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Soubresaut's avatar

What questions do you not want answers to?

Asked by Soubresaut (13714points) December 2nd, 2018

Imagine that for some reason you could know anything you wanted to know, and all you have to do is ask. (Maybe some highly advanced alien or supernatural entity tells you the answer to anything you ask. Maybe you have a friend who somehow has the means/technology/ability to rapidly and definitively answer questions that were once impossible to answer. Etc.) The answer you get will always be the correct answer—or if you prefer, you’ll always be provided with a means to verify the answer, and the answer is always shown to be true.

Is there anything you wouldn’t want to ask? Is there anything you would rather be wrong or uncertain about than know?

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11 Answers

Pinguidchance's avatar

If it’s my question then wouldn’t it be a contradiction in terms to describe it as such and not want an answer?

Is your question rhetorical or is it just mine?

seawulf575's avatar

When and how I die.

janbb's avatar

@seawulf575 I agree with you about something! :-)

Mariah's avatar

I would actually choose to know when I’ll die, if that were possible. I know that’s a question that people mostly don’t want to know the answer to. But if I could know I were going to die young, I’d stop saving for retirement and use that money to travel. If I knew I were going to make it longer, I’d stop worrying so damn much.

I wouldn’t want to know when any of my loved ones are going to die. That would just ruin me.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

“Do you think that I am stupid?” I don’t want an answer to that.

augustlan's avatar

I wouldn’t ask what every minute of my future looks like. The twist and turns make life interesting. Even the bad ones, in retrospect.

And I’m with @Mariah on the death thing. I wouldn’t want to know when my loved ones would die, but would ask about the time and manner of my own death for a variety of reasons.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

I couldn’t stand the pain.

Soubresaut's avatar

@Pinguidchance—that’s fair. I guess when I was thinking about this hypothetical myself, I started to think about everything as a question, even things I think that I know, and that leaked into how I worded it. But yeah, I guess ordinarily we’re not going around thinking in questions about things we already think we know, or we don’t know we don’t know, or we don’t mind not knowing. I didn’t mean to limit the discussion just to questions people already have. I did mean to include things that we feel certain about, that we wouldn’t think of or frame as questions usually.

The death thing is interesting to me… I think I would want to know, but I can’t imagine a world where my knowledge of it doesn’t alter my future. If I’m “supposed” to die in an accident, or from something that is treatable if caught soon enough, etc., then I’m going to avoid the scenario where the accident occurs, or have doctors run tests to catch the disease early, etc. If it’s truly something unavoidable… I think I’d still want to know. Then at least I know I couldn’t have done anything differently, except plan accordingly (kind of like @Mariah mentioned).

I guess following that logic I’d also want to know when loved ones would die… but only if I could first ask their permission to find out.

That said, I get why others wouldn’t ask either.

I’m still trying to think of a question I wouldn’t ask, which is kind of why I asked this question. I mean, I wouldn’t ask them things like “what’s my name?” But I’d definitely ask all the “big” stuff I could think of.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

I wouldn’t want to know when I was going to die. Can you imagine the state of mind counting down the seconds? Knowing you’re going to die in about 2 hours? Ig. No.

augustlan's avatar

@Mariah and I probably want to know about our deaths because we’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about it (we’ve both nearly died on more than one occasion). Chronic and/or potentially deadly illness will do that to you. In addition to that, I worried that my childhood abuser would kill me for a long time.

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