- 20. Are the stories we tell ourselves about our past true, or do we bend the truth so we can create our stories? If the latter is true, than what worth is there in the stories if they aren’t true?
- 20. Are the stories we tell ourselves about our past true, or do we bend the truth so we can create our stories? If the latter is true, than what worth is there in the stories if they aren’t true?
This seemed kind of trite, to be honest- a lot of these are the kind of sophomoric "life changing questions" that get kicked around college dorms every day, and will be for decades if not centuries to come. The ones that aren't trite (or don't have to be) are couched in with such obviously "Truth or Dare" questions that they are trite by association!
"Who are you?" is not a question that makes you think. You know your answer to that because you've been asked it a million times since middle school. If you really wonder about this, then join in on an old, important conversation. Don't reinvent the idea of thinking just to think about this.
Now, for some questions that will make for good discussions with friends and not just make everyone wonder if you're imitating a stoner, try Chuck Klosterman's Questions. The thing that sets these questions apart has to do with the fact that he knows the "right" answer, so that's part of the question. Would you kick your friend in the ribs to save them? Of course! But what would your excuse be?
Klosterman's questions are funny, but all of them actually get at some real thoughts because how you value the options is something you can talk about, and not just "I would totally rather get cancer than see a loved one get hit by a car." Who the fuck can answer that honestly? I'll tell you: people with cancer who have watched a love one get hit by a car. Everyone else is just spitting shit.
I've grown pretty skeptical of most counterfactual thinking, because it seems to be largely based on a sort of primary cause fallacy. That is, since it's basically impossible to properly construct very complex counterfactuals, in which events proceed according to a realistically convoluted web of indecipherable causality, we instead do it in a naive ceteris paribus sorta thing, in which we change one variable but leave everything else equal, and assume that's good enough.
To get to the point, consider this question:
- Your best friend is taking a nap on the floor of your living room. Suddenly, you are faced with a bizarre existential problem: This friend is going to die unless you kick them (as hard as you can) in the rib cage. If you don't kick them while they slumber, they will never wake up. However, you can never explain this to your friend; if you later inform them that you did this to save their life, they will also die from that. So you have to kick a sleeping friend in the ribs, and you can't tell them why.
Since you cannot tell your friend the truth, what excuse will you fabricate to explain this (seemingly inexplicable) attack?
This question requires such a bizarre alteration to reality---in order to construct this scenario, we'd have to imagine an ailment that'll kill someone unless they're kicked in the ribs, and if they are kicked, will kill them if they're informed why---that I honestly can't make heads or tails of it. But if a more rigorous situation were constructed, for example involving blackmail, then it becomes conceivable to avoid the question by outmaneuvering the blackmailer.
Similarly, there's:
- Someone builds and optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future (it's essentially a crystal ball that shows a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you finally peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. Your chair is surrounded by books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that---for some unknown reason---you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And this future is static and absolute; no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed.
The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a pre-season CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it?
Now we're left wondering about temporal mechanics, or what knowing the future actually means. I'm an incompatiablist (i.e., I believe in mesoscale determinism and deny free will), but this question still leaves me wondering about the mechanism for destiny and the apparently paradoxical situation it would present. Does the universe conspire to ensure that destiny is maintained, or are we somehow completely wrong about causality? Again, this prevents me from making headway in understanding the question.
But these aren't interesting thoughts. Pursuing actual insight requires, at the most basic level, at least two things: epistemology and methodology. These questions lack both, so I award them no points, and may God have mercy on their souls.
See? Now I know about you that you find it difficult to imagine things that are fairly straightforward, and you think it's more important to escape a question than be able to answer it! I wouldn't say the counterfactual, "If you had to kick a sleeping friend in the ribs and never tell them why, what would your excuse be?" is all that complicated. Nor should the attempt in any counterfactual be to apply the rules of another universe to your thinking, or weasel out of the question. Yes, if blackmail was used
- then it becomes conceivable to avoid the question by outmaneuvering the blackmailer.
You use a lot of words you don't need to to get your point across.
I read both sets of questions, and to be honest I found the Chuck Klosterman's questions to be really easy to answer. The difference I really see between the two is that I think people really wouldn't be interested in how I solve these 'dilemmas' of Chuck's, while I think the first 30 would be more conversation provoking, mostly because they're better answered with more questions.
Give me some examples of easy answers for each?
I thought the questions were somewhat lame too - back in the day, Gregory Stock wrote The Book of Question the first one of its kind that I saw. A great many of the questions were essentially what would you do for money, e.g. never see your best friend again for one million. That led me to my own list of questions which has turned into my blog which I'm sure someone will think is lame. Overall, I'd say questions are good, even questions about questions.
- If you dislike your family, are you obligated to spend time with them? Show up at family functions? Help them out in their time of need? Is a family even relevant anymore – especially when you have a close circle of friends?
This completely struck a chord with me. I've always to an extent held that you choose your friends, but you don't get to choose your family (parents, siblings, etc -- not spouse and children, obviously). I have never understood why this means you should stand by your family beyond all reason. It seems to me it should mean the opposite, if anything.
I would do anything for my best friends, who I have chosen to be with in life. I had that option, and that right, so in return I care about them. Makes sense to me.
- Is it truly worth it to die for a family member or friend? Yes, you’d be a hero, but that person would feel guilty for your death for the rest of their lives. Is that “brave” act actually cowardly because you’re transferring the guilt that you’d have felt if you did nothing and watched them die to your friend, who has to deal with the guilt of causing your death?
According to Dawkins, it is 100 percent worth it to die for an identical twin, 50 percent worth it to die for a sibling or a child, etc. (But no, that stuff about the guilt is ridiculous. That's a circular argument that can go on all day.)
- Does it matter that there’s an increasing gap between the rich and the poor if the standard of living for the poor keeps going up?
Don't look at how well the poor are compared to the rich. Look at how well the poor could theoretically be doing compared to how well they actually are doing. That's what you want to know.
Cool questions. I think I will stop kneejerk answering them now and go to bed.
Perception is totally subjective. Our stories about our experience are our version of the stories. Sometimes there is photographic, video, or DNA evidence that proves that our version is true, otherwise it's the version we will stick to while recognizing that others might have experienced the same event differently.
- What worth is there in the stories if they aren’t true?