What constitutes a good question? In this week’s podcast, we examine one of the gripping questions of our time: are there more doors or wheels on planet Earth?

We use the wheels vs doors debate as a gateway into the dynamics of questions and information exchange, considering how a question should be defined and whether it is the same as generating a hypothesis. In doing so, we discuss logical positivism, value of information theory, Fermi analysis and the Zen Buddhist concept of Mu. Finally, we share the best and worst questions we’ve asked or been asked.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• More wheels or doors?
• Vienna Circle
• Fermi Estimate
• Manhattan Project

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing wheels versus doors. Chris, wheels, doors, which is better? That's not exactly the question, but... Well, hold on, it was wheels. Okay,

who's winning then? Wheels versus doors. Yeah, yeah, well, quite. Yeah, but I mean, essentially, for those who don't recognise those two terms... Which includes me. Well, I know what they are, but... Yeah, hopefully you know what wheels and doors are, but there has been a huge debate raging since a Kiwi Twitter user, at New York Nixon, posted or created a poll via Twitter that he forwarded, that basically said, my mates and I are having the stupidest debate. Do you think there are more doors or wheels in the world? So that's the question. Interesting. And this has been now, because it hasn't been that long, I think it's been less than a month since this debate has been raging. But the volume of analysis that's gone into it has been huge. So I don't think we're particularly going to address the question itself. What we're interested in, primarily, is why has that captured everybody's imagination? And what does it say about the nature of a great question?

I think this is great. I'm looking forward to this. Also, I just wonder, is a great question now, the same as 20, 30 years ago? Because part of this is the enabling issue, enabling vehicle of Twitter. But I don't think that's the most interesting thing about it. But it's

what is it? Certainly the propagation of the question wouldn't have been possible

without this kind of thing. It's such a big issue, a big question. I'm not quite sure how to go at this. It is. It's bigger than Israel-Palestine. Yeah. It's much more. Yeah, it is. But it's... Gone. Instinct. Start with your instinct. Okay. Well, I mean, this is really for you guys, not for me. But I mean, what is a good question? What's the question? Why would we ask a question?

What are we trying to answer? Start with your instinct about what there's more of, wheels or

doors? Oh, so we do want to discuss the question. Oh, yeah, we definitely want to dive into wheels.

You just said we don't want to. But anyway, well, we need to talk about that. Okay, well,

let's briefly touch upon it. Because that will give us a bit of a case study into why this is interesting. And actually, what's great about this question is part of you goes, ah, wheels, because they tend to be more of them on any individual thing. And you think cars, you think bikes. Brilliant. Okay. So immediately, that sort of starts upping... Cars cancel themselves out, don't they? How do you mean? Cars have got four doors and four wheels. Oh, God. Well, I mean, but they tend to have more, more wheels. They've got a spare wheel in the

boot. And they can get two doors. But is the boot a door? Right. And is the bonnet a door? In which

case, in fact, they've got more doors than... All these peripheral ancillary questions. Well, no, I think we should discuss some of them because they're actually quite interesting. But also what do we mean by a door? Because as soon as we... Right, so that's a good question. Spin-off question. Yeah, exactly. Because I think for a door, I don't think car door. I just think door in a building. Right. Now, what about a cupboard door? Right, exactly. Or as has even been put forward, the door on an advent calendar. Yeah, yeah. So we get down to definitions. But let's

define for a moment. Let's try and attack this. We'll attack this question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So

let's define. I don't know why I'm answering this. This is your podcast. But for me, a door, means a door in a building. And it can be an external door, and it can be an internal door.

No, that's way too restrictive. Why? Because a cupboard door is definitely a door. No, no. Well,

you've asked me to define it. I'm defining it. This is how I want to define it. This is what I think is a good definition. Because otherwise it starts to get too loose. As in, you know, what if we have a dumb waiter? What if we have an advent calendar? What if we... What car doors? A door into your mind. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's not... I think it's not unsensible to listen. Advent calendars, I can rule it out. No, listen, Nick, you asked me, I'm answering. So I think it's not unsensible to say, let's, for the purposes of getting an answer, let's restrict it to doors into buildings, or doors inside buildings. Let's say that for a moment. Okay.

