stupid questions

 

"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." -Epictetus

Dan Ariely is the author of Predictably Irrational and Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He does research in behavioral economics on the irrational ways people behave, described in plain language. Dan discovered that when teaching large classes (an average of 500 pupils) the students were afraid to ask questions. Consequently, Dan would start the semester by taking a few paragraphs from postmodern literature and randomly adding in words and phrases about economics and behavioral psychology. To give you some perspective, Wikipedia defines postmodern literature as ‘a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues’. (If you didn’t understand the definition, well….join the club.) He would then begin the lecture by saying “Let me start by explaining what behavioral economics is …” and proceeds to read this nonsense out loud for 5-7 minutes. Predictably, everyone would start taking copious notes.  No one questioned the information.

Then Professor Ariely stops and asks the group ‘Why didn’t you stop me? If you don’t understand, just ask. Don’t look at other people- assume that you’ll help others and that others don’t understand just as much as you do. Everyone is thinking the same thing. But no one has the guts to change it.”

Rocket scientist Ozan Varol says that “dumb” questions are the starting point for innovation. This comes with a disclaimer: Dumb doesn’t mean stupid. It signifies the basic. It means fun-dumb-ental. Asking a dumb question requires taking a complex concept and asking a seemingly simple question that has no easy answers. Change almost always begins with a dumb question. Here are a few that changed the world: What makes an apple fall down to the ground, rather than go up? What if the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the other way around? What if suitcases had wheels on them?

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the  international bestsellers The Tipping Point and Blink (2005) traces his inquisitive nature to his father’s inclination to ask dumb questions:

“My father has zero intellectual insecurities. It has never crossed his mind to be concerned that the world think he’s an idiot. He’s not in that game. So if he doesn’t understand something, he just asks you. He doesn’t care if he sounds foolish. If my father had met Bernie Madoff, he never would have invested money with him because he would have said, ‘I don’t understand’ a hundred times. ‘I don’t understand how that works,’ in this kind of dumb, slow voice.”

Humility and genuine curiosity are perhaps the most under rated attributes to expanding your knowledge. The minute you wake up and think you know everything- you know nothing