But the article does hit dead on that smart people don't just ask questions about things they don't understand themselves. They ask questions that challenge what the world believes to be settled, 'obvious' and extremely clear.
My favorite How-To-Be-A-Smart-Person-By-Asking-Questions story, about Wittgenstein, from Bertrand Russell:
When I was still doubtful as to his ability, I asked G. E. Moore for his opinion. Moore replied, ‘I think very well of him indeed.’ When I enquired the reason for his opinion, he said that it was because Wittgenstein was the only man who looked puzzled at his lectures. [1]
Incidentally, on the same page, I found perhaps my favorite genius quotation:
The genius is always puzzled by answers, it is the fool who is satisfied by them.
[1] http://readingmarksonreading.tumblr.com/post/2565799967/pg-4...
"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing — that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."
I also think its important to question the statements made by smart people. Times changes, what was applicable when the statement was made might not be valid anymore!
> What the article doesn't mention is that the smartest of people perpetually
ask themselves questions regarding what they believe they understand. It is
remarkably easy to convince yourself you understand something... when you're
really just going through the motions
"Above all, never fool yourself, and remember that you are the easiest person to fool."
That's so true.
He must have noticed that confusion implies learning. After all, it shows that they've encountered unexpected input and are trying to integrate with all the other things they know. If they're not confused, they expected or ignored the answers.
But if I'm not the smartest in the class (or simply not familiar with the material) I may be more inclined to look on Google or follow-up afterwards with the presenter. I don't know if the question I have is worth the time of the 20 or 200 other people in the room. I just don't have the context to know.
So to me it's unclear if smart people ask questions because they're comfortable or because that's what they naturally do. A good experiment -- take these same Turning Award winners to a basketball court and have them run through some plays. See if they start asking questions like, "OK, I go left here, but what if someone is setting a pick, should I switch?" or do they nod their head...
My experience has been that people are centered around feeling special in a few areas. Something outside that area they don't have an issue with appearing to be stupid. In fact they seem to almost embrace that. I'm sure you've run into plenty of "smart" people (say your Doctor) that say "I'm really bad with computers."
So my theory would be that the further away from their area of expertise a person would be more likely to admit they know nothing and ask a question.
I would even say that the asking of questions follows a bell curve.
If you are an expert, no fear.
If you know nothing no fear.
Questioning everything and asking questions are often different things in a classroom environment.
A key premise of the Khan Academy is that students learning in the intimacy of their own space enables slower students to learn and excel
Always a poor assumption to make, in my experience.
For a while I have understood that people see the world in fundamentally different ways, but about two years ago I had an epiphany that really crystallized it for me. Now I see people existing in either one of two camps:
1. Those who believe the world is the way they see it.
2. Those who realize how limited their perspective is.
When Jim Collins was doing his research for "How the Mighty Fall", he identified hubris as being the first stage of decline for great enterprises (http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10565). This is the concept of "pride goes before the fall," and I believe one of the reasons for this is because we stop asking questions and begin to "lean on our own understanding."
We become complacent with our picture of the world and continue on whatever trajectory we were on when we stopped recalibrating. Unless we were right from the start (which almost never happens in a dynamically changing world), we'll veer farther off course.
A better way to go is to constantly be asking questions -- continually adding to your perspective, refining it, and recalibrating your path based on what you learn. As the saying goes, "you don't know what you don't know".
This seems so simple, but admitting you don't know everything and continually asking questions requires humility.
These days, I mostly understand that there are always many perspectives and try to see wisdom as the art of picking between perspectives. But sometimes I get stuck in my old ways and search in vain for the "right" opinion/perspective/paradigm/whatever. This no-one-true-perspective meta-perspective means that life experience and hard-earned wisdom become much more important factors for the good life.
Then again, those who are convinced their way is the "right" way are often the ones who have the biggest impact on the world (for better or worse).
When most people say that something is true, they don't mean, "I think that's an accurate reflection of reality." -- what they really mean is, "It is in my interest to accept that as true."
