| 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?". |