School holds a seminar with a very famous and talented researcher in a field I care

>School holds a seminar with a very famous and talented researcher in a field I care
>Q&A session
>Undergrad keeps asking shit question like "Why should I do?" "What books do you recommend", i.e. shit you can google in 1 minute
>I prepared some relevant questions and raised my hand but no one noticed
REEEEEEEE

Rage more, faggot. This shit happens all the time.
>Go to lecture about multiverse theory
>It was in middle school so it was pop sci mostly but had some cool shit in it and the guy was a professor and shit
>at the end we could ask questions
>get in line
>le random XD tumblr girl in front of me asks overly complicated question that makes no sense, takes ten minutes
>"Well, that's all the time we have for questions."

Basically I don't know why you expected to be able to ask questions when this shit is so common place.

>Asian Science Man comes to my small, meh-tier uni
>does Q&A session with students before giving a talk
>I ask him if there's any current research into the role of dark matter in the formation of star systems
>he gives boilerplate response about dark matter being cool and poorly understood
>ask physicist friend about it afterwards, turns out dark matter is too diffuse to affect stuff on scales below that of galaxies
>turns out my question was pretty retarded actually
>mfw

I really hate it when the person who ask the questions do not even know what the fuck he is talking about.
It's like he didn't understand the material but pretend to do and ask questions, but everything came off unintelligible.

>Asian Science Man
Michio Kaku?

Shinichi Mochizuki

learn to raise your hand better.

It's not about reaction times, it's about preemptively raising your hand as the last question is winding down and raising your hand very energetically and quickly

Being on the other side of this is annoying as well.
>go to a conference, invited presentation
>kinda nervous because it's a big crowd and there are big names in the audience
>talk goes smoothly and I'm pretty sure I got my points across well and concisely
>question round
>some interesting questions and even good suggestions for follow up analyses
>enter student
>asks the most retarded question that is entirely unrelated to the presentation I just gave and the work that I do
>I don't wanna be an asshole and dismiss the question, so I try to humor the guy by speculating a little bit
>"well, that's a question we can't really answer with the present data set, but-"
>he interrupts me
>"why not"
>I'm actually at a loss for words, it's like asking why studying the gravitational pull of Jupiter doesn't tell us anything about if apples are tasty
>some minor rumbling of spaghetti in my pockets
>eventually I just tell him that his question doesn't have anything to do with the presentation, but if he'd like he can talk to me about it afterwards
>he still tries to push the question, but the session moderator steps in and gives someone else the floor
>rest of the questions are quite normal, but I'm still a bit thrown off by that whole ordeal
after the questions I bolted the fuck out of there, never saw the guy again

>mfw I'm one of only two people who asks questions with any sort of regularity (the other one being one of our old professors)

It's not like I'm hogging the floor, either. For some reason my colleagues generally don't care to ask question in seminar. It actually pisses off some of our professors that nobody asks questions. I guess they're just shy? Except I'm shy too and they're all pretty normie.

Can relate.
>when the person asking a question has such a thick accent that you have to ask what the fuck they are saying three times in a row, and eventually you just give up and make up a random answer

Yeah, I'm shy too and I was like you. I asked questions and engaged speakers all the time, especially when no one else in the room would ask anything. When someone gives a presentation (about anything), it's always important to think of one or two relevant questions you could ask them at the end. If for no other reason than to be polite. No one wants to give a 30-minute presentation only to be met with silence and blank stares at the end. If no one bothers to ask the speaker a question, then you should take it upon yourself to ask one yourself. Maybe pick a topic that you think the speaker would have really liked to have gotten into, but couldn't due to time constraints.

Good on you for engaging the speakers like that.

Also, I think "shyness" is generally not an immutable personality trait, but rather depends on context. Normies mostly like to talk about sports, office politics, and their plans for the weekend. I find this is true even in academia. So in a situation like a seminar Q&A, most of those people would rather not have a conversation about the topic at hand (they'd rather be talking about where they're going for lunch) so they remain quiet or text on their phones.

On the other hand, if you have unusual interests, then you will generally find normie conversation boring and you will probably act "shy" in such situations. But during a Q&A about a scientific topic that interests you, then you will be the opposite of shy.

My two cents.

just go up to him after the talk, you're likely to get a more detailed answer too, if they're good questions

Buzz came to my university a while ago, and all the questions he had the misfortune of answering were along the lines of
"how about those aliens?"
"i want to be an astronaut when i grow up" (someone's kid)
"[please repeat verbatim the ending of your presentation b/c we, the student council, are too fucking stupid to realize you answered this question]"
"what's your favorite book"
"[unintelligible foreign giberish]"
"Can I take a selfie with you?" (yes, that was asked in the QA section)

His talk was more about his experience as an astronaut than a technical lecture, so I wanted to ask him whether he supported going to mars, or setting up a permanent base on the moon.
but no, we only got retarded normies and foreigners

Michio Kaku
he's a bretty cool guy desu senpai

You are supposed to find them after the lecture and ask them some real questions, offer to buy them some lunch or coffee or something to discuss their ideas. Most people love to talk about themselves.

Sometimes people just don't give a fuck, esp. after they've done this for years and are just going to the seminar because it's their student/associate's student/have to keep up appearances/are some department head and have to keep up a good example.

>>I ask him if there's any current research into the role of dark matter in the formation of star systems
You kinda deserved that answer. What else did you expect him to say?

>allowing yourself to get trolled in real life
Dude..

Regardless some people just ask questions in lectures because it's the only time 60+ people pay attention to them.

>multiverse theory
>expecting anything except pop-sci

You're joking, correct? Not being able to ask a scientist about a non-falsifiable, non-verifiable hypothesis that can never tell us anything about reality, is what you think constitutes the condescending nature of this comment?

.

>you weren't there
shut the fuck up Ken Ham I swear to God if you say "historical science" one more time I'll fookin stik ya

fuckin rekt

Multiverse theory is Ken Ham-Teir science.