Final Edge Questions

Published on 2020-10-27 by Ashok Be

Questions, questions

I was curious to build a wordcloud based on https://www.edge.org/responses/what-is-the-last-question using the following JavaScript code:

var err = [], res = []; for (var x = 1; x <= 285; x++) { 
  var select = document.querySelector("#block-system-main > div:nth-child(" + x + ") > div:nth-child(4) > p > strong");
  if (select === null) {
     select = document.querySelector("#block-system-main > div:nth-child(" + x + 
") > p > strong");  
  }
  if (select === null) {
  var select = document.querySelector("#block-system-main > div:nth-child(" + x + ") > div:nth-child(2) > p > strong"); 
  }
  if (select === null) err.push(x); 
  else {
    //console.log(x, select);
    var text = select.textContent.replace(/\?/g,'?');
    //var text = select.textContent;
    res += x + ". " + text + "\n  ";
  } 
}
console.log(res);
console.log(err.length, err);

And the 280+ questions are available below:

Can we program a computer to find a 10,000-bit string that encodes more actionable wisdom than any human has ever expressed?
Are complex biological neural systems fundamentally unpredictable?
Are the simplest bits of information in the brain stored at the level of the neuron?
How can we put rational prices on human lives without becoming inhuman?
How will we build the tools to maintain the software in long-lived online devices that can kill us?
Are people who cheat vital to driving progress in human societies?
How do we best build a civilization that is galvanized by long-term thinking?
How would changes in the marginal tax rate affect our efforts and motivation?
Will it ever be possible for us to transcend our limited experience of time as linear?
Does consciousness reside only in our brains?
How can science best leverage unreason to overcome the heroic passion for war?
What is the optimal algorithm for discovering truth?
Will the appearance of new species of talented computational intelligence result in improving the moral behavior of persons and societies?
Can we re-design our education system based on the principle of neurodiversity?
How does a single human brain architecture create many kinds of human minds?
What would a diagram that gave a complete understanding of imagination need to be?
What libraries will we have to build when cloning becomes infinitely expandable?
Will the process of discovery be completed in any of the natural sciences?
What is the hard limit on human longevity?
Will we ever live together in a hive?
What kinds of minds could solve the mind-body problem?
Will AI make the Luddites (mostly) right?
Why are we so often kind to strangers when nobody is watching and we have nothing to gain?
How much biodiversity do we need?
Is there a way for humans to directly experience what it’s like to be another entity?
Will a machine ever be able to feel what an organism feels?
Which questions should we not ask and not try to answer?
Can wild animals that are large and dangerous be made averse to threatening humans?
Can consciousness exist in an entity without a self-contained physical body?
Will scientific advances about the causes of sexual conflict help to end the "battle of the sexes"?
How do I describe the achievements, meanings, and power of Beethoven's piano sonata “Appassionata”?
When will we accept that the most accurate clocks will have to advance regularly sometimes, irregularly most of the time, and at times run counterclockwise?
How complex must be the initial design of the simplest machine that can learn from experience to achieve, at a minimum, the intelligence and abilities of a typical human being?
How can we design a machine that can correctly answer every question, including this one?
What new methodology will be required to explain the neural basis of consciousness?
Is there a fundamental difference between the biological world and the physical world?
Can we design a modern society without money which is at least as effective economically and politically as our current system?
Will some things about life, consciousness, and society necessarily remain unseen?
Is the unipolar future of a "singleton" the inevitable destiny of intelligent life?
Will we pass our audition as planetary managers?
What will we do as an encore once we manage to develop technological solutions to infection, aging, poverty, asteroids, and heat death of the universe?
Will we soon cease to care whether we are experiencing normal, augmented, or virtual reality?
What would comprise the most precise and complete sonic representation of the history of life?
How far are we from wishing to return to the technologies of the year 1900?
If science does in fact confirm that we lack free will, what are the implications for our notions of blame, punishment, reward, and moral responsibility?
Why do we experience feelings of meaning in a universe without purpose?
Is technology changing the nature of moral emotions?
Can natural selection's legacy of sex differences in values be reconciled with the universal values of the Enlightenment?
