Well Let Me Ask You This…
I have a distinct memory from when I was a child in elementary school that helps me understand what it means to be “smart.” I remember sitting in class and a friend asked a somewhat abstract and seemingly unrelated question. After thinking about it for a minute, I knew the answer, but then I thought to myself, “I would never have seen that connection and thought to ask that.” It’s not about having the answer to the question (even more true now since facts can be checked with your personal super computer). It’s about asking the right questions.
It happened again in college. One of my philosophy professors answered a student’s question in a particularly peculiar way. Instead of directly answering the student’s question, he restarted from the beginning of how the author might approach the subject which created a very convoluted scenario in terms of the posed question and the implications with the author’s other positions. At the end, the professor asked “do you still want to ask that question?”
It wasn’t about knowing the answer, it was about understanding the situation well enough to ask questions that are even answerable. This isn’t to say that some questions are not worth asking, but it might be the case that you ask once, which pushes you to learn about the subject, then abandon finding the answer to that question in exchange for searching for answers to the better questions you discovered.
This is not a new theory. Socrates gained a fair bit of notoriety developing a certain method of asking questions to reveal what he described as “remembered” information in the dialogue partner. But the more I read and understand Socrates, the more I can’t help but think he was fully aware of what he was doing and completely sarcastic (even the names are similar — kinda).
For example, take Meno’s slave. Socrates leads a randomly chosen slave boy around some geometric concepts while this kid (probably just trying to not pee his pants) only offers up “yes” and “no” answers and an occasional number (which he usually gets wrong anyway). The kid doesn’t actually know anything, he is simply following Socrates’ guidance and only finding the right answer after a couple leading questions make him realize his wrongness.
I would not swear that my argument is right down to the last word, but I would fight to the last breath, both in word and deed, that we will be better men — brave instead of lazy — if we will believe we must search for the things we do not know; if we will refuse to believe it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that there is no point in looking. — Socrates
When we become satisfied with the answer and fail to ask the next question —that will be the point where our growth ends and death overcomes us.
The answer gets all the outward facing publicity and glory, but the question controls all the true power. The question frames the discussion and corrals the answers by limiting out what is unwanted or unknowingly limiting out the actual desired outcome. Questions push you to answers. Therefore good questions push you to the right answers and bad questions (or no questions) yield terrible results. In order to know whether your question is good or not (you see where I’m going with this), you have to ask more questions.
Questions become the way to imagine a world other than the one you are accustomed to. Perception is restrictive when trying to understand the world, but asking questions allows you to wonder “what if it were another way?” This is why looking backwards, the question that led to a great discovery seems simple or obvious. “What holds us to the Earth?” is a very easy question now, but before Newton, it might have been taken for granted or considered silly or nonsensical.
We thought we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong — U2
Depending on your purpose, your questions may differ. On the innovative side, asking the question that hasn’t been asked is where you find the breakthrough. This is also where the Henry Ford made his mark. Instead of satisfying his customers by finding faster horses, he asked a different question altogether.
For the social/political philosopher, you are looking for a different type of understanding. Questions can be descriptive, prescriptive, or normative and tend to work best when used collaboratively.
What is the situation?
What will be the situation?
What should be the situation?
In seeking understanding of the world and how to make it better, different perspectives provide significant insight, but these questions need to be almost constantly re-evaluated.
As a lawyer, especially for anybody practicing trial law, there is a lot of significance in asking questions. The cardinal rule was “when in court, never ask a question to which you do not already know the answer.” This again supports the idea that the power lies not in the answer, but the question. Because of this power, there are rules limiting what and even how lawyers are allowed to ask, some of which are more effective than others. Leading questions, those that suggest an answer (see Socrates), can only be asked of an adverse witness so as to reduce the story-telling abilities of the more refined lawyers, among several other reasons. However some questions asked even though, or maybe especially, the lawyer knows it isn’t allowed. Sometimes it can be enough to incept the idea suggested by the question into the minds of the jurors. (For reference, see any TV or movie courtroom — ever)
The Oracle at Delphi declared Socrates the wisest human, and he built his career almost solely on asking questions. (This ended up getting him killed, so maybe it’s not the exact game plan you want to follow.) But he became revered because he understood one great truth: answers beget questions. His contemporaries wanted to look smart, which they interpreted as having the answer, but knowing that defining knowledge is a fickle endeavor allowed him to prove that all those sophists couldn’t defend their positions. Especially with his (seemingly feigned) humility of not claiming to know that which he does not know, he didn’t have to prove that he had the answer, only that his opponent was wrong.
If you were part of workforce during the industrial economy, asking questions only slowed down production. Upper management were responsible for thinking and asking questions and the rest became machines. Then we built actual machines to do that repeatable, automated manufacturing and the economy shifted to information and more people were forced into “thinking” roles. Now we built machines (AI) that will do most of that thinking for us too.
As we are entering the creative economy, the role of “question asker” is encompassing nearly everyone. The creative economy is particularly full of opportunities because product creation is about anticipating subjective desires of customers. This allows the new worker to carve out, create, and explore entirely new fields, which (of course) involves asking a lot of new and different questions.
The traditional and broken societal institutions are built on having the answers (just like the sophists for Socrates), but Exosphere is a new educational institution built on asking questions. The people we work with, the faculty and the students, are people who never get tired of asking questions. The big questions are what ignite our passions and keep the coals burning long after other people have given up and moved onto something simpler and easier.
The Philosophy stream at the next Exosphere Academy program (starting January 2017) will direct its focus on asking you the hard questions about consciousness and personal existence. We feel that these questions are the ones that must be asked to serve as a foundation for building your company or even your life. We know these are hard and sometimes painful questions, but we have found that those are the types of things worth doing in the long run. Unlike Chief Wiggum, you should welcome and get excited about asking and being asked questions. It is one of the best habits you can build for yourself. Don’t you think you should start now?
Let me know what you think,
Hoss
If you would like more of an idea about our approach to Philosophy in general, read my first article in this series All Paths Lead to Philosophy.
If you are interested in joining the Philosophy Stream, apply now to the Exosphere Academy!
As an institution that creates options and alternatives for the future of education and work, Exosphere is doing a 5-minute survey to understand the current status of work, education, and emerging tech. We know these questionnaires can be kind of lame so we tried to keep it short and simple: https://goo.gl/KWciuL
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