In the science fiction saga The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a group of space explorers search for the answer to the meaning of life by creating a supercomputer. After seven million years of work, the supercomputer comes up with the answer: 42.
To everyone’s astonishment, the computer replies: “That’s definitely the answer. I think the problem, to be honest, is that you didn’t really know what the question was”.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was one of the books that had the greatest impact on Elon Musk as a child. It taught him that it was not about finding answers, but about asking the right questions. Years later, when Musk went on to found SpaceX, a company whose mission is to take humans to Mars and make life multi-planetary, he said one of his motivations was “expand the scope of consciousness to ask the questions about the answer, which is the universe”.
If making sure the questions are the right ones before rushing to find the answers has been the key to creating SpaceX, the most important space company today, perhaps there is something we can all learn from asking better questions. But it is not an easy skill.
We are good at finding answers. But not good at asking good questions.
At school, we were taught that the important thing was to find the right answer. Exams consisted of questions that students had to answer to the best of your ability. The better the answer, the higher the grade.
The question was never challenged. Nobody would sit an exam and say something like “this question is badly worded” or “there are more interesting questions that could be asked”. You just answered. Even if the question was stupid or badly worded, if you answered well, you got the maximum mark.
Because success at school was associated with getting good grades, we quickly learned to associate intelligence with the ability to answer questions well. And this works in school because it is a controlled environment. But in the real world, where there are many more degrees of freedom, it often doesn’t help much.
A good question can almost solve a problem
The story goes that in the Middle Ages a Chinese military strategist was the guest of a European prince. During his stay, he had the opportunity to be the guest of honor at one of the many jousting tournaments. These tournaments were no mere pastime. They were often used to avoid further conflict and to decide the future marriage of heirs.
The wise Chinese strategist asked his princely friend how the competition worked. He explained the simple rule: each prince would send his three best champions to compete against each other: the team that won the most fights would be the winner.
The Chinese master meditated for a moment and then suggested to the prince: “Dear friend, allow me to give you a piece of advice: let your third champion fight his first champion, your first champion his second and your second champion his third. You will lose the first match, but win the other two.” And so it was.
When we focus on finding answers without challenging the question, we sometimes work inefficiently. The story of the warriors illustrates this perfectly. Up to that point, no European prince had ever thought of changing the order of his warriors. They just assumed that the best fought first. To win the battle, their question to answer is: how can I make my best warrior beat their best warrior? and so on.
But the Chinese warrior does things differently. Before focusing on finding an answer, he tries to understand and formulate the problem better. There are three clashes, and the one who wins two wins. There are no other restrictions. And he realizes that if you change the order in which you take out your warriors, you will gain a considerable advantage. Choose your worst warrior against his best and you will lose the first battle, but you will win the next two. And you will win.
The advantage of asking good questions
Once the Chinese warrior asked the right question, the solution was almost self-evident. In a graduation speech, Steve Jobs said something like, “Imagine you were in a city and you could see it all from the 80th floor. While other people are trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B by reading these stupid maps, you can see it all in front of you. You can see it all. And you can make connections that seem obvious to you because you can see everything.”
There’s an idea from Albert Einstein that says: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the appropriate question, because once I knew the right question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.
That’s the power of asking good questions; many problems become obvious and solve themselves.
Elon Musk was once asked what was one of the most common mistakes made by brilliant engineers. He said: “Trying to optimize a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place”. If the problem isn’t right, it doesn’t matter how good you are at finding the answer. The search won’t get you very far.
Imagine that answering a question is like reaching the top of a huge mountain. Before you start climbing, you have to make sure that the mountain is the right one. Otherwise, you run the risk of getting to the top of the mountain and saying: Wait, what am I doing here? Before you answer a question, make sure it is the right one.
The ability to ask good questions will determine not only the difficulty of the problem, but also how far we can go. Arthur Schopenhauer once said: “Talent achieves the goal that no one else can achieve. Genius achieves the goal that no one else can see.”
Being good at finding answers is similar to hitting the target that no one else can hit. It is a good skill, and it will certainly help you go far. But if you’re really looking for genius, it’s not enough. If you focus only on finding answers, you will only be able to define problems defined by others.
By contrast, mastering the art of asking good questions will help you create something new. There are times when the greatest value lies not in exploring what we already know, but in discovering and exploiting what no one else can see. And for that, nothing beats a good question.