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Well the damn irony of it; that's the best question I've seen on Ask
HN this year! A few thoughts; Courage. Most people hate questions and they recoil, punishing whoever
dare ask. Keep up your confidence in asking the things you know people
don't want to think about - while not being a provocative dick for the
sake of it. Scepticism is a skill, if simply the skill of not falling down the
hole of cynicism. Study Socrates, Erasmus, Sextus. Cicero, Hume, etc,
but also moderns like James Randi, the fictional detective Columbo
(Peter Falk), and great interviewers like Wallace, Frost, Walden, and
even Louis Theroux Sacha Baron Cohen. The hardest questions are asked
softly. Study "epistemology" and scientific method, so you know what "truth"
looks like if you occasionally encounter it. Most of everything is
bullshit and is constructed of parochialisms, psychological biases,
hidden alliances or simply people's jobs depending on them thinking
and saying certain things. Be comfortable with ambiguity and not
getting satisfactory answers. If you are asking questions constructively with a goal or problem in
mind there's a great book by Polya called "How to solve it" that
demonstrates the methods of constructive enquiry - understand the
problem, make a plan, decide what counts as evidence, ask the
questions, review your experiments, improve your method... Be fallible. Don't get overly attached to ideas, knowledge or
positions. And have fun... being curious and sceptical makes for a
lifetime of motivation and seeing the world afresh. |