Just Asking

TAoN No. 199: The question of questions. Plus a new Icebreaker, and more

Quick updates before we get to today’s post:

* Excellent responses still coming in for November’s prompt, Mysteries. Take a look — and join in! — here.

* In this thread about starting noticing clubs (or societies!), there’s interest from Manchester UK, Barcelona, the SF Bay Area, Boston, Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego, Charleston (SC), and multiple folks in Berlin, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh. Someone has suggested an online version, and someone else mentioned creating a spreadsheet. Chime in on the thread if you’re interested, and reach out to others there to make something happen! I’m happy to help of course.

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“The thing that humans will always be uniquely exceptional at, is asking questions.”

This observation came not from a poet or a creativity guru or a Krista Tippett guest, but from the chief business officer of Perplexity, an AI-driven search engine. It arose at the start of a recent Odd Lots (a business-focused podcast) interview. Responding to a jokey question from one of the hosts about why they should bother asking him questions instead of just using Perplexity, the exec continued:

“Perplexity may have the answer, but Perplexity does not have an innate desire to be curious. … That’s why these conversations [such as this interview] are so important: It’s about the questions, not really the answers.”

I happened to hear this interview a day or two after talking to Ken Woodward, for his podcast Curated Questions, which is dedicated to “celebrating the power of questions” through conversations with a range of guests. (Thanks again to Choose To Be Curious’ Lynn Borton for the intro!) I’ll link to the episode that I’m on when it publishes, but it was a really fun conversation. For now, the point is that I definitely had questions on the brain when I listened to that Odd Lots episode.

The way Ken is exploring the question of questions strikes me as having more to do with introspection, connection, and change than the sort of overt information-seeking one might associate with, say, a search engine. His site is a great question resource — with thematic collections, various question lists, and “famous questions.”

Of course the importance of asking good questions has been a TAoN theme before, and there are multiple kinds of good question. There’s the Icebreaker series, most obviously. But I’ve also written about questions as a way to generate new ignorance, which leads to new ideas; and about why you should occasionally skip the search engine and ask a fellow human a question you could have just searched on your phone, because you’ll learn things beyond the formal answer.

So I’m naturally drawn to the idea that questions are a fundamental manifestation of curiosity that’s uniquely human. But I have to admit I was surprised to hear that sentiment coming from an executive at an AI business. Usually AI discourse wants us to think about the efficient way to a productive answer, the best and most correct response. I suppose AI can be trained to produce idiosyncratically human replies to idiosyncratically human queries, but of course it would require a human to set that process in motion.

In other words, sure, AI can probably mimic an interesting human. But for some questions, only an actual, curious human will do¹. My conversation with Ken was a reminder that questions are really about interaction, reflection, and possibly change and growth and arriving somewhere truly original and new.

Ask more questions with no right answer — or no real answer at all.

Here’s one: What is a question, anyway? Just asking.

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• Noticing is about other people, too. The Icebreaker series aims to help with that. There’s a central collection spot for all the icebreakers to date, here.

Today’s Icebreaker comes from Rico Blancaflor of Third Settlements:

What is a “rich person thing” you would be totally into if you became rich?

Thank you so much, Rico!

Please send your favorite icebreaker (whether you made it up or found it elsewhere) to consumed@robwalker.net.

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IN OTHER NEWS

• I am pleased to be included in the recent collection Education of a Design Writer (Amazon, Bookshop), edited by the formidable duo of Steven Heller and Molly Heintz. Got my copy the other day and it looks great! Honored to be among such talented contributors. More about the book from Heller, here.

• Great example of a stealth icon: How “a box with a little mountain range” became the “placeholder icon for a ‘missing image.’” (In part it’s an example of “convergent design evolution,” which I’d never heard of.)

• Why don’t people put their shopping carts back? A behavioral psychologist investigates, analyzing hundreds of videos from the YouTube channel of Cart Narcs, “a small group whose mission is to encourage cart return.” Excellent. (Via.)

• A 1976 letter by then-17-year-old Morrissey to Melody Maker, pronouncing the Ramones “degenerate no-talents.”

• “This project celebrates the art and culture of laptop personalization each laptop tells a story through its stickers and gives us a glimpse of the personality of the owners.” (Via.)

• From Kafka: some thoughts on writing.

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OKAY THAT’S IT!

• As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.

• —> Or just click the heart symbol. That always makes my day.

And thanks for reading …
rw

• RobWalker.net | NB: I use (some) Amazon Affiliate links

All this by Rob Walker PO Box 171, 748 Mehle St., Arabi LA 70032. Send me mail!

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1. A caveat here is that of course many humans aren’t particularly curious. As Anne Kadet has usefully observed, a bot “is a very poor substitute for a real person. But here’s the thing: so are most humans.” But I’m assuming that you, dear TAoN reader, are more interesting, curious, and surprising than most humans. And probably better-looking too ;)