Ten years ago, when you asked a question, whether about your research paper, an assignment, or simply seeking a clarification, you would get thrown into large webs of knowledge systems, an old teacher, an unexpected hyperlink on a blogpost, print only magazines, information disembodied from the synthetic analysis of large language models.

To truly understand something complex, you would have to penetrate walls of raw data, make original, nuanced connections across disciplines, opening windows into rich fields of inquiry. You would indulge in a “self-conversation” that would test your understanding of the world. The type of conversation that is asymmetrical, unpredictable, and disruptive, pitting many varieties of articles, blogs, research papers, books, and video essays against each other, both testing their limits and your ability to generate original ideas.

Answers today, with generative AI, may look like conversations, but they are not dialogic. They are polished and complete, leaving little room for friction. In the age of fast answers, maybe there is something heraldic about the lack of them.

But, before we delve into the importance of manual exploration and struggle in getting answers, we must first analyze the art of asking questions.

Why do we ask questions? Is there an intrinsic value in asking questions? Are some types of questions more valuable than others and thus require that struggle more explicitly?

On questions

In the most simplistic view, questions are tools of collecting facts. When you enter a new domain, you may ask questions to gain background knowledge. In this case, the easier you can access base level information, the better. Should this information come from a teacher or an LLM is a debate for another day, but, for now, I believe that generative AI is certainly helpful at this stage.

As you continue becoming an expert in your field, you gain a sense of existing gaps in literature. At this point, asking questions becomes more radical. Now that you have enough information to know that which is unknown, questions become an act of knowledge production in and of themselves.

The distance between your question and the answer contains the potential for discovery and innovation. This distance is not a void. It is filled with false starts, irrelevant detours, partial understandings, and accidental encoun...

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Wikitag Contributions

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