A lot of things made sense after that.
2. Those who realize how limited their perspective is.
That's a good point. I suspect that the first one isn't so much a lack of humility, though.
Naively, it seems that you're just perceiving how the world is, as if your eyes are just windows into the world, and that your judgments (e.g. such and such is being a jerk) are simply reflecting the objective nature of how things are.
It takes time, learning and effort to really become aware of your perception of things as something in itself, that it is a process which takes in limited information and makes judgments on the basis of various assumptions, and that it is something which can be turned in on itself in a critical fashion.
It seems like the most successful ML algorithms are self-correcting ones, rather than ones that attempt to calculate the exact correct answer in one go.
Coincidence?
One of the problems that atheism faces as a movement is that it considers answers to some traditional questions as 'there is no answer to that (and that's okay)', which doesn't sit well with a lot of people. The 'god of the gaps' argument exploits these areas.
Smart people don't care to convert me to their way of seeing the world. Be it using Ruby, Apple, or not, they are able to see a bigger, wider picture where everything is possible with the right amount of understanding and well placed effort.
Smart people see the patterns and similarities in everything that unite, instead of the differences and exceptions that divide.
Smart people aren't righteous. They don't seek external validation / conversion to fuel their own beliefs.
Smart people don't add to a situation if they're merely replacing one set of confusing concepts with another (theirs). They are driven by clarity.
Smart people are genuinely, insatiably curious about everything.
Smart people know how to take the good from everything, and deeply understand little knowledge is new, or truly unique.
Smart people I've met live in a mindset of possibility, not doubt or skepticism. One fuels creativity, and the other douses.
Smart people know that their brain recognizes patterns where there aren't any. They know that they should not fool themselves.
> Smart people I've met live in a mindset of possibility, not doubt or skepticism. One fuels creativity, and the other douses.
Then they are the opposite of what the article is describing. Smart people I know constantly question their own beliefs.
I didn't say I agreed with the article, haha. ;)
Constantly questioning your beliefs can lead to constantly doubting everything. Over time there is risk of only believing in doubts.
Developing a healthy curiosity that tests, clarifies and strengthens your current understanding is that.
If there's one thing I would have added to the post above, it would be that Smart people know that developing a correct mindset for the journey of learning is far more important than the destination of feeling that they have "arrived" with their level of understanding.
Too many people, think they're done once they arrive at their conclusions, or hang onto them so dearly and fanatically based on all the work they've done. Smart people, for me, are ready to piss everything they've believed into the wind every day because of possibility.
"The way you were raised, namely with wealthy or less fortunate parents, also plays a role. Gladwell explains that when wealthy parents drive their children to the doctor, they tell their children things like, “Johnny, now if you have any questions, be sure to ask the doctor. This is your opportunity to talk to him about any health problems you’re having….” And so on.
In contrast, the children of poor parents may feel less entitled to this same questioning. Instead, they accept what the doctor tells them straight out, without surfacing concerns or criticisms. Gladwell then uses Chris Langan, a genius with a 195 IQ who wasn’t able to succeed in college, as an example. Langan failed to get a PhD (his goal) not because he lacked intelligence, but because he had a mentality to passively accept the conditions and limitations others imposed on him. Langan ended up dropping out of college because he couldn’t convince his teachers to accommodate a simple change in his schedule (a change he needed because his truck broke and he could no longer get to campus early in the morning)."
I can only imagine the awkwardness when he mistakes one kind of patient for the other.
Sociology is fun, any just-so story becomes social science. even.
That seems to be a tautology these days ;)
Disappointed that, in a thread about asking questions, no one has asked whether this Gladwell anecdote generalizes (especially since Gladwell is king of "anecdote == universal fact.")
Can anyone comment on this quote?
That said, I never liked that passage. There are passive and active parents in all walks of life, but I don't think the economics are the point of the quote as much as an admonishment to take a bit more control.
