Is There Any Such Thing As a ‘Stupid Question’?

Have you ever heard someone say,” That’s a stupid question!”? I hear this now and then, and it always makes me wonder. Often, I ask myself, or the person who asked it in the first place, “Is it, really?” It usually leads to a challenging response, and a heated discussion follows.

I ask myself and others all sorts of questions. And the more questions I ask, the more often some get flagged as stupid questions. At one point, I started wondering what makes people think that a question is stupid and say that out loud. And that’s exactly what prompted me to write this article.

This essay is supported by Generatebg

People Often Confuse an Elementary Question with a Stupid Question

My dad once told a story about when he met a professor who was flying overseas to get employed as an ex-pat there. My dad was curious about how far the professor’s destination was from where they were at that point in time. The professor had just laughed arrogantly and rolled his eyes.

Something worse than the remark,” That’s a stupid question!” had happened here. The professor did not even feel the need to answer the question and behaved in an utterly dismissive manner. Lack of respect for the question and the person asking the question – if you will.

My dad was confused and was genuinely curious about the physical distance between the two locations (in kilometres) on Earth. However, the professor had felt that the question was so fundamental that he was not entitled to answer it, or that it was way below his league. My dad just ended up feeling pity for the professor who he thought did not share his curiosity.

Elementary Questions Challenge Fundamental Understanding

Some of the most elementary questions turn out to be the hardest, regardless of the field. I find it remarkable how time and again, I come across established professionals and ‘experts’ who have shaky fundamentals.

My intention is not to shame anyone, including people with shaky fundamentals. But people who accept their mistakes and lack of knowledge (which includes all of us) tend to learn faster and contribute more productively to society. Curiosity is what drives us. And curious questions need to be encouraged, not discouraged.

Thinking Beyond Elementary Questions

Beyond elementary questions, there could be a variety of questions ranging from rhetorical questions to downright obvious questions (the questions that everyone knows that no one is likely to answer). Regardless, it is unclear to me, if not impossible, that a question can be deemed “stupid”.

For a question to be objectively deemed “stupid”, every human being faced with the question should deem it stupid. When I mean every human being, I mean “all” of humanity, and not “the majority” of human beings. There have been many an occasion where one individual was ridiculed by an entire society for asking certain “stupid” questions. Later on, this one individual went on to make a remarkable contribution to humanity because they chose to ask the counter-intuitive “stupid” sounding question.

I am fully aware that it might be impossible for ALL of humanity to agree on something like the stupidity of a question. This is precisely why it is unclear to me that objectively stupid questions exist at all!

Cue in Insecurity, Contempt, Arrogance, etc.

It turns out that when someone says,” That’s a stupid question!”, the person is probably hurting from some form of negative emotion. The act of terming the question “stupid” is the person likely trying to protect themselves or their beliefs. It could be caused by insecurity rooted to weak fundamentals, or strong beliefs from deep idealisms, etc.

Regardless of what causes it, the behaviour indicates a closed mindset on the part of the person. Carol Dweck, a renowned Psychologist, in her seminal work on an open growth mindset, demonstrated what sort of a difference having an open mindset brings to one’s life. If one could take a single message out of her life’s work, it is to practice an open ‘growth’ mindset.

Is There Any Such Thing as a Stupid Question?

We at The Walking Temple aim to answer humanity’s most curious questions, one step at a time. For us, there exists no stupid question. We are willing to come across as being ignorant or stupid in order to quench our curiosity.

Curiosity is what drives us. We invite all fellow curious minds to share this journey with us. While we are answering all sorts of questions, from the social to the scientific, the seemingly simple to the most complex, the seemingly banal to the most meaningful, we might as well do it together!

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