Someone actually was once offered the opportunity to ask such a question. Here is the question that was asked:
- What is the content of the pair in which the first half is the best question I can ask, and the second half is the answer to that question?
Here is the answer received:
- The best question you can ask is the question you just asked, and the answer to that question is the one you are receiving now.
If you want to game the system, the best way to do it would be to ask something that has a ridiculously long answer so you can get the most information possible out of it. For example you could ask, “what are the full contents of the largest, most useful collection of knowledge humanity will ever have, condensed down small enough for us to process?” That’d probably get you a futuristic multi-petabyte hard drive that can still plug into your computer and has a version of Wikipedia from like 10,000 years in the future.
The monkey’s finger curls down as a lossy algorithm is applied.
what are the exact numbers for the next Powerball drawing, in winning order?
…don’t fuck with me, genie, I got problems.
The number is the same as that of a Chinese fortune cookie lotto number. 50 people win an and split a 5 million dollar jackpot, yourself included.
You get about $70k.
Shit man, I’d be happy with a 7k jackpot tbh. 70k would be hella worth it.
Hey I can answer that 100% truthfully. I don’t know :)
That TECHNICALLY doesnt answer the question because he didnt ask what you know, he asked what the next numbers are.
Where exactly is the closest alien civilization located?
What would be the scariest possible answer to this?
I feel like finding out either “disturbingly close” or “far enough away that we’d never reach it before the heat death of the universe” would both be pretty terrifying answers. Or even if the answer somehow turned out to be “there aren’t any”
What happens to us (our consciousness, soul, whatever) when we die?
Nothing. The machine stops.
What do I win?
If it were so simple, you’d think we’d be able to put our thumb down on what consciousness “is” and “isn’t,” where it comes from, etc.
It’s electrical impulses in our brains.
What do I win?
A nobel prize if you could prove it, which you cannot currently.
Literally the biggest, hairiest problem in computation right now. Only thing keeping us from blowing the lid off AGI is not knowing or even remotely understanding what consciousness is.
Our brain is literally nothing but electrical impulses.
We don’t know what specific arrangement of impulses, but we know 100% that it’s electrical impulses.
Again, it has been yet to be proved.
If it seems so obvious to you, please go on and prove it. You’ll die a nobel laureate rather than an armchair dbag.
What are you smoking? It’s been proved, inasmuch as “it’s daytime when the sun is out” has been proved.
Our brain is made up of neurons firing electrical impulses.
Consciousness is in the brain.
Therefore, somewhere in those electrical impulses is consciousness.
Strange you get so defensive. Maybe it’s because your psyche can’t handle the fact that there’s nothing after death, and you need to cling to whatever faint hope you have that there might be such thing as a soul?
