What Is the Last Question? | Hacker News Reader

What Is the Last Question?

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35 pointsCwwm15 comments

I hate being a downer, but was anyone else struck by how...uninteresting so many of these answers were? I love reading this series, but it seems this year's question was just too hard. Seriously, I have no clue what I'd answer either...though it is fun to think about how to put a wider eyed spin on what's there! Like:

how can changing the tax rate affect motivation (how about "are there levers for manipulating motivation which go too far?"),

or what kinds of minds can solve the mind-body problem (us lol, instead what about "what is the history of understanding what we are in relation to the world and which new concepts might we use instead through which a sense of intractable puzzlement doesn't arise?"),

or can we design a machine that can correctly answer every question (how about "if we could design a machine to answer every question, what are its values such that it knows when to stop in any particular case?"),

or is there a fundamental difference between the physical and the biological world (how about "how should we understand the causal role of normative characterization in a kind of explanation which has been particularly well suited to biology?").

EDIT: of course some were very thoughtful! Like Aaronson asking "Can we program a computer to find a 10,000-bit string that encodes more actionable wisdom than any human has ever expressed?" or Bostrom "Which questions should we not ask and not try to answer?" or Dennett "How can an aggregation of trillions of selfish, myopic cells discover the unwitting teamwork that turns that dynamic clump into a person who can love, notice, wonder, and keep a promise?" or Pagel "Is a single world language and culture inevitable?".

I skipped to page 12 and got "Would you like to live 1,000 years?", so I see what you mean. A tenfold lifespan increase is quite comprehensible and seems like a flat yes.

The last question is "How do you turn this thing off?"

With the penultimate being "What's this button do?"

I dislike this 'crowdsourcing' of philosophy. If you want a profound answer you have to search for the profound person who can give it first. I wonder if anyone mentioned "What is a question" as an answer.

To be fair, these aren't random people off the street; it's crowdsourcing from a pool of interesting people chosen by a fairly proven editor. (That, and a policy of answering questions by finding the single person who can grant absolute truth is surely worse.)

most of them are scientists giving a scientific question of their interest as the last question. it's like a classified listing. a debate would be a better format.

For a moment, I though this was Asimov's Last Question...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question

Warning, Spoilers if you haven't read it.

Though I can't seem to access the text source where I first read it, it can be listened to (read by Asimov himself) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3U30wSAV4Q

I think it is my favourite short story, and it provides rewarding daydreams every time I return to it.

I last read it on multivax.com but that domain seems to no longer exist.

Internet Archive version: https://archive.org/stream/Science_Fiction_Quarterly_New_Ser...

I mirrored a copy this morning (UTC). It's here (single html):

http://www.jaruzel.com/media/The-Last-Question_Isaac-Asimov....

Me too! I like this comic book adaption: https://imgur.com/gallery/9KWrH

Awsome ! Thanks for sharing

as long as the answer is 42...

I'm curious as to why so few women were invited to participate. Especially given the diversity of fields represented.

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