Could the thermodynamic prophecy of an increasingly entropic universe be fulfilled by the cosmic flourishing of intelligent life?
What future progressive norms would most forward-thinking people today dismiss as too transgressive?
If we want to make a real and effective science-based policy, should we change politics or science?
Is our brain fundamentally limited in its ability to understand the external world?
How can an aggregation of trillions of selfish, myopic cells discover the unwitting teamwork that turns that dynamic clump into a person who can love, notice, wonder, and keep a promise?
Are accurate mathematical theories of individual human behavior possible?
Are the ways qualia relate to computation, creativity to free will, risk to probability, morality to epistemology, all the same question?
Can we develop a procedure that, in principle, would tell us whether or not our universe is a simulation (analogous to the way the now proven Poincaré Conjecture can tell us the universe’s shape)?
Why is there such widespread public opposition to science and scientific reasoning in the United States, the world leader in every major branch of science?
Will a computer ever really understand and experience human kindness?
Does this question exist in a parallel universe?
How will we know if we achieve universal happiness?
Is it ultimately possible for life to bend the shape of the universe to fit life's purposes, as we are now bending the shape of our environment here on earth?
Why are there no trees in the ocean?
Can we create new senses for humans—not just touch, taste, vision, hearing, smell, but totally novel qualia for which we don't yet have words?
Will we ever be replaced by another earthly species capable of evolving to a similar degree of social and technical sophistication that effectively fills the biocultural niche we vacated?
Is the cumulation of shared knowledge forever constrained by the limits of human language?
Have we left the Age of Reason, never to return?
So, before The Singularity...?
Will civilization collapse before I die?
Will humans ever embrace their own diversity?
Is there a place for our past in our future?
How many incommensurable ideas can we hold in our mind simultaneously?
What will courtship, mate selection, length of marriages, and family composition and networks be like when we are all living over 150 years?
Can we design a common test to assess machine, animal and human intelligence?
Will the "third culture" be followed by a fourth culture, a fifth culture, and, ominously, a Final Culture?
Is there a single, evolved biological mechanism that can be tweaked to improve overall health, cognitive abilities, and slow aging?
Why is the phenomenon too familiar to investigate the hardest thing to completely understand?
Is intersubjectivity possible in a quantum mechanical universe?
Is there a Turing test for living rather than thinking that can distinguish animate from automata?
What behaviors are we attributing only to brain mechanisms that may be better explained by considering biomechanics?
Is there a single theory of all physics (TOP), and what is it?
Can human intuition ever be reduced to an algorithm?
How much time will pass between the last minute before artificial superintelligence and the first minute after it?
Can we acquire complete access to our unconscious minds?
Is it possible to control a system capable of evolving?
If we're not the agents of ourselves (and it's hard to see how we can be), how can we make sense of moral accountability (and how can we live coherently without it)?
Is there a subtle form of consciousness that operates independent of brain function?
How can the few pounds of grey goo between our ears let us make utterly surprising, completely unprecedented, and remarkably true discoveries about the world around us, in every domain and at every scale, from quarks to quasars?
Will a comprehensive mathematics of human behavior ever be created?
What knowledge and know-how are our descendants at risk of forgetting as our species passes through future evolutionary bottlenecks?
What will happen to human love when we can design the perfect robot lover?
What ethical responsibilities will humans owe to AGI systems?
What new cognitive abilities will we need to live in a world of intelligent machines?
What is the upper limit for how malleable the human mind and our emotions can actually be?
Why is it so hard to find the truth?
What will be the use of 99% of humanity for the 1%?
Is scientific knowledge the most valuable possession of humanity?
Why do we get to ask questions at all?
How could one last question possibly be enough?
Is the actual all that is possible?
Which facets of life will we never understand once biological and cultural diversity has vanished?
Will reading and writing survive given the seduction of video and audio?
What does it mean to be human?
When will we replace governments with algorithms?
Will a baby grown from an embryo constructed from human stem cells eventually become a person?
What is the principle that causes complex adaptive systems (life, organisms, minds, societies) to spontaneously emerge from the interaction of simpler elements (chemicals, cells, neurons, individual humans)?
Will humanity eventually exhaust the unknown?
Why is it that the maximum information we can pack into a region of space does not depend on the volume of the region, but only on the area that bounds it?
