Hacker News Reader

Comment by ktpsns | Hacker News Reader

There is a famous quote assigned to Goethe in German, which roughly says »A fool can ask more questions then 7 wise men can answer«. The internet just increased the visibility of fools. Let's ensure wise men don't stop to share their wisedom, because that's what participative education is all about.

View on HN

There's also a saying in Romanian which roughly translated (by me) goes something like this: "A fool throws a stone in the lake which then ten wise men people struggle to get out".

According to his son, Willam F Buckley use to say: “Never fence with an amateur, he’ll kill you.”

That’s cool to know, we have almost the exact saying in Turkish, but ours include a “well” instead of a “lake”.

For those interested in / learning German: https://www.dict.cc/german-english/Ein+Narr+kann+mehr+Fragen...

Not sure about the original source though. A quick Google comes up with either German, Italian or even Lenin, with varying numbers of wise men.

This compendium of idioms from 1925 mentions it dates to the middle ages[1] – but without any details.

As an aside, I came across Proverbs 18:2, which I rather like: "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion" (or, somewhat more poetic in KJV: "A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself").

[1]: In Dutch: https://dbnl.org/tekst/stoe002nede01_01/stoe002nede01_01_062...

For those who are German or otherwise and learning English, the following two phrases are not the same (they have opposite meanings):

1. Let's ensure wise men don't stop to share their wisdom

2. Let's ensure wise men don't stop sharing their wisdom

If you say, "don't stop to do X," that means (roughly), "don't do X." In other words, #1 means the same thing as, "Let's ensure wise men don't share their wisdom." #2 is the one you want. If the amount of multiple negatives is confusing, omit them completely and say, "Let's ensure wise men keep sharing their wisdom."

Your explanation is a bit confusing, although correct. I believe this person here [1] explains it better, with more examples. The key is to “stop thinking” of these two structures as similar to each other: They're not.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-stop-do...

A form of denial of service (DoS) against spreading knowledge: flood the system with 'requests'.

Torriano's A common place of Italian proverbs and proverbial phrases from 1666 has "One fool may ask more than seven wise men can answer". So it's probably very old.

So Goethe was off by 3? :-)

(Disclaimer: I own the complete edition, so not meant as an offense.)

Coincidentally Hindu mythology also has 7 wise sages.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com