It's a cupboard door is inside a building. Yeah, but it's not, you don't walk through it. Yeah, you can do. But I mean, look, I think it's more... No, but it means if you mean a kitchen cupboard that's on the wall. No, I'm going to say it's a hinged panel that divides a volume into two volumes. I think that is going to do the trick for me. So there has to be space behind it. So a false door. Precisely. False door on an advent calendar. No. Okay. Okay, so you can define it

like that. All right. But you so you could and then you could... No, I think my definition is

really good, because it covers all the things that people think of as doors and rules out all the stupid things like advent calendars. But it would include cupboard doors. Yes, but that's

fine. I want it to include cupboard doors. All right. So I mean, anything other than cupboard doors? So I mean, doors that I've talked about, cupboard doors as well. Any other doors? Yeah,

I've got a bit of a problem because mine includes lids. What about the cover on your piano? You're

upright over there. Yeah, so you would include that. So that's hinged but it also has to... But that is not a door. It's got the movement. The movement has to be in the sort of If I would say to you, could you open that door for me? You'd go, what are you talking about? You're right. Okay, so it has to be. So I think it has to be on its side. So a lid wouldn't count. But if you put the box on its side... So if you put that piano on its side, suddenly it turns

into a door. But then that's facetious because actually you probably wouldn't keep a piano on

its side. Yeah, would you call the entrance to an attic a door? I mean, I think what this... Hold

on. But also, I just realised, if you were to go into the kitchen and I would say, oh, could you open that door, please? You would go over to the door at the back of the house into your garden, right? And I would go, no, no, that one on the wall. Yeah, but that's because I'm inferring... So you say, oh, Fraser, you mean the cupboard door. Yeah, that's because I would infer that

you would never need a cupboard door opened. So therefore, it's actually not a door. No, because you would never need the cupboard door opened. Well, no, that's not the correct answer.

A door that's been manufactured but isn't in place yet. But anyway, what I think this highlights...

Just to say, I know, but I just want to win this. It just shows you're wrong. All right, but let's take your definition. Are there more doors or wheels? Well, hold on. Okay. He hasn't defined wheels yet. We haven't even got on to wheels. We haven't got on to wheels yet. Because I think what Chris is going to say, actually, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but it's just to start showing how you interpret

the question and you can make a difference. We haven't even got near an answer yet. And we're still defining certain areas.

There's still a heated debate around this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's not even get into wheels.

Well, no, because I think this is key. You want to get into wheels? Because watching what we're doing... You want wheels? I'll give you wheels. Watching what we're doing now is an important thing to understanding why this is interesting. Absolutely. But I started by simply going around my house. Yeah, yeah. And I thought I'd counted 21 doors. Okay. Now, that does include a few cupboard doors, lest you think I live in some kind of mansion. Yeah. I thought there were 21 doors. And then I thought, well, but in my son's room alone, there's Lego. And Lego... It's got doors and wheels. We all know they're the biggest tire manufacturer in the world in terms of numbers of units. So he's going to have over... He's got to have 100 Lego wheels, if not more. And then, of course, I realised just on my chair in the bunker, there's 10 wheels. Wait. In the bunker. Yeah. And now Chris is going to say, what about Lego doors? And I was like, ah. But that's not a door.

But if the wheel is a wheel, why can't the Lego wheel is a wheel?

There are certainly far fewer Lego doors than there are wheels. I can tell you that. But I think I concluded that in my house, there's probably half an order of magnitude more wheels than doors. And scaling up to the entire world, therefore, there are more wheels than doors. Unless there's...

Yeah.

And that's to say nothing of the things inside, say, a clock mechanism, which might be a wheel.

