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This got me thinking when I visited the ask page in HN: what's the most valuable question one could ever ask?
The answer might be: "why?" But in some situations, like social gatherings, asking why can be a recipe for disaster. Are there no other questions that can be equally revealing?
What kind of questions do you like to ask?
When is the last time you felt you were lucky? (in the non-sexual sense)
What would you do if nobody paid you to do it?
Don't be afraid to cross-examine your own beliefs!
"If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about (your life | your job | this situation | your marriage | whatever), what would you change?"
Another good one, is this - after asking a series of questions, ask
"Is there anything I should have asked you, that I didn't?"
This seems more appropriate for business conversations than casual smalltalk / social situations, but you might be able to riff on it and come up with some useful variations.
Also, for when talking to doctors:
"What's the worst thing that could be causing my symptoms?"
"Could I have multiple problems contributing to these symptoms?"
"If this diagnosis were to turn out wrong, what would the correct diagnosis then probably turn out to be?"
Credit to "How Doctors Think" for the above three (not necessarily word for word, but the spirit of them anyway).
"What part of what I'm doing is responsible for my successes?" Credit to Less Wrong for this one.
"Which of my beliefs are false?" Or "What, among the things I believe in, is not true?"
This question seems very obvious for any intelligent person to ask, but as I put more and more attention to it - I discover more and more shocking things about myself and the world. I have SO much more false beliefs than I've expected.
Because I think of myself as skeptic and atheist, as a rational and "scientific" person, I had no idea that me, and other sceptics/atheists still hold so much beliefs that turn out to be ridiculous and made up when you look at them closely.
And I have no idea how much more is left to discover.
The book that really taught me to ask this question, by the way, is Jed McKenna's enlightenment trilogy. I disagree with a lot of it's new-age'y ideas, but I got a lot of value out of it because of this question, highly recommend it.
To put it shortly "put as much of value and attention into unlearning things and identifying the false knowledge as you put into learning and knowledge"
from the book "change your questions, change your life":
- What do I want?
- What are my choices?
- What assumptions am I making?
- What am I responsible for?
- how else can I think about this?
- What is the other person thinking, feeling, and wanting?
- What am I missing or avoiding?
- What can I learn?
- ... from this person or situation?
- ... from this mistake or failure?
- ... from this success?
- What action steps make the most sense?
- What questions should I ask (myself or others)?
- How can I turn this into a win-win?
- What's possible?
- what do I want?
- what feels right for me?
- what would make me happy?
- if there were no limits on your life...
- ... where would you live?
- ... what would you be doing in your leisure time?
- ... what kind of work would you be engaged in?
- ... what would your home and surrounding look like?
- what do you really want in life? (write down 3 things) what prevents you from making it happen?
- what am I doing?
- why am I doing it?
- what are the results?
- what are the highest value activities I’m not doing?
- what can I cut?
- What hard questions am I avoiding?