What would the mind of a child raised in total isolation of other animals be like?
Does every mathematical symmetry have a manifestation in the physical world?
What will it take to end war once and for all?
How can we separate the assessment of scientific evidence from value judgments?
Why is the world so beautiful?
How does a thought become a feeling?
What is the biological price of being a species with a sense of humor?
When will race disappear?
Will humanity end up with one culture?
What systems could be put in place to prevent widespread denial of science-based knowledge?
Will the "hard problem" of consciousness dissolve (rather than be solved) as we learn more about the natural world?
What might the last fully biological human's statement be at their last supper?
Are the laws of physics unique and inevitable?
Is there any observational evidence that could shake your faith, or lack thereof?
Why don't naked mole rats age or get cancer?
How can the process of science be improved?
Are dreams brief glimpses of the narrative of a subconscious alternative reality?
How can we build machines that make us smarter?
Can we create technologies that help equitably reduce the amount of conflict in the world?
How can we achieve closed-loop neural control of human hedonics?
What is the bumpiest and highest-dimensional cost surface that our best computers will be able to search and still find the deepest cost well?
Can brain implants make us better human beings?
Is our continued coexistence with the other big mammals essential to furthering our understanding of human cognition?
What will happen to religion on earth when the first alien life form is found?
Is the universe like an onion that will require science to keep peeling back new layers of reality and asking questions forever?
Do we need checks and balances for virtual worlds?
Why do we care so much about how well we're approximated by algorithms?
How will predictive models in the social sciences achieve the accuracy and precision of those in the natural sciences?
Has consciousness done more good or bad for humanity?
Will human psychology keep pace with the exponential growth of technological innovation associated with cultural evolution?
What proportion of "ethnic" and "religious" tensions are rooted in our genes?
Are humans capable of building a moral economy?
Is gravity a fundamental law of nature, or does gravity—and thereby spacetime—emerge as a consequence of the underlying quantum nature of reality?
Where were the laws of physics written before the universe was born?
How will advances in mental prosthetics that connect us with other human and machine minds change the way we think about expertise?
What is the fundamental geometric structure underlying reality?
Will it ever be possible to download the information stored in the human brain?
How did our complex universe arise out of simple physical laws?
How will evolution shape the biological world one hundred years from now, or one hundred thousand?
Can we train machines to design and construct a humane and vibrant built environment for us?
How will people focus more on forming the right question, before rushing headlong towards the answer?
Why are humans still so much more flexible in their thinking and everyday reasoning than machines?
How will the world be changed when battery storage technology improves at the same exponential rate seen in computer chips in recent decades?
Is the number of interesting questions finite or not?
When in the evolution of animal life did the capacity to experience love for another being first emerge?
How much of what we call "reality" is ultimately grounded and instantiated in convincing communication and storytelling?
What is the master principle governing the growth and evolution of complex systems?
Why are people so seldom persuaded by clear evidence and rational argument?
Is love really all you need?
Are humans ever really capable of regarding others as ends in themselves?
If the sum of all significant knowledge is finite, what proportion of it can humans, aided by intelligent machines, eventually attain?
Will we be one of the last generations in human history that dies?
Can major historical events, from the advent of moral religions to the industrial revolution, be explained by changes in life history strategies?
What is the most intelligent and efficient way to minimize the overall amount of conscious suffering in the universe?
If we discover another intelligent civilization, what should we ask them?
Is the brain a computer or an antenna?
Is there an evolutionary advantage to building societies that favor entertaining over understanding?
Does religious engagement promote or impede morality, altruism, and human flourishing?
Are there limits to what we can know about the universe?
Why do humans who possess or acquire unaccountable power over others invariably abuse it?
In what situations does the capacity for low mood give a selective advantage?
What does the conscious mind do that is impossible for the unconscious mind?
What is the flow of information through human beings?
Why do humans behave as though what can be known is finite?
What is the purpose of it?
When will "human being" cease to be a meaningful category to speak of?
How can AI and other digital technologies help us create global institutions that we can trust?
Does the future belong to non-human entities?
How did our sense of mathematical beauty arise?
What can humanity do right now that will make the biggest difference over the next billion years?
