Stop Asking Stupid Questions

Interrogation is an annoying form of self-insertion

I ignore a lot of questions. In fact, the better I understand human communication, the more I ignore them. This is because most of the reasons people have for asking questions are negative reasons and most of the time no answer is actually required.

Because I am a public figure, however minor, a lot of the questions I get are performative in nature. I’m not always certain what the purpose of the performance is, but it is obvious that no answer is necessary. Consider one I recently received that unnecessary on its face:

Are there any instructive novels for Gammas?

Think about that for two seconds. The concept of the Gamma was first articulated in 2010. The first book to specifically address the SSH was published in 2026. The heyday of the instructive novel was the latter half of the 19th century. So the obvious answer is “no, there are no instructive novels specifically written for Gammas” although obviously it would probably benefit the average Gamma to read an instructive novel written for young men, or even for young women.

So this question is performative. And performative questions don’t deserve answers.

Neither do rhetorical questions that are intended to assert some kind of control over the actions of another individual. Women, in particular, are prone to these: “why did you do this?” and “why did you do it that way?”

They don’t realize, of course, that most of the time, the question is an exposure of either a) their inability to grasp the obvious or b) their lack of respect for another’s agency. When silence isn’t practical, I usually answer in the most straightforward manner possible: “because that is how I chose to do it.” This usually serves to abort a pointless discussion of the obvious because it short-circuits the usual accusation-and-justification process that otherwise entails.

Women understand this sort of answer and are usually content with it, because they often engage in a similar short-circuiting response whenever they are being held accountable for a failure. “Because I’m just a terrible person!” is an effective short-circuit because it changes the subject from what the woman did to the contemplation of a position that the questioner almost certainly doesn’t hold.

In both cases, what is actually being communicated is “I’m not going to talk about this” which is something that most women recognize and most men, being more inclined toward the literal and dialectical, reliably fail to understand.

Your mileage may vary, but personally, I don’t like to explain myself. While there are occasionally times when explanations are necessary, in most cases, people can’t follow, and even when it’s a simple matter that they can follow, they aren’t really interested in doing so. It’s much easier to assume that people’s actions are self-explanatory, and anyway, it is the behavior that is reliably informative, not the ex post facto rationalizations and justifications.

Aaron Rodgers has provided us with what is perhaps the best possible response to stupid, performative, and rhetorical questions: “it’s a beautiful mystery”. It’s a polite and effective way of informing the questioner that answers will not be forthcoming.

At some point, probably during elementary school, a number of people somehow came to equate asking questions with intelligence. And while that may have been true for children, it most definitely isn’t true for adults.

Do you know what is a sign of intelligence? Being able to figure things out on your own without bothering anyone else about it.