More questions than answers

Speaking in practical terms it is out the discussion that, when we pose a question, we do so because we are interested in the answer (save for rhetorical ones, which are there for dramatic effect). If you ask someone on the street what the fastest way to the airport is, you are likely to listen intently, balance your answer against your previous knowledge, if any, and then act on it. However, from the philosophical point of view, the question is indubitably much more interesting, because it opens a whole world of counter-questions that can make, if nothing else, great conversation. Why did you ask that question? Are you from out of town, so you do not have knowledge? Or are you local but do not go to the airport that often? Why do you want to get there quickly? Is your plane soon or is it just that you do not like to spend time on transportation? Are you flying out or just picking up someone arriving? Where are you flying to? Is it business or pleasure? Do you travel alone, are you meeting someone at the airport or at your destination? The number of possible questions is almost endless, and that is only considering the content of the question. One can also ask about the situation: Why did you ask me? Do I look local, well informed and trustworthy? I am the first person you ask? Why do you ask right now and not before or later? The variety is simply astonishing once you get down to think about it.

Over the course of all these months writing the blog I have come to realize how much more interested I am in the questions that in the answers. And this has nothing to do with the pretense that I would be able to provide a better answer, but because the exercise of thinking an answer of my own is much more interesting. One concept that permeates many of my articles is the idea that the circumstances are so wildly diverse that passing any kind of thoughtful judgment is almost always bound to provide intriguing results. Yesterday I mentioned the concept of "replay judgement" where we try to follow someone else's reasoning to determine how far our world view are aligned and where they differ. Sometimes the exercise breaks because we do not know enough of the other person's circumstances to make an accurate call and the only default we have, our own views, would simply not work. But those are precisely the right moments to ask about the question: what kind of values and ideas would be necessary to justify a response that I do not understand?

Photo: Tambako The Jaguar

Among my sources of inspiration, one of the most prominent are the podcast that I try to listen to on a regular basis: Freakonomics Radio (hosted by Steven Dubner), Rough Translation (Gregory Warner), Hidden Brain (Shankar Vedantam) and Revisionist History (Malcolm Gladwell). It turns out that all the host share an incredible ability to pose interesting questions, try to understand why things are the way they are, if they are or could be different under other circumstances and what the impact of this difference could be. Recently I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell in an open discussion with psychologist and former diver Adam Grant when a question came around about the "Bomber Mafia", a group of airmen in the late 1930s that aspired to limit the damages caused by war through the strategic use of bombing: if you can stop the war machinery of the enemy by bombing a few factories, the casualties on both sides would be much smaller than the horrifying numbers that the recent trench fights in World War I had caused.

Grant asked Gladwell what his moral judgement was of the Bomber Mafia, because he must have one, but Gladwell very smartly sidestepped the question replying that the interesting answer is not what he thought in 2021, but the thoughts that must have coursed the minds of these people back in the 1940s, when Japan had seized most of the Asian cost of the Pacific and the US efforts were extremely costly and slow. There is no doubt that they must have been horrified by the prospect of killing thousands of people with the atomic bombs, but they were equally scared of the idea of extending the war for another five years to have the same result with a much higher tally. Gladwell closes up stating that he cannot even start to imagine what he would have done if he had been given the decision, and I can only agree: the questions is just too difficult to answer in the hypothetical. Still, it is very interesting to contemplate the question and trying to understand what went through their minds.

In a similar fashion, Dubner has created a spin-off podcast (which started as a recurrent theme in Freakonomics Radio) called "No Stupid Questions", where he and his co-host, psychologist Angela Duckworth, pose questions to one another and give them serious thought. It is, in the purest sense of the expression, a program about questions, not about answers. Vedantam deals in his podcast with the patterns that influence or even govern our thoughts and why these patterns are what they are and not anything else. Warner, on his side, tries to draw comparisons between events in foreign countries and those in the US, trying to find a reason both for the differences and the similarities.

From the humble pages of this blog I simply try to follow a bit in their path: asking a question and contemplating possible answers, what would make sense for me, but also what could work for others in a different situation. As a general rule, all I intend to do is to invite the debate; the solutions I provide, the explanations I give, are mine and mine alone, and are not supposed to hold more truth than the ones you might bring yourself. As usual, you are welcome to disagree (or to agree) in the comments below. Have a nice evening.