“The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
— Albert Einstein
What is the point of asking questions? Could they be a useful tool for thinking? Can they help me decide what to do next?
These are the questions that prompted me to wander into the labyrinth of questioning.
So, what exactly is a question?
Perhaps we can answer this by looking at the kinds of questions we normally ask. When trying to understand an event unfolding in the present, we tend to ask:
- Who is involved? — To identify the actors in the world.
- What are they doing? — To understand the event itself.
- How are they doing it? — To understand the manner in which the event unfolds.
- Why are they doing it? — To understand their motivations.
- Where is it happening? — To locate the event in space.
- When is it happening? — To locate the event in time.
Each question helps us remove a different kind of uncertainty about the world, gradually turning a screen of white noise into a recognizable image, albeit a pixelated one.
Imagine you have a friend who cannot see a scene unfolding in front of you, and the only way they can know what is happening is by asking you questions. They would probably ask these very questions to construct a picture of the world around them.
A question, by itself, tells us nothing. But it tells us where to look.
If we extend this idea beyond our immediate surroundings, to events unfolding in faraway places or events that occurred in the past or might occur in the future, then, in a sense, we are all blind. We need to ask questions to uncover what is happening, what has happened, and what might happen.
Questions, then, are tools in our language toolkit that help us uncover the past, understand the present, and reason about the future.
Why is it important to ask questions?
The world is a complex system. Our brains cannot possibly comprehend the sheer number of events unfolding at any given moment, let alone how they all relate to one another.
The best we can do is form mental models of the world and make our best guesses about how things might unfold based on these models. And one of the best ways to form these mental models is by asking the right questions.
To illustrate this, consider a game of poker.
When someone first learns to play poker, they begin building a mental model of how the game works through a combination of instruction and picking the host's brain about the rules. After enough questioning, the player develops a working mental model of the game, enough to start playing.
But knowing the rules is not enough to win.
To start winning, the player needs to build mental models of their opponents' strategies in addition to estimating probabilities. This involves asking themselves questions about their opponents' past moves, based on what they have observed so far.
How often does an opponent bluff? Under what circumstances do they bluff? How do they react when someone raises? What do they think of me as a player? What do they think I think of them?
With enough observation and questioning, the player begins to form a mental model of each opponent.
Now, armed with a mental model of the rules of the game, the mathematics of probability, and, most importantly, the workings of their opponents' minds, the player can begin making better decisions at each turn.
This line of questioning can be applied to almost any prediction we want to make about the world.
By asking questions about past events, we can begin to understand the patterns underlying them. These patterns help us construct mental models, which in turn allow us to make predictions about the future and decide what to do next.
Of course, asking questions does not guarantee that our mental models will be correct. We might be asking the wrong questions, or drawing the wrong conclusions from the answers.
And the idea that questioning leads to better mental models, and that better mental models lead to better predictions, is itself nothing more than a mental model in my head.
It might be wrong. Or perhaps only partially right.
But having an imperfect mental model that we are willing to question and revise is often better than having none at all. And perhaps the best way to build one, test it, and refine it is through questioning.