Brockman - The Last Unknowns

The solution: not an explanation: a description and knowing how to consider it. Everything has been explained. There is nothing left to consider. The explanation can no longer be treated as a definition. The question: a description. The answer: not explanation, but a description and knowing how to consider it.

Asking or telling: there isnt any difference. No explanation, no solution, but consideration of the question. Every proposition proposing a fact must in its complete analysis propose the general character of the universe required for the fact. Our kind of innovation consists not in the answers, but in the true novelty of the questions themselves; in the statement of problems, not in their solutions. A total synthesis of all human knowledge will not result in huge libraries filled with books, in fantastic amounts of data stored on servers. Theres no value any more in amount, in quantity, in explanation.

For a total synthesis of human knowledge, use the interrogative. The conceptual artist/philosopher James Lee Byars contacted me and suggested a collaboration of sorts which resulted in our taking daily walks in Central Park as Byars and I walked and talked, conversing only in interrogative sentences. Does it sound like fun? Want to try it? James Lee soon began to develop his ideas, which led to The World Question Center: To arrive at an axiology of the worlds knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves. On November 26, 1968, he launched The World Question Center in a one-hour television program produced in Brussels at the studios of the Belgian national television network and broadcast live to a national audience. During the hour, he called numerous celebrated intellectuals such as composer John Cage, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, futurist Herman Kahn, artist Joseph Beuys, novelist Jerzy Kosinski, poet Michael McClure, and asked, in various ways, the following: Im trying to find hypotheses that people are working with that are reduced into some type of very simple single question with no explanation, hopefully, thats important to them in their own evolution of knowledge.

Might you offer one thats personal? For the 50th anniversary of The World Question Center, and for the finale to the twenty years of Edge Questions, I turned it over to the Edgies: Ask The Last Question, your last question, the question for which you will be remembered. John Brockman Editor, Edge Can we program a computer to find a 10,000-bit string that encodes more actionable wisdom than any human has ever expressed? SCOTT AARONSON David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin; author, Quantum Computing Since Democritus Are complex biological neural systems fundamentally unpredictable? ANTHONY AGUIRRE Professor of physics, University of California, Santa Cruz Are the simplest bits of information in the brain stored at the level of the neuron? DORSA AMIR Postdoctoral research fellow, Boston College Are people who cheat vital to driving progress in human societies? ALUN ANDERSON Senior consultant (and former editor-in-chief and publishing director), New Scientist; author, After the Ice How can we put rational prices on human lives without becoming inhuman? CHRIS ANDERSON Chief executive officer, 3D Robotics; founder, DIY Drones How will we build the tools to maintain the software in long-lived online devices that can kill us? ROSS ANDERSON Professor of security engineering, University of Cambridge How do we best build a civilization that is galvanized by long-term thinking? SAMUEL ARBESMAN Complexity scientist; scientist in residence, Lux Capital; author, Overcomplicated