Could be described as wheels, but again, depends on how you're defining a wheel, presumably.

So I think lots of these definitions of wheels are just not commonsensical. You know, how about a wheel attached to a vehicle? That's the only wheel that counts. Well, no, I mean, a wheel on a chair. That's a wheel. Don't tell me that. That's not... That's clearly a wheel. A wheel that is attached to something that helps that thing move. Yeah, go on. Yeah, but a cog in a clock helps something move. No, but it doesn't help the object itself move. It helps something within the object move.

Okay, well, which acts as a... Which sits between the object and the floor. No, but there's a reason why a cog is called a cog and a wheel is called a wheel.

What about, you know those... You know at the end of the supermarket conveyor belt? Yeah. There's the little thing with wheels on... Rollers, not wheels. The rollers, the rollers, right. Yeah, so I think they're called rollers, not wheels. Yeah, okay, they're called rollers, but they do help something move and they do rotate.

Yeah, but they're not moving that thing along. They're not moving with the thing. Yeah, that's what I mean. Right, so, I mean, well, I'm the only person who's given an answer so far.

So, well, no, I want to actually wish there were more. You say wheels is the answer, right? Well, that's my... I would say by my definition, so a door being a thing that you can walk through and it's in a house but it's not a cupboard because a cupboard's a different thing to a door and it's into the house or inside the house. Those are doors. Wheels are things on which you... Yeah, we've done all that. What's the answer? I think wheels.

Yeah, I mean the Empire State Building definitely doesn't have one room per person, but it has at least five wheels per person because every person has a chair on wheels. Yeah, and within my definition that would, yeah. Somebody else pointed out that whereas a wheel can be a door, a door can't be a wheel. Hold on, a wheel can be a door, but a door can't be a wheel. That turns out not to be a very useful piece of information, but it's just an interesting argument.

You could presumably construct a... hang on. How could a wheel be a door?

I get how a door can't be a wheel.

Oh, oh, like almost like a rotate one of those revolving doors, is that what you mean?

You could imagine making a door out of a wheel. Anyway, it doesn't make much sense. However, I did actually think, I wonder if I can work out how many trap door spiders there are, because they have doors. But actually is a trap door a door? Not by your definition. No, it's not. It's a trap door. Yeah.

Oh, anyway, so let's bring in Chris, because when me and Nick were having our discussion, you said, ah, well this shows, go from there.

Well, so I think one of the interesting aspects of this question is it's not unidimensional, right? And before you even get to trying to estimate the answer, there's the whole issue of defining the terms. I think there's also another intriguing aspect of this question is that it feels like there should be an answer to it. It feels like there is a definite answer. It's not one of those questions like, why am I here that's open ended? There is a number of doors, by any definition, and there are a number of wheels that actually exist today that are theoretically knowable, but which practically is completely unknowable. So I think that in itself is interesting. And it's philosophical and it brings in semantics and all sorts of approaches to estimation and analysis. So I think there are lots of factors in this question that make it an intriguing question.

Absolutely. So where do we go?

Well, let's just talk about those kinds of that, this taxonomy of questions. Yes. Because I think if we start with the logical positivists as a natural starting point, their division. I remember studying this briefly, but I don't really, I can't remember what logical positivism is about. Very simple, but extremely powerful kind of idea that I feel like if everyone had this idea in their heads, life would be much easier. Which is, and it's not totally straightforward, but I mean, as a general rule, debates tend to be debates either about the meaning and use of a word, or they're about something factual. That's the logical positive. For something to be meaningful, if I say something meaningful and you disagree, we must be disagreeing about something factual. We can go and find out.

So either something real, or we're not sure about the terms.

