I heard a great quote once, the speaker I can’t remember, but it went like this:
“If you ask a question, you’re ignorant once. If you never ask a question, you’re ignorant forever.”
Say you are sitting in a talk, and you’re not following something. If you have been paying attention to something, have a reasonable background understanding*, and you find yourself confused, ask for clarification. Almost certainly someone else in the room has the exact same question but without the courage to ask.
* A reasonable understanding is subjective, and can lead to being intimidated to ask, but I think these are a few reasonable litmus tests:
- I followed most of the talk, but this didn’t make sense
- I’ve followed other talks in this area, but not this one Additionally, if none of the talk made sense at all, there’s a good chance it’s just a bad talk 🤫. I’ve found a lot of the PhD process has just been realizing that english is far more important to research than the research often is (if you can’t clearly communicate your ideas, they’re worthless) and lots of other people can’t communicate their ideas well. Overall, if you were interested in a talk based on the abstract, other presentations the speaker gave, the work’s applications, etc., you probably have sufficient background.
Don’t ask a ton of questions and dominate the presentation, though. If you find yourself asking more than 3 questions during the presentation, it’s possible your background understanding was over-estimated or the speaker really is just not giving a good presentation and you should just ask for lots of clarifications after the talk. Don’t be ashamed you asked 3 questions, be glad you’re 3 questions more intelligent than you were before asking. Speakers are there to benefit you and sell their ideas; if you don’t understand they are accomplishing neither of their 2 simple goals.
There are also ways of asking questions better and worse. Ideally your question should state exactly what you didn’t understand, why you think it’s important (if it’s not an obvious clarification), and often what you thought it meant/implied so the speaker has a sense of where/why you’re asking; among other details.