“I’m not going to educate you” - obnoxious or legit?

Are they sealion-ing? Are they asking for information that is relatively uncontroversial/nonpartisan and available via some casual websearching? Do they, because of who initiated the conversation or is making the extraordinary claims, have the burden of proof much more than I do?

 
Right, exactly. In the context of a Twitter or forum thread, that kind of urgency is unlikely. (In fact, in the case of medical care, that kind of urgency probably doesn't happen as often as it does in tv shows, which make every situation as critical as possible, for the sake of drama.)

well i mentioned stroke because its one of those things that can absolutely be time sensitive. to the extent that failures by staff that moves patients or poor/inadequate communication of information to the doctor can and does cost people lives or serious harm. but yeah, most conditions aren't like that, not even all strokes.

for twitter, i suspect this is more along the lines of my complaint wrt strategy help threads. if you see the same question or statement five times, ten times, etc and it's low effort/doesn't appear to respect others' time, you can get rude responses like this. it's kind of generally obnoxious, but whether the question itself or the answer is more obnoxious depends on context.

let me give you the example that came to mind which prompted my first post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/search/?q=good division template&restrict_sr=1&sr_nsfw=

"is this a good division template?"

this question (or a variant of it asking what one is) is so common that it's stupid. the correct answer in that game is to learn what stats do, evaluate the tradeoffs of putting different things in the division, and then optimize them for some purpose. quick glance suggests that < 10% of these threads even specify what they're trying to accomplish with a particular division.

that means that 90% of the players asking this question are not only asking a wrong question, they are also putting in virtually no effort at improving, requesting the same thing hundreds of people before them have requested, won't understand how to distinguish between good and bad advice they get in response, and had the best answer to their question available years ago a quick search away.

i've long since stopped being surprised by it, but it's still kind of amazing in a way.

so now people there have seen a variant of this question dozens of times. they've seen inaccurate answers repeated about it, also dozens of times. perhaps pointing out that it's not worth answering is obnoxious. but you know what? so was the question, and more so. if players actually want help, actually want to improve, it is reasonable to expect of them at least semi-comparable effort to accurate answers.

if someone doesn't try when asking the question, why should anybody try in answering it? i extend this question both to gaming, and to topics outside of it.
 
If somebody's being a jerk and is ignoring points I am making, but they continue asking questions in a roundabout way in a "gotcha" kind of way, then yeah, I might very well tell them that I'm not going to answer any more of their questions, and they can educate themselves on this subject if they ever want to hold a civilized conversation about it. But that's kind of a last resort.

If somebody says that in the middle of a normal civilized exchange of ideas, then they are being the douche.

I mean, I'd generally agree but with the caveat that numbers and frequency really, really, really do matter. If you're the thirty second person asking them to spend time and effort educating you today, they actually are pretty justified to refuse to educate you, because how many hours of their weeks can we reasonably ask a person to educate others without paying them for it?

And that's where it gets hard to judge, because the people asking and bystanders probably don't see the numbers (and keep in mind, those numbers include questions in real life, not just online, let alone just on twitter). They only see their own (very reasonable) question, not that it's part of a (very unreasonable) mass of collected questions.
 
I mean, I'd generally agree but with the caveat that numbers and frequency really, really, really do matter. If you're the thirty second person asking them to spend time and effort educating you today, they actually are pretty justified to refuse to educate you, because how many hours of their weeks can we reasonably ask a person to educate others without paying them for it?

And that's where it gets hard to judge, because the people asking and bystanders probably don't see the numbers (and keep in mind, those numbers include questions in real life, not just online, let alone just on twitter). They only see their own (very reasonable) question, not that it's part of a (very unreasonable) mass of collected questions.
Which, funnily enough, is exactly the kind of scenario Twitter promotes by design. Because user interactions are money, regardless if they're good, bad, or terrible :)
 
So you can't imagine a scenario in which an expert in a complex and demanding field says "this is your best option, it's very complicated to explain why it's the best option, and you don't have the educational foundation to really understand it"? No, doctors aren't just there to do the procedure, they're also there to tell us what the best course of action is, when the choices and consequences are beyond our own understanding. Same with a lot of professions. Mechanics and plumbers aren't just people who've invested in buying tools, they're also experts.
Some doctors really are arrogant jerks. I dealt with a couple of them during my hospitalization in '19. And some nurses are clueless - they'd bring me stacks of printouts to read, ignoring me when I'd keep telling them that I had cataracts and couldn't read anything that small. They'd offer to turn the light up, not understanding that light wasn't the problem. I told them to give me the web address where they got the material (I had my computer with me) and I could look it up and magnify the page to the print size I needed.