So if I say, oh, you know. That's definitely what's going on here. If I say humankind has made... Both things are going on. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But if I say humankind has made progress in the last thousand years and you say, well, no, because we're still killing each other. And I say, yeah, but we put a man on the moon. And we might disagree on all the facts. It's just whether we call that progress is probably where we differ on there. And it's a different kind of debate. Like, we can't go out and prove it by getting some information from somewhere. As Chris says, there is a bit of that going on here. Although I would say probably the answer, I would have thought the answer, whatever it is, is not that sensitive to definitional discussions. But it is definitely an interesting aspect of Wheels v. Doors. But I just also just want to add one extra thing, which the logical positivists would have said was probably meaningless. But I mean, I think it's another important category, which is debates about preferences, which I think also cause some of the... When we're looking for what are the big debates that people internally fight about, a lot of the internet arguments fall into that category. So it's should you have pineapple on a pizza? Should you bite or lick an ice cream? What's the correct way to draw an X? Who ought to have the armrests on the middle seat of an aeroplane? And questions like that, which seem very important and about which it's possible to make progress by introducing arguments, but which ultimately boil down to a question of preferences rather than a factual or definitional question.

And sorry to interrupt. And I think, actually, as you were talking there, I think the most interesting... If the sort of two things you talked about, which is you're either talking about an argument about the real facts, or you're talking about definitions. In this case, with the wheels versus doors, I think what's far, far more interesting is defining is, you know, the definitions rather than...

That is definitely where we had most heated debate.

Yeah, because who really cares how many wheels or doors? Who, I mean, who knows? I mean, whatever. But what's way more interesting and what we were getting more into is, okay, let's get into the guts of this and what are we really talking about? What are our definitions?

Yeah. And I think that's sort of born out... You know, Nick was talking about preferences. And, you know, that was sort of satirised by Swift with the idea of which end you should, or how you should stand your egg. And that being a contentious debate between, you know, the people of Lilliput and Blethescu. But obviously, that was satirising the real world, right? If you look at things like the Reformation, you know, thousands of lives lost over what the three of us here, I'm sure, would say are similar issues of preference. We don't feel them ourselves, you know, and they look trivial to us. But obviously, people were prepared to be burnt at the stake for that particular question. You know, we're so committed and engaged. Yeah.

And I think it's interesting that people don't generally have religious debates these days that feel like factual debates. But that in the time of the Reformation, that was much more of a thing, you know, that people would talk about, well, is it actually the body and blood of Christ or is it actually not? And, you know, lacking someone to swoop in and say, look, we've got the scientific method. We can find this out, provided you can provide us with a, you know, a kind of critical experiment where we can find out whether this piece of bread is a body or not. You know, given that that didn't exist, I think it was much easier to carry a debate like that on than it is these days. Sure. Someone at some point is going to pull a logical positivism on it and say, you know, this is pretty meaningless.

So I can't remember how and why you brought in logical positivism, but I might have headed you off on something else there. You started talking about that, and I think you were going to move on to something else about, we're talking about how can we go at this? How can we examine this question? So we've talked about logical positivism.

Just that, I think, you know, I suppose all I'm trying to say is they're actually, those sorts of debates have very different character. You know, when you're having an interesting discussion about a piece of fact. Now, in this case, I think, you know, more wheels to doors. Let's assume we have an absolute type. It's a bit like, you know, we know what an ant and a bee is, right? But are there more ants than bees? You kind of think, well, I don't really know. But you could think your way through it. You could have quite an interesting discussion about whether there are more ants than bees. I think the discussion about the definitions is an enabling factor. But it's not like once you've got that sorted, the answer will be obvious. I think it's interesting that this question actually has both of those.

Yeah, yeah.

Chris looks like he wants to say something.

Yeah, well, I was just going to say there is an issue at the heart of this, really, which is what is a question, right? Do you see what I've done there? I like it. Yeah, yeah. The question, what is a question? Yeah, but because there's some quite interesting research done by, or not research, but thinking done by Dr. Lani Watson, the Oxford philosopher, who's been looking at what do people understand as to what constitutes a question? So, for example, when you type a search into Google, is that a question? We're expecting Peter in a moment, right? When he, if he rings the doorbell, if the doorbell rings and something will come into our mind, is that a question? They've sort of done... Well, are we asking, when he rings the doorbell and we think, I wonder if that's Peter?

