I wouldn't give their opinion much weight.
If there truly is an enviromnment that discourages asking questions because they deem them as 'dumb', then you need to work to improve such environment.
In my experience, the only time questions were discouraged (and almost always in the interest of time) was because it was otherwise possible to get an answer to your questions.
Can you give an example of the environment you would be talking about?
I see this problem among less experienced developers who have a lot of talent. These devs exude 'know it all' and can back it up on some narrow set of knowledge/skills. Part of maintaining this impossible image requires not asking questions that might show cracks. Pretending to know everything is a sure path to not knowing much of anything given enough time and I've seen developers go down this path.
One big one is high school. (I'm in high school right now) If I ask one or two questions, it's fine, but if I ask more questions, all of which are serious questions that I truly want to know the answer for, the teacher usually gets annoyed. It probably is due to the fact that there isn't much time in the class to cover all the material and answer questions, but it irritates me nonetheless.
In high school (and I truly hate to be the one to tell you this), it is quite possble that your teacher doesn't know the answer, so he is annoyed at you for asking questions so that you do not expose his/her shortcomings.
A lot of high school teachers know little past what they are actually teaching and even that not in a lot of depth. This is for a lot of reasons, some of them not their fault, but it is a sad fact.
So, keep asking and keep annoying them. Try going and asking during their office hours, but don't be surprised if you do not get a satisfactory answer and if it does not seem satisfactory, I would question its validity.
'Office hours' are a college term. It's the time that teachers or professor allot for students to go get extra help. A place where your teacher keeps their purse (sort to speak). It's away from the teaching environment where teachers can focus on your lack of knowledge or desire to expand it.
Keep in mind though. High school teachers are mostly overworked. Even the ones that know what they are talking about (some don't - we established that already), so do cut them some slack and be curteous. But keep asking questions. And if they don't answer, ask anyone who will. Read, explore and keep learning. It's what keeps us alive and what - at least according to this post - keeps us smart.
Good luck and you are on the right track to greatness.
Interesting choice of words. Office hours are the "teaching environment". The classroom is the (increasingly obsolete) bulk information transfer environment.
Any politicized working environment. People will twist your questions to trying to make you look stupid. You can counter it by actually asking other people in the room to explain it and lo-and-behold no-one understands but that's pretty much a downhill slope as then you're potentially making other people look stupid.
But to echo the other reply, get out, life's too short to bother with that.
I'm curious what you feel makes the environment one that discourages asking dumb questions. I ask partly, because I think everyone is somewhat insecure when faced with potentially appearing ignorant, particularly around people we feel are smart. So I think it's always valuable to question, is it really the environment that is creating this insecurity or are we simply choosing to feel insecure.
The working environment in general is less conducive to it I feel. But especially when there are many people in a meeting and its in a consulting environment where you have to manage the client relationship at the same time. I don't think anyone chooses to feel insecure, but I think after having been in that kind of environment, you become conditioned to asking fewer questions.
I spoke to it in my response to lucasferre. The problem is that if you don't ask the "dumb" assumptions early on, it becomes too late to ask afterwards and you can get stuck in that situation.
It's okay though, because I didn't learn anything from that experience. ;D In my second year of engineering, I took a cognitive science class, and asked a ton of questions. At the end of the course, the professor recommended me for a fourth-year research course in a cogsci lab!