But a doctor who snarked at me for drinking milk - which was on my daily breakfast menu there - and told me to drink coffee instead... I can't fathom it. When I saw my regular doctor, I said, "Please make sure it's your name on my future prescriptions, not hers, because she's an idiot and I don't trust her." My doctor just laughed and agreed to make the change.

If a medical professional has a patient who wants to understand something but can't, it's up to him/her to find a way to explain it, or find someone else to explain it. There were times when they'd go overboard one way or another with me, and in some cases I'd tell them, I've got high school biology that was 40 years ago and don't speak 6-syllable medical terms. My grade 12 teacher was crap at explaining some stuff, so you need to find a medium between too hard and assuming I'm stupid. The nurse who was trying to teach me how to inject insulin wasn't allowing for the fact that there really are people who panic over deliberately putting sharp things into ourselves. She got snarky and rude and said I should move to a nursing home, I complained, and they finally found someone much more patient.


To answer this question in general: It's something I've been tempted to say on the YT channels when someone asks me the umpteenth time to explain why it's not faithful to the Dune novel to make Liet-Kynes female (NOT wanting to get into that here - it's just an example and we do have another thread to argue the point). They ask that when I just stated the reasons in my previous post, which they can easily see by scrolling upward an inch or so.

So "RTFB" is a valid response when people are being willfully obtuse and you've made a good-faith (and polite) attempt to explain whatever and they just keep on being obnoxious to the point that it's like talking to a 4-year-old who keeps asking "Why?"

That said - and I've mentioned this here - when I ask a question on the forum, it's not "rhetorical." It's because I really want to know the answer, and the best way to get me to stop asking is to actually make a good-faith attempt to answer. If it's something personal, a polite "I'd rather not say" is fine.
 
I mean, I'd generally agree but with the caveat that numbers and frequency really, really, really do matter. If you're the thirty second person asking them to spend time and effort educating you today, they actually are pretty justified to refuse to educate you, because how many hours of their weeks can we reasonably ask a person to educate others without paying them for it?

And that's where it gets hard to judge, because the people asking and bystanders probably don't see the numbers (and keep in mind, those numbers include questions in real life, not just online, let alone just on twitter). They only see their own (very reasonable) question, not that it's part of a (very unreasonable) mass of collected questions.

It doesn’t even have to be the 32nd time that day the question’s been asked. It could be the first time of the day, and it could be a question with an extremely simple, straightforward answer, but it may also be the case that I know from past experience that answering this question is not actually going to be 5 seconds delivering the answer with polite acceptance, but rather a half hour or more of what amounts to a dissertation defense with citations and symbolic logic diagrams, all the while having to manage the very fragile emotions of the asker while being constantly bombarded with earnest-but-subtly-transphobic remarks without blowing up or giving them the excuse to reject out of hand my answer simply because I’m the one giving it.

Yes it’s rude, yes it’s unhelpful if my goal is to convince you of the truth of my lived experience, but often I’m tired and I don’t have the mental or emotional energy necessary to hold someone’s hand while enduring every dumbass “novel insight” I’ve heard a thousand times while trying to get them to understand a concept about gender that I’ve known since I was ten years old. Usually it’s much easier (and better for my mental health) to say it’s not my job and move on.
 
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I mean, I'd generally agree but with the caveat that numbers and frequency really, really, really do matter. If you're the thirty second person asking them to spend time and effort educating you today, they actually are pretty justified to refuse to educate you, because how many hours of their weeks can we reasonably ask a person to educate others without paying them for it?

And that's where it gets hard to judge, because the people asking and bystanders probably don't see the numbers (and keep in mind, those numbers include questions in real life, not just online, let alone just on twitter). They only see their own (very reasonable) question, not that it's part of a (very unreasonable) mass of collected questions.

A follow-on to Eie's excellent point (edit: and schlaufuchs ninja'ed me and says it better anyway): it makes a difference as to whether the education requested is fairly clinical, like how to do something or history of this or that, or something with substantial emotional investment on the part of the educator (and usually not the student). "Educate me on how transgender people figure out they're transgender", as an example. "Why do some trans folk want surgery but others don't" for another. Providing an education in the latter cases mostly overlaps with defending one's existence, and that gets emotionally exhausting very quickly.
 
"I'm not going to educate you" is, in every case, the simple truth.
 
