A question is defined by the act of seeking information, not the question mark
A real question is defined by its function, not its form; asking is a power you can practise — and most of the answers AI hands out today have not answered any question that was seriously posed.
The video won't play here. Listen to the audio instead:
The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
Neither the question mark nor intonation marks what a question is
Nigel begins by assuming a question is whatever ends in a question mark. Lani counters that spoken questions carry no question marks at all, and we ask them all day long; intonation is no more reliable, since intonation systems differ completely across languages and cultures. In the online survey she has been running for 15 years she includes a "how are you" case, and participants split almost 50/50 — the disagreement turning on whether the speaker actually wants to know the answer. So the mark of a question does not lie in its form; form is only the surface.
— Lani WatsonA question is an act, not a sentence
Lani's formal definition is that a question is an information seeking act: whether something counts is settled by function, not by form. Many participants counted looking both ways before crossing the road, consulting a dictionary, even raising an eyebrow as questions, because all of these are non-verbal acts of seeking information. A rhetorical question is therefore not a real question, since on her view it is not aimed at acquiring information; what is genuinely blurry is where we draw the line on what counts as rhetorical.
— Lani WatsonAn insincere question is still a question
Nigel presses: must the asker sincerely want the answer? Lani says no. Her analogy is a hammer — a hammer hung on a wall as a piece of art is still a hammer, because driving nails is its function; an insincere question, so long as the information-seeking function attaches to the act, remains a question. That sits in contrast with the 50/50 split on the "how are you" test earlier: sincerity is not part of the definition, only one dimension of whether a question is being used properly.
— Lani WatsonPhilosophy can sit comfortably inside questions that have no answers
Nigel asks why other disciplines simply applaud after a talk while philosophy insists on questioning and hunting for holes. Lani says philosophy has a tradition thousands of years old of pursuing questions that have no answers, so it is comfortable sitting inside a question; 15 minutes of Q&A is nothing. She also accepts the other view of philosophy: test an idea to destruction, check its robustness with the harshest criticism available. But she cautions that this is easily read as rude, and that what matters is the manner and the intent of the asking — if you are genuinely seeking the truth, you should not simply antagonise the other person.
— Lani WatsonBefore asking whether ChatGPT is good, ask what it is answering
She worries that in the technology world answers are everywhere and everyone is racing to answer rather than to ask first. Her favourite question at the moment is: what question is ChatGPT the answer to? If it is a solution, an answer, then what was the question it originally answered? The framing pulls the assessment of AI away from ‘how good is the answer’ and towards ‘is the question itself worth answering’. Once the question has not been thought through, no quantity of answers amounts to more than solving an object nobody has defined.
— Lani WatsonThe collapse in children's questioning is taught, not the price of growing up
Once children enter school the volume of their questions drops quickly, and by secondary school it has all but fallen off a cliff; the silence that follows a teacher's ‘any questions?’ is the everyday face of that collapse. But Lani says the neurochemistry that drives questioning at ages 3 to 5 is still running in the adult brain — exploring and asking still deliver a dopamine reward. So we should not accept ‘you grow up and stop asking’; we should embrace that natural impulse and resist the way an answer-oriented culture suppresses questioning.
— Lani WatsonThe best question can be the simplest one
Nigel closes by asking her what the best question anyone has ever asked her is, and she laughs and answers: the one you have just asked. It is both the show's closing joke and a live demonstration of the whole episode's argument — the best question need not be complex or profound; it can arrive in the simplest possible form, so long as it really is seeking something.
— Lani WatsonIn their own words · checked verbatim
I don't think a question is defined by having a question mark at the end. I think we've got lots of questions that don't have question marks at the end.
Lani Watson0:00
a true question stands or falls on, not its form, not its intonation, but its function when you think about the function of a true question for me that's information seeking, so I define a question as an information seeking act.
Lani Watson2:31
It's kind of like using a tool. And we know that if you're using a hammer to do something other than say, hammering in a nail, there's this kind of sense in which you're not using it for its original intended purpose. Maybe you're displaying it as a piece of art, say, but it's still a hammer because it has that function of hammering in nails
Lani Watson5:15
I think of questions as a form of power, and it's a form of power that we've underappreciated in modern life and that we can all learn to harness for positive change.
Lani Watson5:15
one of my favorite questions at the moment is what is chat ET an answer to, if it is a solution, if it is an answer, what was the question
Lani Watson10:30
when children enter school, their questioning typically starts to decline pretty quickly and it more or less drops off a cliff by the time they're getting into secondary education
Lani Watson13:00
it still wants us to explore the world. it still wants us to ask questions. it rewards us when we do with dopamine.
Lani Watson13:30
Figures
| How long the online ‘what is a question’ survey has run | more than 15 years | 1:30 |
| Participant disagreement over whether "how are you" counts as a question | roughly a 50/50 split | 1:50 |
| How long ago Socrates lived | two and a half thousand years | 4:00 |
| Length of the Q&A session at a philosophy conference | 15 minutes | 7:30 |
| Time children spend developing their questioning before school | 4 or 5 years | 12:30 |
| The neurochemical period still active in the pre-school brain | ages 3, 4 and 5 | 13:00 |
Glossary
- information seeking act
- An act whose function is to obtain information, not necessarily in verbal form.
- rhetorical question
- A question in form, but not aimed at obtaining information.
- private questions and social questions
- The split between questions you ask inside your own head and questions asked in interaction with other people.
- answer oriented model
- Chasing answers from the system without ever going back to check whether the question was worth answering.
How to listen
People who build products, write criticism, or design interviews; founders and investors who are forever asked for answers; educators trying to understand why children stop asking.
The opening display of defining terms is slow; if you are short on time, start from ‘asking is a power’ and listen on.