[floxy]

I'm going out on a limb and say that pretty much all human cultures are guess cultures. What if every woman was sexually propositioned thousands of times per day? Maybe I should ask every person I ever see if they'll give me $1,000, maybe some will say yes. And then I'll expand my horizons, since my normal day routine doesn't take me by enough potential benefactors. Spam is essentially an ask-culture failure.

[nkrisc]

I’m an asker, but I’m not going to waste my day asking everyone for $1,000 because I know it’s unlikely anyone will.

“Asking” is for things you don’t already know the answer to, and “no” or “I don’t know” are acceptable answers.

[floxy]

>I know it’s unlikely

That sounds like something a guesser would say. I'm only going to ask for something I'm already likely to get (going back to the original MetaFilter thread).

[helpful-guy]

As mentioned in the article, it's a spectrum, not a dichotomy. What you're describing seems to be on the very extreme end of ask culture.

[Supermancho]

Indeed. Most of human social interactions, throughout a lifetime, are non-verbal. That does not mean it's the most efficient or socially expedient way to communicate. I would say that it has a larger domain of communication failure states than direct questioning. Perhaps that's part of why language has persisted and supersedes non-verbal communication in most social domains.