I recently played through the Dark Souls trilogy and whenever I'd look up advice on a boss or something, there'd be a number of replies that were just "git gud". Sounds like a similar phenomenon where people would rather be smugly dismissive than actually help
 
Are they sealion-ing? Are they asking for information that is relatively uncontroversial/nonpartisan and available via some casual websearching? Do they, because of who initiated the conversation or is making the extraordinary claims, have the burden of proof much more than I do?


Hey, the sea lion sounds exactly like some people close by.

I recently played through the Dark Souls trilogy and whenever I'd look up advice on a boss or something, there'd be a number of replies that were just "git gud". Sounds like a similar phenomenon where people would rather be smugly dismissive than actually help

Maybe that's because there are already plenty of guides and similar discussions. Unless you were asking in the early days.
 
Maybe that's because there are already plenty of guides and similar discussions. Unless you were asking in the early days.
I wasn't making new threads or anything; I had no problem looking up pre-existing guides. Either way, just telling people to "git gud" contributes nothing to a discussion
 
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In the case of Dark Souls, the git gud response is in invitation into the community.
 
Maybe that's because there are already plenty of guides and similar discussions. Unless you were asking in the early days.

i think rather than impatience, a lot of those responses in that context are a more simple, basic/deliberate troll. though the history there is a bit interesting, and there's a kernal of truth in that anything in the series can be dodged indefinitely with though practice.

Hey, the sea lion sounds exactly like some people close by.

i know right, who comes to mind depends on who reads it, too. funny how that works. though sometimes, "unwilling to have a reasoned discussion" is a proxy for saying something else due to rules.

should be fun to replace "sea lion" with skin color though.
 
So you can't imagine a scenario in which an expert in a complex and demanding field says "this is your best option, it's very complicated to explain why it's the best option, and you don't have the educational foundation to really understand it"?

Not really, no. In medicine, a physician should be able to say, "This is the option that has the best outcomes, and we know because we've studied it." "Do it because I'm a doctor" doesn't really cut it for me. In other fields, if you can't explain it, I don't trust that you understand it.

No, doctors aren't just there to do the procedure, they're also there to tell us what the best course of action is, when the choices and consequences are beyond our own understanding.
I don't believe that medical choices and consequences are beyond the understanding of ordinary people. I do see a lot of physicians who don't want to tell people what their options are and who refuse to provide data about outcomes for differing choices.
Same with a lot of professions. Mechanics and plumbers aren't just people who've invested in buying tools, they're also experts.
Exactly, and experts who can't explain why they recommend something are doing a lousy job. When my mechanic says something is broken and needs to be replaced, I expect that they can show me that it is broken. When the plumber says it needs to be plumbed in a particular way, they should be able to tell me why. I'll accept "this is the building code" but not "it's upside down."
 
This thread reminds me of an infamous video with Feynman, the known physicist. He was annoyed with an interviewer so didn't answer a question - or rather answered by making it very clear the interviewer lacks any knowledge to appreciate any answer. Feynman would react like this from time to time, going from other videos (eg a lecture series on quantum mechanics and a - in that case - rather not very polite insistence by a student about something).

Anyway, it's not like you need a specific person to help you understand something. If one doesn't, try someone else. Or read it yourself.
 
And then there are the folks who have no interest in knowing what is true; they are quite happy in their cocoon of misinformation.
 
There is hardly enough time to live ones' own life, much less live for everyone elses.

If I'm going to educate someone for an hour it better be worth it.


...YouTube help videos really shine here because the same question really does get answered thousands of times, and the creator gets paid for every viewing.
 
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I mean, I'd generally agree but with the caveat that numbers and frequency really, really, really do matter. If you're the thirty second person asking them to spend time and effort educating you today, they actually are pretty justified to refuse to educate you, because how many hours of their weeks can we reasonably ask a person to educate others without paying them for it?

And that's where it gets hard to judge, because the people asking and bystanders probably don't see the numbers (and keep in mind, those numbers include questions in real life, not just online, let alone just on twitter). They only see their own (very reasonable) question, not that it's part of a (very unreasonable) mass of collected questions.

It definitely depends on the situation. I was pretty much assuming the 2 most common scenarios in my answer and basically ignoring the one you just outlined and all the other potentials I guess.
 
The last time anyone thanked me for teaching them something they hadn't already known was last week, when I told them that Michael Ansara had played a Klingon named Kang on three different Star Trek series (TOS, DS9, and Voyager). He was an Ansara fan and hadn't known this.
 
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