Why do even the most educated people today feel that their grip on what they can truly know is weaker than ever before?
Is a single world language and culture inevitable?
Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century?
Is the assertion "Nothingness is impossible" the most fundamental statement we can make about our existence?
Can we engineer a human being?
What is the most important thing that can be done to restore the general public’s faith and trust in science?
Will humans ever prove the Riemann Hypothesis in mathematics?
How can we empower the better angels of our nature?
Are we smart enough to know when we’ve reached the limits of our ability to understand the universe?
How far will we go in predicting human behavior from DNA?
Will blockchain return us to the golden age of ownership of information licenses that can be resold like books and records?
Will artistic invention enlighten the age of AI?
What will it take for us to be fully confident that we have found life elsewhere in the cosmos?
Does the infinite multiverse of cosmologists, in which all that is physically possible occurs, contain realizations of our unruly paradoxes of infinity (Hilbert’s Hotel, Thomson Lamp, 1+2+3+4… = -1/12; etc.)?
What quirk of evolution caused us to develop the ability to do pure mathematics?
Can a single underlying process explain the emergence of structure at the physical, biological, cognitive, and machine levels?
Will questioning be replaced by answering without questions?
Will the universe observed today someday begin to contract, bounce, and be reborn?
Why should we prize the original object over a perfect replica?
Is the botscape going to force us to give up the use of the first-person singular nominative case personal pronoun, I?
Does something unprecedented happen when we finally learn our own source code?
How can we sculpt how individual brains develop to avert mental illness?
How can we rebel against our genes if we are biological creatures without free will?
Can humans set a non-evolutionary course that is game-theoretically stable?
Will the frontiers of consciousness be technological or linguistic?
Why did we acquire our extraordinary human capacity for social learning?
Will we ever be able to predict earthquakes?
Can the human brain ever fully understand quantum mechanics?
What would the ability to synthesize creativity do to cultural evolution?
How do our microbes contribute to that particular combination of continuity and change that makes us human?
How do ideas about biological evolution change once one species has control over the origin and extinction of all other species?
Will we ever find an organization form that brings out the best in people?
How can we reap the benefits of the wide and open exchange of data without undermining the values that depend upon the scarcity of information?
Why are the errors that our best machine-learning algorithms make so different from the errors we humans make?
Why is sleep so necessary?
Why do some people act inside the law, others outside, and others create the law?
Will our AI future forms need the natural world?
How will humanity change in light of the increasing use of non-sexual methods of reproduction?
What is the cosmic perspective to the future of life?
Why is Homo sapiens the sole non-extinct species of hominin?
Will the behavior of a superintelligent AI be mostly determined by the results of its reasoning about the other superintelligent AIs?
Can behavioral science crack the ultimate challenge of getting people to durably adopt much healthier lifestyles?
What does justice feel like?
How will the advent of direct brain-to-brain communication change the way we think?
How do I know the right level of abstraction at which to explain a phenomenon?
How can aims of individual liberty and economic efficiency be reconciled with aims of social justice and environmental sustainability?
Can a user-friendly computer proof assistant satisfy the mathematician’s desire for certainty without killing the pleasure?
What will be the literally last question that will preoccupy future superintelligent cosmic life for as long as the laws of physics permit?
What is the fastest way to reliably align a powerful AGI around the safe performance of some limited task that is potent enough to save the world from unaligned AGI?
Are moral beliefs more like facts or more like preferences?
Does romantic love have a biological function?
Why is human communication embedded in the silence of material objects?
Is a human brain capable of understanding a human brain?
Why is the acceleration of the expansion of the universe roughly equal to a typical acceleration of a star in a circular orbit in a disk galaxy?
How do contemporary developments in technology affect human cultural diversity?
Will the individual quantum event forever remain random?
How much would surrendering our god(s) strengthen the odds of our survival?
Will it be possible to do surgical operations in the future without making incisions?
How do we create and maintain backup options for humanity to quickly rebuild an advanced civilization after a catastrophic human extinction event?
Can the pace of human evolution stop accelerating?
Can technology tame evolution?
