Answering questions is not only a great way to satisfy another person’s curiosity, it’s also a great way to refine your own thinking. They say you don’t really understand something unless you can explain it to someone else, so answering someone else’s questions about a topic is a great way to practice your own understanding.
Along the way, that understanding is bound to change. Your willingness to ask questions is an indicator of your own intellectual curiosity, but so is your willingness to answer them. And I mean answer actual, asked questions – not just proselytize at strawmen.
The corollary to that is that if someone holds a position that they’re unwilling to be questioned about, chances are high that they’re intellectually unserious about it. They either don’t understand it or don’t really believe it – maybe both. “It’s not my job to educate you” might be true, but it also indicates that you couldn’t if you tried.
So for every position, a good test of your own intellectual commitment is to always be willing to either ask questions about it or answer them. If you’re unwilling to do either, then that’s not an intellectual position – it’s a bias.
The Opportunity Machine 