Re:Leonardo Da Vinci’s To Do List (circa 1490)
by vidarh on Friday December 16, 2016 @10:39AM
(#13193958)
> These days asking questions of an expert usually gets you a response of JFGI
To me it seems that most people I ask questions of are happy to respond. But the key thing being that the ease of asking people questions means that you need to ask people questions they haven't heard a thousand times and written a book about. And that you can easily answer with Google.
It's lazy ad insulting if you e-mail and ask something you'd find a whole article about on the persons site, for example, because it implies you couldn't be bothered to even see they've already written about the subject, and don't respect their time.
But if you ask about the finer points of something they've written, on the other hand, they are more likely to be flattered, intrigued or at least willing to point you in the right direction.
Having said that, learning has ALWAYS involved a lot of solitude and independent research - it's just that "levelling up" used to REQUIRE asking other people for advice, input and tips, whereas with the Internet it's practically expected for people to never ask for help.
Basically, back in the old days, a novice asking "explain this to me" was met with "ah! a fellow academic! how rare! OK here's how it is" whereas today it's met with "google exists for a reason".
Humans beings are motivated by social stimuli