I synthesize these positions on Gladwell.
#1, he’s not a scientist and not a science journalist. He doesn’t apply any rigor to speak of: at best, he’s telling suggestive and insightful stories, not proving or really getting to the bottom of anything. He leaves out huge amounts of important information, especially when it would get in the way of making a catchy point. This is extremely irritating when it’s implied – usually by his readers, not by him – that he’s doing something more.
But #2, he’s good at what he does. If you approach it as engaging stories that highlight quirky research, it’s entertaining and thought-provoking. I’ve learned very little from Gladwell per se, but I’ve learned a lot from following up on the actual science that he refers to. That’s valuable.
So I think it’s fair to say that Gladwell’s scholarship is shoddy, and his writing is shallow and over-popularized and mostly anecdotal. But if you take him as a good storyteller rather than a bad scientist, it can still be worth reading.
If you want to like Gladwell but don’t, you might prefer John McPhee. He’s a little more on the hard journalism side of the science popularizer spectrum.
With that in mind, I take two concrete appraoches to Gladwell's work. Unless I feel like reading a story, I skip the anecdotes -- this shortens most of his books to about a chapter's worth. :-)
And if I do hit upon an important point I might want to incorporate into my thinking, I look up the references to see how substantiated it really is.
I find folks who have been surrounded by extremely smart hands-on analytical types most of their lives are slow moving and not great leaders because they question absolutely everything. It's a reflex that develops because if you're working with 20 other engineers building a rocket you don't want to be the guy who said "lets just assume" or "screw it, lets just get it out the door".
Sometimes though, it's useful to have an arrogant ass around that makes a few assumptions and keeps kicking the can down the road. Steve Jobs comes to mind.
Ideally, there is some balance between making assumptions and asking questions that leads to great leadership and innovation. I think this balance occurs when one questions everything within a certain domain they wish to control (for instance, Apple and how people interact with computers), but then just accepts the common views for topics outside of their domain.
We can learn from this. Smart people should be winning! at life, after all. Maybe a combo of strategical luminosity and tactical cocksurity can be found? :)
As a matter of fact, this struggle to avoid the extremes of reckless delusion on one hand and self-sabotage on the other, is one of my major life motifs.
Think about the last time you bought something where you had a great sales experience. How many questions did the sales person ask? Think about last time you were on a great date? Did the person ask questions about you.
Asking questions is a sign of validated learning and active listening and those two concepts are the way we better ourselves and our surroundings.
Good for you. Even better for you is the fact that you recognize your opportunity. How sad that so many people in your situation never do until it's too late.
Now, when I say “smart people,” I don’t mean that guy who always wins trivia night. I mean, blazingly intelligent individuals who are regarded as the pre-eminent scholars in their field.
There are many vectors of smartness in both magnitude and direction. Some of the smartest people I've ever known never went to college. You don't have to be a "pre-eminent scholar" to be smart and there's nothing wrong with winning trivia night.
It’s pretty amazing to pass by Turing Award winners and leading political science scholars grabbing a sandwich.
The smarter you get the less amazing that will feel.
Before I go anywhere, let me make one thing clear: I am not one of these smart people.
Hmmm, not sure I like the sound of that. Where are you going with this?
This is perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve learned after 3 years here.
Then it's a good thing you have one more year. Hopefully you'll learn a bigger lesson. (Read on...)
There is an absolutely incredible number of smart people in the world, and I can name a whole bunch of students and professors alike who I know for a fact I will never ever ever be as smart as, no matter how hard I try.
How sad to hear you say that...
The purpose of college is not to become a greater repository of data.
The purpose of college is not to become a better accumulator of data.
The purpose of college is not to become better than anyone or anything else.
The purpose of college is to see the possibilities and put yourself in position to go after them.
You may not believe me now, but you are probably a whole lot smarter than many people, including the smart ones you cite, at something, perhaps many things. And once you put yourself on the shoulders of giants, including your own, you can geometrically catapult yourself into much higher spheres of measure, including "smartness". But even then, so what?
