[bluGill]

Do you start every response off with "that is a great question"? I don't know any human who does. "that is a great question" is reserved either for really hard questions, or sarcasm. The majority of questions are not great, they are just things the asker needs a simple answer.

[e28eta]

I remember listening to this Freakonomics episode [1] on the phrase.

It covers a variety of times people might use it. Sometimes it's genuine, other times it's flattery. Some people use it all the time (and in the episode they talk about calling someone on it). One guest says it's a bridge, to go from the question asked to the question you want to answer instead.

I don't see it in this transcript, but I also thought I remembered hearing/reading that it can be a sign the speaker doesn't know the answer offhand, and needs to consider the question to formulate their answer. I think I'd classify that as a genuine usage: the question is something the speaker hasn't considered before, and thinks is worthy of consideration.

[1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/thats-a-great-question-rebr...

[DamnInteresting]

That's a great question! Ahem.

I remember being advised to do this ~20 years ago when I was going to be answering questions from a group of people. I was told that it's good practice to say something like "that's a great question" every time someone asks anything, as a form of social lubrication, to encourage others to ask questions. I can't say whether it works, and it was advice for a spoken context rather than written, but I don't know how to finish this sentence.

[impendia]

Math professor here.

When I go to research lectures, I sometimes hear that in response to audience questions, although not especially consistently. Some speakers do this more than others, I don't think anyone does it all the time.

[DamnInteresting]

It was so long ago that the specifics have faded, but I remember I was coached to use a variety of positive responses. "That's a great question," yes, but also things like "I'm glad you brought that up," and "I was hoping someone would ask about that!" It wasn't my cup of tea, too artificial, but the advice was contemplated.

The next question (which is a great one, from what I understand) is: Why do LLMs use these phrases so much if humans rarely use them in written form? Maybe a fair portion of training data comes from lecture transcripts, where such responses are common when responding to direct questions? And/or system prompts are just instructed to be like that?

[someguyorother]

> Why do LLMs use these phrases so much if humans rarely use them in written form?

As far as I understand, it's due to RLHF. The reviewers the AI companies use don't necessarily know what kind of question is a good one, so when the LLM answers "That's a good question!", they tend to rate the answer higher because they like being flattered. Proxy models that are themselves trained on RLHF inherit this pattern. Similar effects contribute to sycophancy.[1]

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.13548

[ThrowawayR2]

I've always seen and used "That's a great question!" and similar vacuous phrases when speaking as a polite way to buy some time while formulating an actual response to the questioner.

[phito]

That's a good question... => I didn't think about this, I don't know the answer yet.

That's a great question! => I can tell you understood what I explained and used that understanding to reach the next step of reasoning just like I did.

[plorkyeran]

In a spoken Q&A setting opening every single response with "that's a great question" or "thanks for asking that" or whatever is pretty common as a way to fill a few seconds while you think about your response. This is obviously unnecessary on slack.

[eyelidlessness]

Well before the LLM explosion I would often preface my answers with some form of praise for the question. It depends a lot on audience of course, but it’s amazing how many people tend to perceive direct answers to their questions as negative… and just as amazing how far a little strategic sycophancy goes to temper that. Even though everyone knows it’s half-sincere dead weight.

[bonesss]

And in parallel: a non-trivial number of people in class or at work are asking questions for no reason other to establish their own social credibility as smart and or knowledgeable.

Validating their ego and effort and social position can fulfill their social desires regardless of an answer that dismisses, say, buzzword soup as both inappropriate to the current context and incoherent to people who know what those words mean.

[pibaker]

It might be a difference in culture, but I definitely remember people saying you should say stuffs like that to encourage others to ask more questions. The rationale is if you are in a more powerful or senior position, like a college professor vs a student, other may be not feel comfortable asking questions because they fear appearing dumb or inappropriate and it hampers communication.

[SoftTalker]

I would probably reply with "that is a great question" only as a euphemism for "I don't know"

[AnimalMuppet]

From Schlock Mercenary: "'That's a great question' is a terrible answer."

[coder97]

I have only heard this phrase in american tv shows and movies

[a1o]

People use that too when speaking in real life when they are stalling a bit to conclude their internal thoughts before providing an answer.

[low_tech_love]

And worse, you use it so much that when the question is actually great, you can’t convey that convincingly anymore.

[onraglanroad]

I didn't, but then I watched SICP and the guy kept saying it to utterly dumb questions.

And then, somehow, he kept turning the dumb question into a deep and insightful one.

So I've adopted that technique but if I say "that's a great question" think for a while and come up with nothing, it's probably a moronic question. I'm not perfect.

[kwar13]

work at a crown corp and you'd change your stance on above...