I WISH everybody answered every possible question ever

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I wish there was a test that had every "semi-significant question" that could ever be asked that required a serious response (or whatever response desired by the question), and every body took this test (This test would easily have at least a million questions.). Then, I wish I knew everything about everyone, like their actual social properties, behavior, speech, finances, diagnostic status(es) and intrinsic thinking processes and then I wish I had a quantum super-computer that'd run a super-jumbo-factor-analysis (Or whatever advanced statistical techniques) to find significant correlations and associations that could categorize them in one of the many categories and combinations of categories. This way, when someone else took this test, they could know *exactly* how they think and what 'categories' they belonged to. I'm stating this desire because this sense of mystery pervading my "exact" nature and all the characteristics defining my identity and "me" and expressions thereof leaves me insatiably curious, and asking questions hither and thither with equally introspectively clueless individuals really seems to be an inexact way of going about it!

Last edited by swbluto on 24 Apr 2011, 1:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

How can this wish-plan of yours be exploitable for personal gain and profit?

Intrapersonal gain has been explained. Profit? Oi. There are some riches to be found in this idea, isn't there? "Take this test and learn everything that you could be known about yourself for the modest sum of $100."

We could financially exploit all the identity confused individuals for massive financial gain, couldn't we?

It would make life a lot easier if people answered all the questions.

You could make it easier on yourself and just ascend into godhood.

Nooooooooooooooooo! A million questions!? Could I pay someone else to fill it out for me? I think I would feel like this otherwise:

I love numbers and data though, so I think it's a perfectly fantastic idea! Looking through all that data would be amazing

Edit: TMI

Last edited by Indy on 24 Apr 2011, 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

How would questions be determined to be semi-significant or not My stoner friends think their stupid questions are very important & a lot of those questions cant even be answered

That's pretty interesting to think about. What would be a stupid question? The question that a person doesn't answer? But, could the fact that they didn't answer the question also tell you something about the person? (Like, if they didn't answer the question "Why didn't the chicken cross the road?", then they must dislike overly-common jokes.)

Because, if you model a person as an input/output machine, any patterns of output (the answers) from any amount of input (The questions, some of which might be considered silly by some quarters) would tell you something about the cognition of that person.

So you want a medical, emotional, physical, spiritual, social, physiological question?

I got it:

What's wrong?
It could span into every aspect of their life, it could show you how they think (technically and emotionally), it would show you everything. [ In theory, I haven't tested it out yet. I think I know why it would work too. Because it is sorta the psychologist's paradox, you ask what is bothering them, so you get an opinion, yet you can see how their mind works through asking the question and how they respond]

If you wanted more detail, you could ask about each area of their life.

Ok, I usually am not so egotistical, but I think that was the most amazing comeback EVER.
(Now, since I am lazy and I don't want to read the history, I am going to post it and see that someone else has already thought about it).

Tell me what you think!

Can't be done. You are misleading yourself into believing attributes exist which do not. As an illustration, finances: how much is the computer I'm typing this on worth? To you? To me? To my next door neighbour? To someone starving? To a cow? To a rock? How much value does it have to me tomorrow if the electricity goes off? Its value is subjective, not a physical truth, and the same goes for every other thing I own and every other thing I could potentially buy. I may think that it's reasonable to put a price on my computer - let's say a (generous) thousand pounds - how many dollars or euros is that worth today, and on what baseless grounds is the exchange rate set? What if I prefer to consider how much time I worked to pay for it, or - heaven forfend - how much labour of how many people went into building it?
*shrugs* And that's a simple thing, compared to behaviour - you're talking six billion people each with a mind as complex as your own. Could you sit down and describe how you'd respond to a million different questions? Could you be accurate? Can you always accurately describe yourself and know how you'll respond to everything? Can you always accurately convey that into words? I couldn't tell you how I'd behave after answering a million questions. I'd predict I'd be extremely annoyed, but you never know, I might end up in zen tranquility. I'd certainly be a different person at the end of it, though - as I'll be a different person at the end of today, and the end of the week, the month, the year - and that difference will not just be down to me and my environment, in all its natural randomness, but will be an interrelated thing based on the actions, direct and indirect, of those six billion others.

this thought had a vogue about three hundred years ago with Wilkins & Dalgarno & all:

http://www.amazon.com/Land-Invented-Lan ... 0385527888

also, i think Aquinas's intent in his Summa was to have an answer ready for almost any sensible question a Catholic might ask about how & why the world was ordered...

now, of course, we know that knowledge is not a horizontal set of flat, unit things like "facts"--it is the momentary result of an ongoing process (part of which is the "scientific method" & part of which is creative insight) & never comes to a final end.

our total knowledge advances by more-comprehensive integrations or "paradigms"... the two epistemologies i have just sketched are a couple, but probably do not exhaust the possibilities. isn't there knowledge in singing a song? touching someone else's hand?

one can never have too many forms of knowledge.