It's now how smart you are, you rich you are, or even you good you are, it's what you can imagine doing with all those "assets" and how you can positively affect the lives of others. If you learn nothing else in college, I sincerely hope that you come away with this mindset.
...but I have noticed one overarching theme among smart people: they ask questions.
Wow. It sounds like you learned something in college that I didn't learn until years later. And I thought I was so smart.
After all, I don’t want this person to think I’m a moron.
Smart people don't care about that.
The intonation of the question and the intensity with which the professor listened to the response definitively suggested that the professor’s question was genuine, and that the answer was of great importance.
What a great lesson. Which reminds me that two of the smartest things you can ever do is keep learning and keep teaching. Thank you.
Smart people challenge the very limit of human understanding, and push the envelope of what’s possible farther than many people would argue it’s meant to be pushed. Smart people don’t take claims at face value, and smart people don’t rest until they find an explanation they’re comfortable accepting and understanding.
Therefore, you become smarter simply by claiming that you're smarter, right? (Notice this is the opposite of "I know for a fact I will never ever ever be as smart as, no matter how hard I try.".)
Smart people challenge everything.
Hmmm, I wonder if "challenge everything" = "see the possibilities". I think I've learned something.
(You know who taught me that? A smart person.)
That's great, but please don't overlook all that you can learn from people that may not seem so smart.
Maybe someday, people will call me a smart person.
The smartest thing you can ever do is stop caring how smart others think you are.
For now, I’m going to keep asking them questions.
I take back what I said before. It sounds like you've already learned more in 3 years than many learn in a lifetime. But you probably already knew that, being as smart as you are.
Thanks for the great post and the chance for interesting discussion. I feel smarter already.
[EDIT: Any notion that I was making fun or teasing OP was most definitely unintended. This was a great post! (Sounds like I now need a <NoSarcasm> tag.)]
This is something that I'm continually trying to come to terms with. The intelligence distribution is tighter on the high end than most people realize. By that I mean, the smartest people aren't really amazingly smart. This reply, from Clay Christensen (Business School Prof at Harvard, Rhodes Scholar...must be bright!) when asked how it felt to be the top of his field, in this case material sciences, has always stuck with me:
"You know, there's real disappointment. When I was younger, I looked up at the top of the mountain and thought, Wow, those guys are really smart! When you're near the top of the mountain looking down, you think, Boy, if nobody is smarter than I am, the world is really hurting!"
It's all perspective.
At the same time, everyone bases their internal scale at their level so while he met a few people that where smarter and many where far more educated there was always this feeling like he was surrounded by people that where just a little slow.
PS: He also generally referred to IQ in terms of speed. Most people have interesting things to say as long as the conversation is slow enough for them to follow.
I love that you said this. One of the things that smart people do is learn something from anyone they can about anything they can.
I met a bellhop once in Florida. He had moved his entire family to Orlando. I think he came from some less desirable place up north. But he had enough smarts to realize that if he was going to cart bags for a living it might as well be in a nice warm place instead of a cold city area.
I learned a few valuable theories that I've used for years of giving estimates from an electrician as a child. (I'm not suggesting that an electrician isn't smart only that they don't usually get picked as "pre-eminent scholars" that the OP is writing about.)
Awesome.
But your response seems kind of disproportionate. Even if it did take him a while to learn that asking questions at the risk of seeming dumb is a good thing, and even if it took him observing "pre-eminent scholars" doing it to think it was worthwhile, and yeah, his post is ironically devoid of question-asking, why make fun of someone for learning something?
EDIT: edw wasn't being sarcastic, misread that.
This false belief turns out so many people who feel cheated later in life.
Perpetual self learning is the only required skill for the truly educated, or self-educating. IT especially, what we learn today is worthless in a short time.
If you learn the right stuff this is not the case. Knowledge in the areas of algorithms, data structures, code and language design seems to have a certain timelessness to it.