Oh, do you mean questions we pose to ourselves?

Pose to ourselves, internal questions. Similarly, in fact, she's done quite an interesting experiment. So she's posed scenarios to people, a few thousand people, and said, do you think there's a question here? So rather than look at a philosophical definition of it, how do people themselves define what questions are? And when the scenario was, Sarah is walking up the street, she gets to the edge of the pavement, she looks both ways, is that a question? 66% of people said there was a question there, which is presumably, you know, should I cross the road now?

I was thinking a bit more along the lines of, is there a car coming? Or is there a car coming?

It's very similar, but I mean... So, but it's quite interesting, you know, so actually, you know, questions are far more prevalent than just debate type questions. But the question is, what elevates something from something going on in our mind or something we might be considering to a question that formulates debate that gets schools around it and so on? That's...

So this is, this feels to me, this is about information, right? So... You're doing well, Fraser. Spot on. Thank you, sir. It feels like, you know, so that question that everyone recognises that that's a question, even though the question is not verbalised even, explicit, which is that person is looking for information that's going to help her make a decision in a moment whether to cross the road or not, right? It's very specific. Is Peter going to arrive? I mean, that's similar, okay? But I guess it's a question about what's the right question, what's the appropriate question?

I mean, this is the thing that I don't think a question is... I don't think you can meaningfully distinguish a question from simply a hypothesis. And a hypothesis is something that could be true. And that's that, you know, trivially can transform a hypothesis into a question. So, as you say, I think a question is like potential information. It's about matching. Anything that is possible information.

So let's say I want to know whether this evening when I go to the casino, should I put all my money on red or should I put all my money on black?

There is a slight issue there, but that's...

But what I want to say is I could ask the question, is Peter going to arrive? Right? That question doesn't help me answer whether it should go on red or black.

No, okay. So I was going to... Yeah. So there is... I think we want to distinguish between interesting questions and useful questions. Right? So useful questions, this idea of value of information, quite well developed. And it's essentially de-risking a decision. So information that de-risks a decision, which makes it more likely you're going to choose the appropriate action. So in the case of going to the casino, the information about whether the ball's going to come down on red or black is very useful for you. And you'd be willing to pay an enormous amount of money for that piece of information. If you had a million pounds to bet on black or red, really you'd be able to... You'd be willing to pay up to, well, in theory, half a million quid. But to get a definite answer to that question, you'd definitely make a profit. Could be green. Could be green. In fact, I think... In the US, I think you can bet on green, can't you? But anyway, so there's that question about useful information, which is nowhere near the same as interesting information. So I wanted to... And I think useful is quite well understood. And I'm not sure it's worth talking much about. But it's basically useful information gives you an insight into the state of the world in such a way that you can tune your decision to the world. And so important, useful information is not the same as interesting.

Now, I think it's worth pointing out that the answer to this wheels versus doors question is evidently not useful, right?

But the debate about the semantics of it is more on the interesting side of things. Do we agree? Okay, good. Let's talk about then, what do you mean by interesting, right? What do we mean by that?

I've got a few suggestions. I don't know if Chris has got some proposed criteria for interestingness. First of all, it can't be easy to just find the answer out.

Okay.

