I remember listening to this Freakonomics episode [1] on the phrase.

It covers a variety of times people might use it. Sometimes it's genuine, other times it's flattery. Some people use it all the time (and in the episode they talk about calling someone on it). One guest says it's a bridge, to go from the question asked to the question you want to answer instead.

I don't see it in this transcript, but I also thought I remembered hearing/reading that it can be a sign the speaker doesn't know the answer offhand, and needs to consider the question to formulate their answer. I think I'd classify that as a genuine usage: the question is something the speaker hasn't considered before, and thinks is worthy of consideration.

[1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/thats-a-great-question-rebr...

That's a great question! Ahem.

I remember being advised to do this ~20 years ago when I was going to be answering questions from a group of people. I was told that it's good practice to say something like "that's a great question" every time someone asks anything, as a form of social lubrication, to encourage others to ask questions. I can't say whether it works, and it was advice for a spoken context rather than written, but I don't know how to finish this sentence.

In a spoken Q&A setting opening every single response with "that's a great question" or "thanks for asking that" or whatever is pretty common as a way to fill a few seconds while you think about your response. This is obviously unnecessary on slack.

Well before the LLM explosion I would often preface my answers with some form of praise for the question. It depends a lot on audience of course, but it’s amazing how many people tend to perceive direct answers to their questions as negative… and just as amazing how far a little strategic sycophancy goes to temper that. Even though everyone knows it’s half-sincere dead weight.

It might be a difference in culture, but I definitely remember people saying you should say stuffs like that to encourage others to ask more questions. The rationale is if you are in a more powerful or senior position, like a college professor vs a student, other may be not feel comfortable asking questions because they fear appearing dumb or inappropriate and it hampers communication.

I would probably reply with "that is a great question" only as a euphemism for "I don't know"

I have only heard this phrase in american tv shows and movies

And worse, you use it so much that when the question is actually great, you can’t convey that convincingly anymore.

I didn't, but then I watched SICP and the guy kept saying it to utterly dumb questions.

And then, somehow, he kept turning the dumb question into a deep and insightful one.

So I've adopted that technique but if I say "that's a great question" think for a while and come up with nothing, it's probably a moronic question. I'm not perfect.

work at a crown corp and you'd change your stance on above...

Could add a <vitriol> tag to that - but yes, if that was auto assigned by LLM - i could see that.

Could even add a "Autistism" filter, preventing conversation digressing, filtering out only points that stay on topic and only the <summary>, that way.

Hah, can we do that for recipes next?

When a person expands bullet points they add extra information from their own knowledge and research in the process of writing. When AI does it, it adds filler and repetition.

Long form writing itself isn't a problem, it's the empty fake long form we have now.

Sorry for the long response, I didn't have time to write a short one.

But this should not be an excuse applicable to an LLM.

Speaking as a random internet stranger, it depends entirely on context.

Sending me a message saying "Hi, I'm getting a Frobnizzle not found error" is a waste of both our time. Explain what you're doing so that I can reproduce it, even if it takes a few paragraphs. Maybe send me your user ID so I can check our logs. I don't care if you're declaring "these are the facts" because the facts are what I need to help you.

If it's a massive wall of text with a defensive tone during a discussion, yeah, sure, that's bad. Do you work somewhere where that's common?

Some people, like me, have developed this communication style because it turned out that when they didn't they were very often misunderstood. When properly applied (i.e., not excessively, no actual walls of text), giving appropriate context helps focus the thinking of the receiver in the right direction.

> It's much harder to have a proper back and forth with a firehouse than it is a few sentences at a time.

Sometimes, a back-and-forth is not needed, and the entire response is necessary for someone to understand to interact with.

This is when I open up a text editor, draft it, and paste that into Slack.

> It declares authority "these are the facts" rather than "let's discuss ideas" and if you haven't fully earned that authority it honestly just kind of smells of insecurity.

Not at all.

1. Someone is coming to me with the question. They're doing so because either the question is about my area of ownership and I have that authority or because I'm a subject-matter expert and I have that authority.

2. I don't know what the other person knows around the edges of the domain that the question is in, I don't know if they understand the constraints of the domain nor do I know what constraints their specific problem has.

3. Often the answers to any actually decent question at work are fairly nuanced, and to understand the nuance you need at least a level set of context.

It's a lot more dismissive and rude to answer with excessive brevity if you treat the question in good faith. For simple questions, sure I don't need to write an essay. Some questions I answer with "Got 10 minutes so we can chat about this?" because it just needs a conversation. Or I answer with questions of my own. But if the question is well-formed, answering it starts with providing the necessary context to understand my answer so we're on an even playing field and we can effectively communicate ideas.

How long have you been at it? Because some of us grew up writing letters with pen and paper, sending them to people in the mail, and getting something back a week or two later. You just have to actually sit down and READ closely what people are saying, sometimes multiple times, to make sure you are clearly understanding what they’re saying rather than skimming everything you encounter for information to extract.

It is actually quite easy to communicate a problem in the middle of a wall of text. You simply refer to the phrase and then explain why it doesn’t hold. It is also fine to simply present your perspective to people without invitations to “discuss ideas.” You can open a discussion if you want, but if I’m telling you something then you can rest assured that those are the things I believe to be true, and if I am uncertain about any conclusions I will include caveats to indicate uncertainty. You have free will and are perfectly capable of taking or leaving anything being said to you.

> It's much harder to have a proper back and forth with a firehouse than it is a few sentences at a time.

Sometimes just providing the context about an issue is itself enough to warrant a few paragraphs, let alone a few sentences.

Obviously, it's best to express a problem, its options, and its recommended solution(s) in as few words as possible, but it's unwarranted to hold an absolute position that every discussion must be an inefficient exchange of mere sentences at a time.

I'd rather have an outline-style essay given to me in one go for me to digest and research async rather than be subjected to a barrage of back-and-forth pings. That's the real disrespect of other people's time.

The next step is to not talk with each other at all.

Just have a LLM that "knows you well" in all your position argue by points and values assigned to the points with the LLM of the opposition.

If value alignment exists, a actual conversation may be engaged.