I’ve always considered it sub-optimal to become an expert in all the idiosyncrasies of one particular language or domain at the expense of thinking about and trying to understand the larger truths and principles of software development. Idiosyncrasies can be easily referenced; a good grasp of abstract principles takes practice.
Being less snarky: It matters very much _what_ you learn. If you spend time being buzzword compliant (and to some extent, you have to), yes, that'll expire soon-ish. If you learn the underlying principles, it'll stay with you for a long time. (I'd say probably your entire career unless you're living on the cutting edge of research)
This is true, however your comment makes it seem you ascribe to the romantic idea that everybody is good at something. The harsh reality is that the magnitude of the vectors in not independent: some people are smart in almost every way and some people are dumb in every way. I've had to good fortune of attending one of the top US schools and I can relate to the feeling of meeting people where you seriously wonder if there is anything you could outsmart them on. I very much agree with the gist of your post though, and the other points you make.
"Don't make us look stupid! Stop! Just go along with it! Stop caring whether you understand everything!"
The really, really important part here is: SEEM not so smart, and accordingly, SEEM oh-so-smart
"Smart" is pretty difficult to quantify, let alone compare... just to play devil's advocate here: a lot of the oh-so-smart people might have "nothing" but a decade of experience more than you and an ability to be extrovert about what they do and they might be one of only a handful of people in that field, so might just be big fish in an actually small pond. And have you ever talked to PhD candidates about what is really going on in scientific publishing?
So, question and look at how these oh-so-smart people do things, see their up- but also, especially, their downsides as good and fair as possible. That way you will learn something about people and about yourself.
I'm asking this question to see if a Smart Person is the byproduct of getting skilled in a different set of areas, and getting very professional and focused in one or two.
I'm certainly not as smart as some fellow HNers here. But, few minutes ago, I have been reading blog posts and emails I wrote 6 years ago. "What a retard I was!"
I tell the following to my roommate weekly: "These guys (referring to HN) are 'wicked smart'". HN certainly makes me humble about what I think of myself.
>What a retard I was
No, you've grown a lot. I got back to my writings of even 1 year ago and I can see the difference.
I think you should consider your life in many ways successful if you say that every year.
I think the answer is that when they don't fully understand something there is some sort of mental itch that just has to get scratched. Things just don't feel right until all of their questions are answered.
Also, I can't help but note how much these endlessly inquisitive smart people sound like the old gadfly Socrates. If philosophy has anything going for it, it is that it teaches one to ask questions about matters that are typically taken for granted.
Smart people also are secure in what they know and what they don't know and aren't afraid to show it.
If you asked PG, Fred Wilson or Steve Blank about a company - if they had heard of it - they wouldn't feel self conscious if they hadn't. They would probably assume it just wasn't well known at that point.
If you asked the same question to a "newbie" on HN I'm not sure they would be so secure to admit the same because they wouldn't know how ubiquitous the company was. And they would be afraid of showing how clueless they were.
I mean if you are in a meeting and are an expert on the subject matter you feel pretty secure that if you have a question it's not a dumb question. Nobody likes to ask the dumb question.
I've notice with customers that call us that an overwhelming number of (at least smart sounding) people start the conversation with "this might be a dumb question". It's like laying down with your belly exposed to acknowledge what you don't know.
This would only hold true if they were conditioned to fear the reaction of them not knowing. If someone had never heard of Google and they admitted that, if someone simply said 'it's a commonly used search engine' without much negative connotation, they will not be afraid to admit not knowing something similar in the future.
However, if you laugh, point, call them a 'newbie' and make them leave the room with their heads hung in shame, then yes, they may be more careful next time.
It boils down to respect. If you respect people, even if they don't know the obvious, then they will have an opportunity to learn and thrive.
If PG acted immaturely every time someone admitted they did not know something that was obvious to him, he quite possibly would not be able to do what he does.
