I. #

Children like asking questions. Some of their questions are very hard: “Why do people die?”. Others questions expose our biases: “Couldn’t we invite the homeless man to dinner?” Then there are all the annoying questions: “When will we arrive?”

In my experience, school didn’t teach us to ask questions - we were just taught how to answer them. To pass the test, you only had to memorise the material in the textbook.

Perhaps this isn’t too surprising. It’s hard objectively measuring someone’s ability to ask questions. But above all, educational institutions serve many different purposes, apart from spreading knowledge¹. Schools should also produce good citizens. A society full of radical skeptics wouldn’t function properly (hence the execution of Socrates). So children might hear that some questions are meaningless or irrelevant, even in school.

II. #

On two different occasions, I’ve heard two distinguished professors at ETH mention that students ask too few questions. They weren’t referring to the specific questions about the lecture, but to something like Research Hamming questions. For example, one could ask about improvements of a particular result or whether a proof technique generalises.

They make a good point. The ability to ask interesting, open-ended questions seems like a key research skill; call it question taste. Intuitively, a person with question taste is like a child with expert domain knowledge.

Certain groups of people are known for their question taste. For example, consider journalists. They have undergone extensive training in asking questions as part of their university degree. Moreover, they constantly practise the skill of asking questions at work. No wonder they get pretty good at it. Similarly, researchers, psychologists, essayists and investors tend to have good question taste, as questioning is part of their job.

III. #

I assume, perhaps somewhat naïvely, that acquiring question taste is mostly about deliberate practice. The implementational details will depend on the domain you’re working in, though.

A basic strategy might be to identify the people in your area who seem to be asking the right questions and try copying what they do. For example, I’d like to formulate good questions about research agendas in AI safety someday, so I’ll often make note of questions raised by leading researchers in podcasts, blog posts or papers. Sometimes I write down own questions and discuss them with others for feedback, although this is more time-consuming.

Having a safe environment in which to practise asking questions - a training ground - also seems important. If you’re a student, you can attend student-run seminars, where you might feel more comfortable asking questions. Regardless of the kind of questions you aim to ask, you need to find a community to give you feedback. And hopefully, you get some answers too.

As you practise asking questions, you’ll inevitably ask some “bad questions”. Part of the reason why children are so inquisitive is their lack of self-consciousness. They don’t care if their questions make them sound stupid. So, in order to ask good questions, make a conscious effort, find a supportive community and maybe don’t take yourself too seriously.