You don’t really want answers
Answers are insufficiently linearized. What does this mean? Also, answers are no good if your questions don’t make sense.
Are there stupid questions? Within a theory, you can ask questions about how various pieces work together, or to describe various components. These are natural questions. Critical questions seek to displace or undermine a theory. They question assumptions, draw out contradictions, and take ideas to their logical conclusion. In other words, they make unwarranted alternative assumptions, dismiss the efforts of experts working at the frontiers of the field, and take the slippery slope.
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“What’s the trick to X, or what’s the answer to Y?” You actually don’t want to know. Answers are lists and trees. They have components. They can interact with one another but are largely static. Answers are facts like the 3 branches of American government, names of birds, or the ingredients for making concrete; they are markers on a trail.
The truly valuable answers can’t be circled in a multiple choice test. Stories are not pictures and answers, but journeys, songs, movies, discussions, adventures, mysteries, proofs, and algorithms. This distinction is a little unfair. Single pictures can tell a story. Unlike lists, good stories can’t be reordered. Every new piece of information in a story implies a question or a problem to resolve.
In reality, even a good painting composition has “gaps” and imbalances that beg to be resolved. When you put a circle on the left side of the composition, it begs to be balanced out by something else on the right. Even marking a little x on the right, at the very least, admits that imbalance is not good even if it doesn’t fully make up for the lack. Sometimes you have stories within stories that can then be combined together to create larger works.
Teachers understand the value of prerequisites. However, there are two types of prerequisites. The first is obvious, and the other isn’t. To understand Calculus you need to understand Algebra. The other way to understand it is that some problems require more than just Algebra to solve. It’s much better to think about prerequisites in this way.
Medieval courses were offered according to books, not by subject or theme. Early universities didn’t even have buildings. Classes were held in homes and churches. It’s impossible to fully appreciate an answer until you understand the problem. No, instead we should start with questions and problems. A student comes to the teacher and asks him why some people have money and others are poor. Another asks where the water in the faucet comes from.
Education disconnected from the real world isn’t education, and may not even be propaganda, but ritual. The teacher recites a lecture; the students dutifully take notes to study for future tests. Teachers don’t want you to just memorize. They want you to think and understand. They give a nod to this telos of education even if the structure of test-taking can only approximate a test of understanding.
The ultimate test is the real world, and according to Fayerabend, spotting a fatal problem in a world view isn’t something that an insider can do. Critique has to come from outside the theory. In other words, ignorance gives you an advantage.
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A story is what happens when you have a setting, characters, and a plot. Einstein thought in stories. He imagined himself as a photon. Richard Feynman similarly dug into reality by starting with a common phenomenon and continually asking why:
Why did the man slip on the ice and fall? Because ice is slippery. Why is ice slippery? It’s because water expands when it solidifies. What this means is that under pressure, undoes this expansion and it becomes liquid and creates a thin layer of water. Other materials aren’t so slippery. The closest comparison are greasy things like oil.
Socrates took things experts believed and asked them questions until until he found contradictions, exposing that his interlocutor may not be an expert after all.
Central to every story is a gap where you expect an answer to be. Central to every human story is hormesis providing an ironic twist. You do something to get a result, and instead accomplish the exact opposite. The harder you pursue, the more it eludes you.