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Ask HN: What questions aren't we asking?

by hhs·7y ago·11 comments·view on hn ↗

Bacteria, plants, and animals can do only so much. They can solve basic problems. But they can't solve problems of building spaceships like us because they have limits to their "minds" - because I'm guessing they don't ask those types of questions in the first place?

I wonder what our limits are. What are the boundaries of problems we humans just don't have the grace of asking about, and therefore even solve?

In Wikipedia, under the topic of 'new mysterianism', there's a quote cited in Steven Pinker's book, "How the mind works", where he writes, "The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside. This is where I place my bet, though I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius—a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness—comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us."

What questions aren't we asking?

11 comments

How can we reduce the cost of food sustenance by an order of magnitude? How could this challenge be applied to a town, city, region, or type of citizen?

How can city-threatening wildfires be prevented? Malibu, Paradise, Chico, Santa Rosa, Thomas - and now how can these areas of desolation be stewarded back into a vibrant state? It could be possible to prevent the devastating mudslides some of these areas have now experienced.

My ideas around these questions have me imagining things that may require new systems of economy, agreement & responsibility. I look at our wild spaces, and I see messes of tangled bush. Can we manicure these lands in a way that encourages more vibrant growth of native species while creating natural fire blocks? What if these areas could also begin becoming food sources, helping with that first question I posed?

As it is now, most any ravine around my town is clogged with deadfall and could make for a city-razing fire in the worst of cases. Fixing this manually would be a massive effort, but what if we could set tens of thousands of people to task at it, while sheltering, feeding, caring for and educating them? If we can empower a much greater portion of our population to have these basic needs met, we may be setting free a number of great minds to pursue helping advance the state of our consciousness.

With the changes to jobs availability, we should embrace novel new ways to 'make a living'. The rules that have brought us this far are great. We're capable of improving upon them.

Can we create simulation games that would help us ponder these questions better? There are so many variables at play, this should be the next MMORPG fad. How else can we tinker with new ideas around massive human efforts?

How about we collaborate on sending money and resources towards robotics clubs, maker spaces, and other groups that obviously try to push the envelope of what's real?

These are deep, important questions. I wonder how people will go about fixing the problems of food sustenance and wildfires in the years to come. Will we innovate incrementally or through big ideas?

When I was reading through your points, my mind popped up with the industries built in the 19th century. For instance, the steel business industry innovated itself to be inexpensive (e.g., via Bessemer Process), to generate not only jobs but also interesting economies. Though, there are also positive and negative externalities to think about with all this stuff.

I totally agree, pushing the envelope with real ideas is key.

Any question I could come up with has probably been asked already, but here goes:

How do we know anything in the past actually happened? We are 100% reliant on memory, but an equally plausible explanation is that we materialized 1 nanosecond ago, pre-loaded with memory and state. And in 1 nanosecond we will cease to exist, but at any point in time we will never know if that is true.

Science and repeatable experiments, models of the universe etc. refute my statement, except science is based on the assumption that my statement is false, so it is a circular argument.

The question "what is truth?" is as old as time, and so important that we've created a system to analyze it and attempt to come to a consensus[0]. If an idea is untestable, it is logical and good for your sanity to assume that it is false until proven otherwise.

We assume that certain aspects of reality are real because they are testable and repeatable. We say gravity exists because every time we drop something, it falls down towards Earth, and if we apply other assumptions while looking out in the sky, we see other objects falling towards each other. The assumption is logical and testable.

It is impossible to test whether we just materialized, therefore it's safe to assume it did not happen unless repeatable testing indicates otherwise.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

Hi drankula3, definitely agree. You make good points that we study things that are based on reality using science when we ask "what is truth?"

I still wonder if there might be constructs or frameworks 'out there' more advanced than "asking questions". When looking at evolution, I wonder if bacteria, plants, or animals have that frame of reference of "truth" and "asking questions". To me, it looks like "truth" and "asking questions" are things humans have constructed.

I wonder if "asking questions" is just a part of species evolution and I'm curious by the thought that there might be more powerful frameworks 'out there'.

Yeah, interesting point about us being reliant on memory. And I agree, it's useful to think about the circular argument.

I wonder if "asking questions" is just a small progressive part of evolution? For instance, on a time scale of species evolution, I wonder if things might look like this:

...Sensing...Simple reasoning...Complex questioning...X...Y...Z...

> What are the boundaries of problems we humans just don't have the grace of asking about

> What questions aren't we asking?

I don't see the point to your submission. First you postulate that there are things we cannot think about, and then you ask us to think about it.

Hmm, sorry about that, I'm going to reword this and hopefully clarify my thoughts. I wonder about the limitations of us humans, as a species, and what we do when we ask about things.

I wonder if there are constructs and frameworks more advanced than "questioning". Is "questioning" that we, as a human species, do something that is just one primitive part in the scale of evolution?

Hmm, sorry about that, I'm going to reword this and hopefully clarify my thoughts. I wonder about the limitations of us humans, as a species, and what we do when we ask about things.

I wonder if there are constructs and frameworks more advanced than "questioning". Is "questioning" that we, as a human species, do something that is just one primitive part in the scale of evolution?

how close are we to a thunder_app on fdroid to increase your social footprint, etc?

Hi, 70122-_6, this is amusing. This is a question, indeed, I think most people aren't asking.