"I don't know"

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Does anybody else have this habit of responding "I don't know" to almost any question? It's like my knee-jerk reaction whenever somebody asks me a question, and then sometimes a little while later, I'll think about it and be like "Wait.. I do know.." but then it's usually too late. Maybe it's just habit because most of the time I DON'T know, or am wrong when I think I know. I'll almost never guess or say what I think something is unless I'm sure.
I especially hate when people try to make me guess at things they know the answers to, and are going to tell me anyways. It seems like the whole point is to make me feel stupid when I answer wrong. Then they're not actually asking me anything, they're just making me uncomfortable before they tell me, and usually then they get to rub it in my face that they knew something I didn't anyways.
It's like, no matter what, I'm never going to be able to correctly answer any question that isn't multiple-choice.

I do that all the time. Asking me a question might go something like this...

"So where do you want to eat?"

-"I don't know."

"What do you want to eat?"

-"I don't know."

"Are you even hungry?"

-"I don't know."

I'm just not good at communicating what I want or feel and hate making decisions.

I'm pretty good at trivia questions though since I usually know the answer anyways.

Lol, yea, I do that too.. but it's different than the times when someone asks me a question that I do know the answer to, but I'm so flustered by the question that I say I don't know anyway. I don't like being asked questions.

same with me i cant answer unless i know for sure.

i don't know......but what you think?

I had a little break-through of understanding on this a couple of days ago.

I always thought of question-answer situations as being knowledge based. Otherwise they would be ignorance based. Stochastic estimates are knowledge based, but intuition and opinion are different. I tend to dismiss intuition, but it's actually the result of an efficient social processing part of the NT brain that I don't really have.

Most NT Q/A interaction is social, and not about the information.

I totally relate to Jacoby's dining quandary. I enjoy good food, as opposed to bad food, and am even a pretty good cook, but I don't feel hunger, other than as information, and don't care what type of food I eat, or where, except in practical terms. I don't want to go somewhere noisy, or hard to get to, for example.

"But what do you WANT?" people always ask. Whirled peas.

I DO THIS ALL THE FREAKING TIME!

A lot of the time i just don't want to seem selfish or uncooperative, so i try to go with whatever the other person wants. This is especially true if i'm out doing anything with a friend.. It's so rare that i actually go "hang out" with a friend, that i'm pretty much just do whatever they want. I think it's just me attempting to be really nice to compensate for not being very socially skilled. Hell, i usually offer to pay for things just because i'm so thrilled that someone is opting to actually do something with me(in fact.. i'd say i'm EXTREMELY easy to get along with for this reason.. people just have to put up with certain eccentricities and inabilities) A lot of the time i'll try to bribe my sister into going shopping with me or something by offering to buy her lunch at wherever she wants to go, even. But, yeah, a lot of the time i do it around my family.. Usually when they ask, i haven't really been thinking about it, so i don't have an idea in my head. And then sometimes, when i really do know, it just comes out at a habit.. Especially when i'm concentrating on something else at the time, and don't feel like bothering to think about whatever it is.

My GF called me Button-Bright one time, because the (Wizard of) Oz character always says "Don't know."

Yup.

And I used to over-apologize a ton. My wife kicked me of that habit.

I noticed the "I dunno" mantra in myself as a teen. No telling how long I'd been doing it before I realized HOW MUCH I was doing it. I also noticed it in Raymond Babbit the first time I saw Rainman - another clue, along with constant stimming that made me suspect a touch of the Autiz long before I heard about AS.

I think it's an avoidance mechanism. Either to avoid potential conflict with the asker, who I suspect must already have a preferred answer, and expect me to know what it is - OR, to avoid getting caught up in one of those endless loop arguments inside my own head that occur when I'm expected to make a choice between multiple options, all of seemingly equal value. I suck at making quick decisions and if I genuinely have no preference, any choice I make seems like it might be wrong.

As for the apology thing, though - if I inadvertently bump into someone, or inconvenience them in some way unintentionally, an apology is usually automatic. In an argument, however, I wouldn't take the position I do if I weren't already convinced beyond a doubt that I was right. You want an apology in that case, you'll have to put a gun to my head, and that probably won't work, either.

I do that if someone's asking me for a decision or a preference, or sometimes something personal ("How are you doing?", "How are you getting on with that piece of work?", "Where are you up to with that?")

Knowledge-based questions, I tend to answer more immediately - although I instinctively "don't know" most things that ask for new information, stuff I've read but haven't had the time to process properly just yet.

I do that too, I feel it lets me off the hook a bit. I absolutely hate getting asked questions, especially personal ones. When people ask me something it makes me feel like the whole world is watching me and listening to what I say, which makes me worried that I will say something stupid or wrong. So saying "I don't know" seems like the less stressful option.

I sometimes respond with "I don't know" not because I don't actually know, but because I don't know right at that moment & need time to think of the answer. Sometimes even if I do know the answer I still say that I don't know because I don't know how to explain it.

I do it; it seems like I do it when NTs want instantaneous responses and I need time to process.

for me it's that or "either way', or "whatever", or some such thing on most opinion questions.

I don't like guessing but if I can come up with a solid answer pretty quick I'll go ahead and give it. One thing I've always been good at is answering odd questions.