8. What’s the difference?
Easy Questions
• We have the means to find the answer
• We have the means to validate the answer
Hard Questions
• We lack the means to find the answer
• We lack the means to validate the answer
Hi! Thank you for attending this talk.
I like to let my mind wander off sometimes. A couple of weeks ago, I got this idea, which I want to share with you.
Questions are everywhere. What’s the weather today? Is the train on time? What do I work on next? Obviously, some questions are easier than others, and what’s easy for you might not be easy for a child. But is it possible to categorise questions in an absolute way that transcends our momentary differences? Maybe. Let’s see.
These questions are easy because the answers are known. They lie within the body of knowledge of humanity.
These questions are harder because we might not already know the answer. But they are still easy: we know how to get the information. It might take time, effort, and resources, and it might not even be practical, but it’s still easy because we have a process to find out the answers.
These questions are hard because we can’t really know the answer. We can try to provide an estimate, but that’s all it’s going to be: a level of confidence less than 100%.
Hard questions are prolific. The harder ones are about the assessment of our knowledge. How do we know that what we know is correct? How do we know what we need to know?
A favourite of mine is about whether time is multi-dimensional.
These questions cannot be answered within the human body of knowledge. We simply don’t have a way to find an answer. The only possible source of answers is divine inspiration from the creator of the universe.