How can coalitions of scholars who wish to update the content of explicit common knowledge in order to use that knowledge collaboratively detect and circumvent coalitions which are applying narrative control strategies to preserve arbitrage opportunities implicit in disparities between official narratives and reality?
Could superintelligence be the purpose of the universe?
Why is it so difficult to influence people’s belief systems for deeply held beliefs and so easy to manipulate belief systems when little is known about the subject?
What are the beautiful curiosities that artificial curiosities can't comprehend?
Clarify the differences between understanding, knowledge and wisdom that could be communicated to a literate twelve-year-old and recommunicated to their parents.
How smart does another animal have to be for us to decide not to eat it?
Is immortality desirable?
Will we ever understand how human communication is built from genes to cells to circuits to behavior?
When will we develop a robust theory of Ontological Intelligence (OI)?
In which century or millennium can all humanity be expected to speak the same primary language?
How diverse is life in the universe?
Is the universe relatively simple and comprehensible by the human brain, or is it so complex, higher dimensional and multiversal that it remains forever elusive to humans?
Why are reason, science, and evidence so impotent against superstition, religion, and dogma?
Will weaving networks that blend humans and machines yield network effects?
Can we ever wean humans off their addiction to religion?
What will time with artifacts that simulate the emotional experience of being with another person do to our human capacity to handle the surely rougher, more frictional, and demanding human intimacies on offer?
How do the limits of the mind limit our understanding?
How does the past give rise to the future?
What is the world without the mind?
Do the laws of physics change with the passage of time?
Is civilization's demand for water a dividing or unifying force?
Was agriculture a wrong turn for civilization?
Can general-purpose computers be constructed out of pure gravity?
What will be obvious to us in a generation that we have an inkling of today?
Are there any phenomena for which it will never be possible to develop parsimonious theories?
Can rational beings such as Bayesian robots, humans, super-intelligent AIs ever reach agreement?
Can an increasingly powerful species survive (and overcome) the actions of its most extreme individuals?
Will there ever be a mechanistic scientific question that can be asked about the lone individuality of mental life, with its particular beginning, middle, and end?
Will the creation of a super-human class from a combination of genome editing and direct biological-machine interfaces lead to the collapse of civilization?
Will post-humans be organic or electronic?
What cognitive capacities make humans so damn weird relative to all the other animals on the planet?
Is there a design to the laws of physics, or are they the result of chance and the laws of large numbers?
Would you like to live 1,000 years?
How will we cope when we are capable of keeping humans alive longer than our optimal life expectancy?
How far can we extend beyond our human limitations to more fully grasp the nature of the world?
How and when will it end or will it persist indefinitely?
Is there an ultimate reality?
Given the nature of life, the purposeless indifference of the universe, and our complete lack of free will, how is it that most people avoid ever being clinically depressed?

created at TagCrowd.com

Can we program a computer to find a 10,000-bit string that encodes more actionable wisdom than any human has ever expressed? Are complex biological neural systems fundamentally unpredictable? Are the simplest bits of information in the brain stored at the level of the neuron? How can we put rational prices on human lives without becoming inhuman? How will we build the tools to maintain the software in long-lived online devices that can kill us? Are people who cheat vital to driving progress in human societies? How do we best build a civilization that is galvanized by long-term thinking? How would changes in the marginal tax rate affect our efforts and motivation? Will it ever be possible for us to transcend our limited experience of time as linear? Does consciousness reside only in our brains? How can science best leverage unreason to overcome the heroic passion for war? What is the optimal algorithm for discovering truth? Will the appearance of new species of talented computational intelligence result in improving the moral behavior of persons and societies? Can we re-design our education system based on the principle of neurodiversity? How does a single human brain architecture create many kinds of human minds? What would a diagram that gave a complete understanding of imagination need to be? What libraries will we have to build when cloning becomes infinitely expandable? Will the process of discovery be completed in any of the natural sciences? What is the hard limit on human longevity? Will we ever live together in a hive? What kinds of minds could solve the mind-body problem? Will AI make the Luddites (mostly) right? Why are we so often kind to strangers when nobody is watching and we have nothing to gain? How much biodiversity do we need? Is there a way for humans to directly experience what it’s like to be another entity? Will a machine ever be able to feel what an organism feels? Which questions should we not ask and