However I've also noticed—among engineers where solid understanding is perhaps more critical—the culture can be different. There's still a general reluctance to admit you have no clue what a speaker is talking about, but when 'that guy' finally breaks the silence with the questions that were on everyone's mind, you can almost hear the sense of relief spreading through the group.
Acting like you know everything doesn't come from a place of intelligence - it comes from a place of fear, that the other person knows more than you, that they will judge you, that a "smart person" would know what you don't know. I've forced myself to ask questions many times in meetings when I thought the answer was probably obvious to everyone else - only to discover that others had been wondering the same thing.
Another way to think about this: the smart people are happy to tell me what I need to know to succeed, so I don't have to be disadvantaged by not being as smart. I do, however, have to be humble enough to be a good listener, and have some discernment to know who to listen to.
What defines this league, and how can people in it be compared?
I think its boundaries have something to do with a general ability and desire to learn, and a breadth and depth of knowledge about important things in the world at large. (The knowledge criterion has to take into account age. You know less now than you will at 50, but that's obviously not a mark against you.)
Amongst such people, the only meaningful comparisons are far more specific than "more smart" and "less smart" can capture. You can meaningfully talk about, say, one's ability to solve an electrical engineering dilemma, or to pleasingly arrange the samples in a hip-hop song. But not relative smartness, not in this league.
This is one case where the truth is actually more comfortable than the myths we tell ourselves.
Usually, the ones who continually ask questions and run their mouths in class are the ones who are extremely interested in their respective field of study. Interest creates curiosity and excitement, and both are required for someone to continually want to ask questions and learn more about whatever subject.
The other students who do not continually ask questions are either shy or are just going through the motions at college, so they do not really care.
If you are a student at Harvard, you probably have above-average fluid-intelligence, regardless of what you accomplish with it. The more you ask questions and the more interest you have in a subject, the more knowledge you will gain in that said subject (crystallized intelligence). But it doesn't mean people who do not continually ask questions have any less fluid intelligence.
Edit: I remembered something. There was a man called Said Nursi in Ottoman Empire in 20th century. He is recognized as one of smartest people ever. When he was in his 20s, after graduating 4 universities he opened a bureau in Istanbul and wrote on it's door "Here will be all questions answered and no questions asked" After answering most paradoxal questions ever he was already famous in Europe. In first days of Turkish republic people invited him to parliament, and then to be the president of Turkey. He rejected and started to write his famous books. Nowadays there are 300 millions of his students calling themselves "Nurcular" in turkish.
It's okay though, because I didn't learn anything from that experience. ;D In my second year of engineering, I took a cognitive science class, and asked a ton of questions. At the end of the course, the professor recommended me for a fourth-year research course in a cogsci lab!
In an academic environment, for example, there can be prerequisite knowledge for particular courses, and within a course, you are expected to form a foundation of knowledge upon which later material is based. Questions that betray lack of prerequisite or foundational knowledge rather than topical are often considered unhelpful.
More generally, there is the matter of social context, and the relevance of your question to the people who will be listening to its answer. People value their time, and dislike spending it in a Q&A they consider to be without any value, either informative, personal or entertaining. If you can be pretty sure a question is only relevant to you, it's more appropriate to ask in private than in front of a large audience.
Beyond that, I wouldn't worry about it.
In my experience, the only time questions were discouraged (and almost always in the interest of time) was because it was otherwise possible to get an answer to your questions.
Can you give an example of the environment you would be talking about?
But to echo the other reply, get out, life's too short to bother with that.
Smart people challenge everything.
Challenging people is not always the optimal way of exchanging information. When you think someone is wrong, asking questions to understand why they think something will work or is correct is sometimes much more constructive. This is in cases when it leads you to discover a different underlying assumption, a different main goal, a piece of information you missed, ...
For example, in the lecture hall example the students thought they understood the guest lecture and the only person to ask a genuine question was the tenured professor. The way I interpreted it was that the students accepted their understanding of the subject as "good enough" while the professor wanted to be 100% certain he understood the subject correctly. The professor challenged his own understanding.