Which means that we were in the realm of things that are not covered by statistical data sets and things where we can just go and look it up. I mean, that's obvious, right? But and I think that's part of the reason why Google has really killed a lot of those pub debates, because it's now easy to find out the answer to things. But as we know with wheels v doors, there's no database of all the wheels and doors in the world, which is great. So we're in the realm of the unmeasured. So I think, first of all, it's got to be not measured, so not easily find outable. And also, I don't think it should fall to common sense very easily. So in other words, if I said, what are there more of doors or MRI machines, right? Well, it's obvious that there's more doors. And if I say, what are there more doors than houses? You'd be like, well, yes, because every house has a door. Easy reasoning gets you to the answer. So it's got to be not in that realm either. But I think it should involve the ability to introduce interesting arguments. Like, it can't just be a matter. It's like if I said, what are there more grains of couscous or grains of rice on this table? And you'd be like, well, I could find the answer out. And it would be laborious. But there's no interesting argument. I know I can brute force an answer to that. Whereas this question about these kind of interesting insights about, oh, you know, every chair has five wheels, but every person has less than the door. And you think, oh, OK, that's important. Let's add that in. But now we need to think of another case, which perhaps isn't covered by that. Are there buildings where there aren't any wheels? Or are there cars or vehicles where there's no doors? And, you know, there's sort of interesting, multiple different types of case. So I think that question of interesting reasoning, you have to be able to apply reasoning to it, almost like doing Fermi analysis. You know, on what analysis? Well, Fermi analysis, you know, Enrico Fermi was this physicist who works on the Manhattan project, among other things. But he was famous for being able to answer apparently unanswerable questions. And it's something that interviewers like to test people on. So it's things like, you know, how many piano tuners are there in Chicago? Or how long would it take to move the Great Pyramids, you know, 30 miles down the road or whatever? Questions like that, you know, where you have to kind of work out an answer on the back of an envelope. And certainly in our line of work, you know, one of the things that we try and encourage people to do is Fermi reasoning, because it really gets you quite a long way by itself. And I think...

Sorry, but what is the difference between that kind of reasoning and other reasoning?

Oh, it's just the name given to that sort of, OK, I don't have any information, but I'm going to build a model.

Breaking down your estimates into constituent parts. So how many houses, first of all, how many doors does it take?

Right, so working on what data you do have and building a framework.

Exactly, building a model that you can then make do some work for you without actually going and finding out. You don't need to go and find out some data somewhere, but there's some interesting model building that you can do that gives you some insight into it. The Drake equation is a good example, which is about the number of intergalactic intelligent civilizations. I remember this. Yeah, so where you might go, well, I don't know. We've got one sample, which is Earth. What's that going to tell us? And Frank Drake created this kind of model, which says, OK, well, how many planets have got water on or whatever? How many planets are this far from the sun? And what percentage, how many galaxies are there? And, you know, you end up with a kind of number at the end and you go, OK, well, you know, is that right or wrong? But the point is, you've got a better understanding of the kind of thing you're talking about.

Yeah, OK.

So that's my, yeah. So I'd say, you know, that it can't be easy to find out the answer. It mustn't fall easily to common sense, but that it has to be vulnerable to some kind of Fermi analysis to be interesting.

OK. Annoyingly, we're getting close to needing to stop. We've still got plenty of, you know, juice. There's still plenty here to talk about, but we're sort of, you know, towards the end. I want to talk about answers for a moment. I don't know if this is the same thing or something different. So, and perhaps we should come to Chris, but because I do, I could be wrong. And we talked about this in the pre-research, right? Which was when we decide which, what subject we're going to talk about, because the Japanese.

That's where the research stops with you. Yeah.

Oh, no, it does. And it's only when I hit record that I then start to think about the question. The research starts with the pre-research phase. Yeah, it starts and stops there. Mu, right? We talked about this. Is this relevant or not?

The Zen concept.

Yeah, which is a Japanese concept of, you know, should I, you know, is God watching me, right? Is he watching me? And should I be worried about the fact that God's watching me and so modify my behaviour? I think a good answer to that might be Mu, okay? Which if I, if I understand correctly, the concept, it's not a question, it's not, the answer does not mean yes. It does not mean no. It means you defined your question poorly or the question is irrelevant, right? And I think that would be a good response to that question. Am I on to something? Do you want to talk about that? Are we talking about the same thing or something different or?

See, I, well, go on. I want to hear from Chris for a bit.

