The Importance of Questions

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers” – Voltaire

Questions are a useful tool, few would disagree. They allow you to retrieve specific information from someone, they give you focus and they intrigue. Why are questions so important though? You could command someone to give you information instead; you could guide discovery with a checklist of what to do without the potential ambiguity of a question.

Questions are the linguistic expression of curiosity. One could argue that above all other competitive advantages humans have, it is our insatiable appetite for knowledge and discovery that compels us to greater and greater things. We love the feeling of discovering something new, and questions act as the compass, aiding the journey of discovery.

Questions in Life

Could you imagine life without questions? It would be boring that’s for sure. Unfortunately it would also give people an excuse to talk more about themselves and how good they are at everything in conversation. However, questions do not only exist in conversation, as you are probably aware. There are the questions you ask yourself everyday. There are the ones that engage your mind and prompt an emotional response or an epiphany. Sometimes a question is a mixture of both.

You may not realise it, you ask yourself hundreds of questions each day. “What would I like to eat?”, “Should I say something or not?”, “What if I walk instead of drive?”. Before a thought is turned into an action, you ask a question. This is why questions are so important. They begin the thinking process. If you begin the thinking process correctly with proper questioning, you are likely to arrive at more sound conclusions than if you start by trying to “just think”.

Question Everything

I hope you defiantly retorted “why should I?” because you should have. Maybe I’m a charlatan that wants everyone to fail by stalling their lives, getting them to inquire about mundane, pointless things, while I continue to move and win the game of life. Maybe I’m not. Maybe it is sound advice. What option do you choose and why? The fact of the matter is that today we don’t ask enough questions.

Bureaucrats (read: robots) run around, doing as they’ve always done, without ever stopping to think about what they are actually doing. To stop and think, is stop and ask a question. Perhaps if the accountant asked “why am I doing this?” they would no longer be an accountant. Or maybe they supply themselves an awe inspiring answer driving them to work harder and more effectively. No one will ever know the answer until the question is asked.

An example of my own questioning of everything (albeit with some help from Peter Thiel) gave me concrete evidence of the importance of questioning things. There can be no answers without questions. The riskiest time to not ask a question is the exact time you think one is not required. If it seems “good enough” ask “why?”. If you get a confirmative answer, keep going. If you don’t, then you can save yourself time, effort, money, anything applicable to the situation at hand for the mere seconds of asking a question.

Your Task

Consciously listen to the questions you ask yourself everyday. Realise when a question is biased, and counter it with another question, or change it. For example in my The Value of University in the Digital Age post I mentioned the fact that I only argued the case of not going to university. In other words, I only asked “what (negative) outcomes occur if I don’t go?” The negative was implicit, but nonetheless there. To counter it you can ask explicitly “what positive outcomes can come about by not attending university?”

The idea is to use questions to gain a more balanced view of the world. In particular your world, since it is the only world that exists (for “cogito ergo sum”). To be able to rationalise past your brain’s irrational tendencies, as a kind of meta-thinking, is surely helpful in gaining intellectual freedom, which in turn leads to more better and wider-scope questions creating a snowball effect of curiosity, discovery and improvement.

With this in mind, there is the possibility to stall by incessant questioning. To avoid this, try to ask “why?” questions most frequently. These tend to push you into the next level of abstraction, which can create a black hole of discovery, sucking in the unnecessary questions and bringing your attention to its centre where the purest answers lie.