1. If I am right, it validates my understanding of the concept.
2. If I am wrong, it bring misinformation to surface and gives me a reason to go over previously discussed material. If I never had experience where I was wrong, it puts me in the cycle of "I know everything, so I don't need to study."
3. It keeps me awake in class because asking and answering questions requires paying attention in class.
Kudos for him recognizing that in himself. It is the single most problematic and annoying aspect of most middle and upper managers. Fear of looking dumb feeds on itself.
I don't like words like "smart" - and "stupid" - but I can recognize some of the qualities associated with them. One of the biggest is to know what you don't know, to not be complacent and arrogant. The people I respect the most are humble people, and I think it comes down to this.
I don't know what the definition of "smart" is, but I think you sound like a smart person for knowing that you don't have it all figured out - and want to fill in the gaps, even though it means telling other people.
What is the probability of being unique?
A coin being heads-up is a binary property, yet it could be associated with a probability.
And also take care that schools reward this to, to the extent possible.
For example, when you need to convince others (need high confidence in whatever you believe in), to gain trust(depends on your audience), to increase social ranking (asking lot of question is sign of being a good protege), to hide weakness (sometimes you don't want the other party to know how much you know/don't know), etc etc
Similarly, how can someone learn to ask questions without being sufficiently curious, or at least sufficiently motivated to learn about a particular subject? I guess the answer is: with a lot of work.
Does anyone remember what the link was? Please post it here if you do. Thanks :)
That's why they ask questions. Even if they hate doing it, they have to find out, at just about any cost.
My high school English teacher mocked Harvard students who used term "very unique". "uniqueness" is a binary (not continuous/leveled) attribute (and "very" is a near-meaningless word).
There is an innate ability to do this integration and some people do it more easily.
But those who use their abilities most often and without fear build their brains faster.
"The only thing I know, is that I don't know anything."
Remind yourself of that whenever you feel smart, and you will soon feel your mind expanding.
There is a time and a place for asking questions, and if you regularly need to ask questions to which you can easily find an accurate/complete answer to without help you'll probably learn more from "learning to fish".
Now, please, go away and only come back when you've at least done the homework.
You can't know until you don't know.
if only correlation implied causation...
It is in the interest of the speaker to claim that audience members who ask questions are in some way smarter. Being asked a question implies that the speaker has knowledge that the audience doesn't. So of course the speaker is going to claim those people are smart.
It is also not a good thing to presume that audience members are not asking questions simply to draw attention to themselves and to impress other audience members. People with awards are more probably than not to be smart, but they needed a lot of visibility to get those awards.
An important question would be to ask, "which non famous person is asking lots of questions, and is that person smart?" Since the author seems to define smart as having won awards and being well known in a field, this question fails immediately.
Personally, unless it is unpublished research, I can get most of my questions answered immediately by surfing along while listening and without disrupting the talk. It's also funny when I pull up wikipedia and it either turns out to have the same content as the talk, or directly contradicts the talk.
My father is a prof at a "top university" and in my family we were always encourage to ask questions and discuss issues. My friends grew up in similar households. But I don't think these were typical households. My perception is that in some Asian cultures the children are less likely to be encouraged to question than the environment that I grew up in. Also, many women are more shy than men and perhaps less likely to ask a question that was on their mind.
Regarding hiring decisions, the one thing I look for is whether people will argue with me or not. I look for the people that question and argue with passion.
A lot of people I've seen described as smart are either a) actually good at making money (not necessarily legally) or b) good at manipulating people to get what they want. I describe this as cunning, rather than smart. Although they may be smart, too -- but that's quite rare in my experience.
But, yes, smart people tend not take anything at face value or believe everything they are told by the media.
Going to institutions like Harvard is not in itself a measure of smart, necessarily. All it usually represents is a disposable income.
- don't use low-contrast text, which obfuscates their message
- have a comments section for feedback, rather than a 'reblogged' section for desperate popularity