Well, I was just going to say that I think it partly comes back to Nick's distinction between useful and interesting questions because useful questions need to be properly defined so that, you know, and there's obviously been a lot of work done, for example, on geopolitical forecasting and the fact that if you ask a vague question, you're going to get not terribly useful answer and that it needs to, you know, have sort of set parameters around the question and so on. So I think it does apply in that case. However, I think something like the wheels versus doors question shows that actually poorly defined questions, not poorly defined questions, but questions with hidden depth are actually intriguing. So it seems like the answer to that question, the wheels versus doors question is straightforward at first glance, but there is hidden depth to it. So once you then go, oh, hang on a minute, what actually is a door or a wheel? And then you start wondering about how you might determine that. So what looks like a simple question has got layers. And I think also as you're going down and trying to answer that question, you are sort of applying skills or building models as you go. And so I think in the question, in terms of what makes an interesting question, I think there you've got to really think about it more like it's the journey rather than the destination, whereas your issue of, well, that question is not, I can't really answer that question, I think misses the point of what an interesting question is. It's about getting to the answer. It's not about the answer itself. Whereas a useful question is one where I'd really like to know the answer, please.

Okay. Yeah, no, that makes sense. We need to wrap up. I've actually got a question or two I want to ask before we do. I mean, this reminds me of going back to when I was thinking about what course I might study at university. I remember in the prospectus when I was thinking about theology, I was interested in history, I was interested in English. And I think in the prospectus it said theology is a subject for people who are more interested in questions than answers. And I read that. It's not dishonest. It's not, is it? No. And for me, I was like, yes, okay, great. Yeah, I'm up for that. Anyway, my question is this, unless anything, Bernie, you want to add?

I just, I feel like we've slightly skated over the fact that even questions about definitions at a deeper level can be really interesting. And in fact, I think are the most interesting. So in other words, what does the concept... I thought we covered that nicely, no? Well, we didn't really cover. Yeah. I think, you know, Go for it quickly. But I mean, the really big questions in philosophy, you know, what does good mean? What does true mean? What is science? What does it mean to be alive? Those kinds of questions can be, you know, generate lots of really interesting debate. And they're not about definition, are they? Well, well...

I mean, they can be, but also...

They're about how a concept works, I think is what I would say.

Tell me the questions again, for example. Well, I mean... What does good mean?

Yeah, ethics or, you know, epistemology and all of those kind of, you know, questions about what...

Even why am I here really is a question about what do you mean by why?

Although I would say that that's a very straightforward factual question. I mean, that's, you know... You can answer that with... Yeah. One of the things that people think philosophers are interested in is what's the meaning of life. But I think most philosophers say it doesn't have one. And it's not a well-formed question. Yeah. But I mean, there are things like debates like in The Predictor, which is a debate in decision theory, for example. I won't go into it. People can look it up. But it's generated absolutely tons of discussion for a very simple problem, because it's not clear how you would go about attacking it. But it's clearly still a meaningful question. But it's not a factual question. You go out and get some data about it. It's really about... It's on a very deep level about the meaning of some of the concepts and about, you know, whether or not those concepts are coherent and things. So I think those kinds of debates are really good. We haven't really touched on that.

Yeah, it's almost another podcast. This part is kind of makes me want to go off and do, you know, an online degree in philosophy. That said, I remember I opted to take a paper at university on the philosophy of religion. I hated it. And I remember Chris Lear, we were talking in one of the episodes he was on, we were talking about philosophers and how they're very good at sort of, you know, teasing this stuff out. And in many ways, their job is thinking about this and having good answers to it or good questions. But nobody understands what philosophers are talking about.

Yes, it's not true. It's just a myth that people who don't know about philosophy spin, I think. Oh, you reckon? Yeah. Yeah. Philosophy is very straightforward.

I don't think it is. I don't think it is. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Listen, I just got a question I want to ask. Don't know if it's a good one or not. What's either the best question you personally have ever been asked? Or what's the worst question you personally have ever been asked? I've got one. Apart from this one. Apart from, no, that was a, yeah, because that was the best, right? So, so yeah. Good question. Yeah. Anyone good to go? I am. Not, not yet. No. Okay, you go.

