Answers?

My generation spent our young adult years being fascinated by all the new technology cascading to the market. We knew television from our youth, but soon it was color television, then there were VCR’s and cable TV, video games, there were computers in the office and then computers at home – and then the internet and cell phones arrived! Scanners, digital pix, e-mail, social media, texting, news on demand, ipads, smart phones, search engines – all of this was a long way from the US Postal Service and the Encyclopedia Britannica. We were fascinated, seduced, enamored, and then we were… suspicious, and sometimes overwhelmed.

I remember the first time I was exposed to a spread sheet program (Lotus 123) and realized those ledgers and blue and red pencils could go out the window. But the initial joy was followed by the realization that the answers we got from the spread sheets were only as good as the data and formulas that we put into them. The word processors produced gorgeous copy – error-free with justified margins, but the content was if anything diminished by the speed with which it could be produced. We learned the acronym GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out. We found that we could reach anyone in the world from our cell phone or computer, but that there weren’t that many people we wanted to talk to. (Remember Thoreau? “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate!”) Google answered our questions, but we weren’t at all sure what questions to ask. Maybe Picasso spoke for all of us when he stated that “Computers are useless. They only give you the answers.”

Of course, computers and rational people can answer what are called convergent problems – ones with definitive answers that are the same across time and individuals. How do you build a bicycle? How far is it to the sun? But what are the important questions? For you? For me: “What should I do? How should I live? And (as I got older): Why haven’t I figured this out before now?” Ah, but maybe the problem is a blind belief in rationality itself and that we (or our computers) can “figure it out.” The best literature is written about the big questions of life. I just finished Richard Powers wonderful Prisoner’s Dilemma (and see here for a description of the philosophical problem for which the novel is titled) and the question that Powers asks is “what, if anything, can one private citizen do to make the shared scenario less horrible?” This is a great question for our time. A good exercise in reading is to attempt to ascertain what questions the author is asking and what – if any – alternative answers are presented to these interrogations.

Questions and answers. For all the rationality of Socrates, he is surely better at questions than answers. And wisdom literature of the religious variety is not much for definitive answers. In the Bhagavad Gita, we open with Arjuna asking Krishna why he must engage in battle. Krishna tells Arjuna that it makes no difference, in the end friend and foe are the same, and that Krishna himself is both the sacrifice and the sacrificer. Try to figure that out rationally. Arjuna learns a level of acceptance – “You have dispelled my doubts and delusions and I understand through your grace,” says Arjuna finally. “My faith is firm now, and I will do your will.”

Job asks God three questions: “Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?” “How can a man be just before God?” and “If a man die, shall he live again?” As far as I can see, God never answers any of these questions. After trying to argue rationally with his friends and with God, poor Job comes to the same conclusion: “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” God also takes Job’s “friends” to task for thinking they had “figured things out” and for giving Job false information. These friends end up needing to make big sacrifices and have Job intercede for them to stay on the right side of the Big Guy. The Book of Job and the Bhagavad-Gita are stories of acceptance, not stories of answers.

Computers have both absolute rationality and answers; it might appear that both are, in many ways, useless. Like Job’s friends. Computers give us answers, but answers – especially easy answers – are something of which we should be very suspicious.

But the questions, the questions are important. How do we interrogate our own lives to avoid GIGO? What are your questions? Think about it. And when you decide on your questions, run them through Google for a laugh.

This week’s story, “Don’t Eat the Pink Ones,” has more mysteries than answers, but it is appropriate for the end of the blueberry season.