Ask Lemmy

If it's not important enough to explain accurately why do you care what they answer? It's not important.

Say the incorrect answer out loud. People are quicker to correct someone than to share knowledge.

Yes, it's an art hard to master, but you'll almost always have to put up with some amount of extra information. You must give some explanation, story or something so they don't feel the need to add nuance and detail to their answers.

Depending on the topic might not be possible, though.

In short, the less talking you want them to do the more talking you'll probably have to do.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Is it that you want a short answer but the question takes too long to form? Or that you take too long to answer questions that should only need a short answer? Or a third option?

Personally I don't mind long answers or long questions, as I very much ramble on when answering questions myself... Unless it's instructions - then I want them as short and direct as possible, with as little "flavour" (descriptions of visual elements etc) as possible, and at most two steps or preferably written form so I can refer back to it when I inevitably forget the next step.

Unless you know that person should have the knowledge - no it's not possible.

Very few people are coded to give straight and short answers. We tend to wander around a topic, and the more specific info you need - you need to give a more specific question.

Nowadays it is easier with the AIs - you can learn how to ask pointed questions and request links to the source - to cut down llm bs.

Autisms daily struggle of finding the correct level to start on, without going too in depth or without being so blunt it hurts.

How can one know?

Well, people are people. It might be unpleasant and rude to systemically browse people, especially if you need to interrupt and clarify your prompts, basically treating them like chatbots.

The way I see it, you should differiante how you approach human and inhuman sources. Information from people have a lot of advantages, too. You might get your target information quickly without any "bloat" from e.g. an encyclopedia article. However you might lose a lot of key information. A person forces you into an interactive bi-directional conversation. They will get information from you and more likely add additional information you need.

For example you might get the commonly accepted translation of an ancient poem from an article. A human can give you that, too, but if they notice that you are absolutely not familiar with the subject, they might also clarify that a literal translation is not possible, that you need the context of this historical event and so on. In a inhuman source you might have skipped that information. This is how some people may use a trusted source, but still leave with fake news, because the extracted information is incomplete.

It is outright impossible to make them all as smart as you already are.

So: forget it. Decide whether you want to work together with such un-perfect beings or just let it all be.