Qualitative analysis had always been broad and hollow, and terribly boring."
"But since you asked, as far as your question was concerned... if someone asked a stupid question, you had only two possible reactions: answer or not answer."
"There were also two ways to answer: seriously or perfunctorily."
"If you answered seriously, you lost... Anyone who took a stupid question seriously was most likely a fool."
"If you answered perfunctorily, people might think you couldn't even answer a stupid question properly. Naturally, that would make you worse than a fool."
"Likewise, there were two ways not to answer. You either didn't know the answer, or stayed silent because you didn't want to bother with it. The former was the same as above: anyone who couldn't even give the answer to a stupid question was naturally a complete idiot. The latter was slightly smarter, but only slightly. After all, how smart could someone who sat around chatting with fools really be?"
Xiao Xiao's complicated, roundabout explanation made Zheng Qing roll his eyes. But in the end, he understood Xiao Xiao's unspoken meaning.
"Oh, so no matter what I say, I'm still a fool?" The young publicly funded student set down his quill and rolled up the graph paper on the desk. He glared at Xiao Xiao in annoyance. "If one person acts foolishly, what does it have to do with anyone else?"
"What if I give him an even stupider answer?" Fatty Xin, who was chewing on a preserved plum nearby, eagerly joined his roommates' conversation. "...Then my answer can help him go even farther down the road of stupidity."
Zheng Qing looked at the fatty incredulously.
"I thought you were a good person," he said in a shocked tone.
"To smart people, I'm a good person." Fatty Xin used his