Yeah, I, one of the ones that always springs to mind when I think about really, really good questions is a, probably it's, I mean, Mythbusters have tackled this one as well. But what's great about it is the fact that you can sort of really work your way through it. And it, well, actually I'll say, I'll say two. Yeah, go on. So let's say you have a massive treadmill and a jumbo jet that's on the treadmill. Yeah. And the treadmill is designed so that however fast the jumbo jet is going, it's going backwards at the same speed. Can the plane take off? That's a brilliant question. There is actually, well, in my mind, a very clear answer, but I won't, I won't say what it is. The other one is where you. Why did someone ask you that? No, they didn't. Well, it's an internet question from a few years ago. But the other one is that you have a truck full of birds. Yeah. And it's slightly heavier than the maximum weight of a bridge. And so the truck driver bashes the side, all the birds take off inside. And while they're flying, he is then lighter and can cross the bridge. Or not, because aren't the birds beating down with the same amount of force that they would need to keep themselves on, you know. But then you say, well, what if there was a bird flying overhead while the truck was on the bridge? Would that make it heavier? Well, no. So how does, you know, could that work? And under what conditions? Another brilliant question. It is a brilliant question. Yeah, but anyway, we haven't got time to get into them now.

I think your best ever questions are not very good questions. No, that's because you.

They are interesting.

They're interesting, but they're not particularly personal to you.

No, I think. But the best internet debate ever was the dress. We all know that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Was that to do with colour? My favourite internet, yeah.

My favourite internet debate of all time, hands down, that one. But that's, you know. And I'm right, was it colour? Was that it was about? Yes, was it white and gold, or was it black and blue? But it's been so done to death, I can barely bring myself to raise it again.

Although your questions are good questions, I didn't get what I wanted there, Nick. You disappointed me. Chris. Well, I'll try and disappoint you even more, Fraser.

No, I think the questions I'm interested in are generally ones that have had a huge impact. So things like, not who killed JFK, but what was that all about? Because there's obviously a whole history of conspiracy theories around that question. But just what actually happened feels like it would be really satisfying to know the answer to. So it's not necessarily a posed question, but it's an open question that I think is interesting.

And if the information were present, it is answerable, right? There's definitely an answer if we could access that information.

Yeah, it seems like there should be. And then the other kind of questions that I like, similarly historical, are counterfactual questions. Like what would have happened had the Nazis won the Second World War? And obviously there's a whole fictional genre about that kind of thing. Where actually, I like counterfactuals because you don't know, but it's a really interesting thought experiment. So, yeah, those kinds of historically fundamental questions I like.

Yeah, you have disappointed me. Fraser, go on. Now you've built yourself up. Get ready, right? By the way, I mean, counterfactuals are interesting, but can sometimes feel fairly meaningless because they are themselves vulnerable to further counterfactuals. Yeah, true. So are you about to say like, why do men have nipples or something like that?

No. What's your question? Fingers. You're going to love this.

Because you sort of think, I'm not sure where to start unpacking this one. Yeah. Yeah.

And I was just completely, what?

I think that's quite a good question.

It's a good question.

I think that's a good question because it boils down to the whole issue of what does that question... You know, the definition of what is white, what is ethnicity, why is he asking it in the first place, has he got an agenda? I think that being Brazilian stops you being white. Yeah, I think that's... There's so much going on. That's an interesting question.

Yeah. So actually, right, here's another question. Can the worst ever question be actually the best ever question? Try and get your needle around that.

Go on, what's the other one? What's your good question? Oh, no, I only got... Oh, okay. No, that's fair enough. Yeah, yeah. That'll do.

And by the way, my mate, when I went back to the hotel and told him this, he thought it was hilarious. He couldn't stop laughing because apart from anything else, I was actually bright red that day because I'd got sunburnt. All right. I think we'll stop there. So thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. Been here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.