not try to answer? Can wild animals that are large and dangerous be made averse to threatening humans? Can consciousness exist in an entity without a self-contained physical body? Will scientific advances about the causes of sexual conflict help to end the "battle of the sexes"? How do I describe the achievements, meanings, and power of Beethoven's piano sonata “Appassionata”? When will we accept that the most accurate clocks will have to advance regularly sometimes, irregularly most of the time, and at times run counterclockwise? How complex must be the initial design of the simplest machine that can learn from experience to achieve, at a minimum, the intelligence and abilities of a typical human being? How can we design a machine that can correctly answer every question, including this one? What new methodology will be required to explain the neural basis of consciousness? Is there a fundamental difference between the biological world and the physical world? Can we design a modern society without money which is at least as effective economically and politically as our current system? Will some things about life, consciousness, and society necessarily remain unseen? Is the unipolar future of a "singleton" the inevitable destiny of intelligent life? Will we pass our audition as planetary managers? What will we do as an encore once we manage to develop technological solutions to infection, aging, poverty, asteroids, and heat death of the universe? Will we soon cease to care whether we are experiencing normal, augmented, or virtual reality? What would comprise the most precise and complete sonic representation of the history of life? How far are we from wishing to return to the technologies of the year 1900? If science does in fact confirm that we lack free will, what are the implications for our notions of blame, punishment, reward, and moral responsibility? Why do we experience feelings of meaning in a universe without purpose? Is technology changing the nature of moral emotions? Can natural selection's legacy of sex differences in values be reconciled with the universal values of the Enlightenment? Could the thermodynamic prophecy of an increasingly entropic universe be fulfilled by the cosmic flourishing of intelligent life? What future progressive norms would most forward-thinking people today dismiss as too transgressive? If we want to make a real and effective science-based policy, should we change politics or science? Is our brain fundamentally limited in its ability to understand the external world? How can an aggregation of trillions of selfish, myopic cells discover the unwitting teamwork that turns that dynamic clump into a person who can love, notice, wonder, and keep a promise? Are accurate mathematical theories of individual human behavior possible? Are the ways qualia relate to computation, creativity to free will, risk to probability, morality to epistemology, all the same question? Can we develop a procedure that, in principle, would tell us whether or not our universe is a simulation (analogous to the way the now proven Poincaré Conjecture can tell us the universe’s shape)? Why is there such widespread public opposition to science and scientific reasoning in the United States, the world leader in every major branch of science? Will a computer ever really understand and experience human kindness? Does this question exist in a parallel universe? How will we know if we achieve universal happiness? Is it ultimately possible for life to bend the shape of the universe to fit life's purposes, as we are now bending the shape of our environment here on earth? Why are there no trees in the ocean? Can we create new senses for humans—not just touch, taste, vision, hearing, smell, but totally novel qualia for which we don't yet have words? Will we ever be replaced by another earthly species capable of evolving to a similar degree of social and technical sophistication that effectively fills the biocultural niche we vacated? Is the cumulation of shared knowledge forever constrained by the limits of human language? Have we left the Age of Reason, never to return? So, before The Singularity...? Will civilization collapse before I die? Will humans ever embrace their own diversity? Is there a place for our past in our future? How many incommensurable ideas can we hold in our mind simultaneously? What will courtship, mate selection, length of marriages, and family composition and networks be like when we are all living over 150 years? Can we design a common test to assess machine, animal and human intelligence? Will the "third culture" be followed by a fourth culture, a fifth culture, and, ominously, a Final Culture? Is there a single, evolved biological mechanism that can be tweaked to improve overall health, cognitive abilities, and slow aging? Why is the phenomenon too familiar to investigate the hardest thing to completely understand? Is intersubjectivity possible in a quantum mechanical universe? Is there a Turing test for living rather than thinking that can distinguish animate from automata? What behaviors are we attributing only to brain mechanisms that may be better explained by considering biomechanics? Is there a single theory of all physics (TOP), and what is it? Can human intuition ever be reduced to an algorithm? How much time will pass between the last minute before artificial superintelligence and the first minute after it? Can we acquire complete access to our unconscious minds? Is it possible to control a system capable of evolving? If we're not the agents of ourselves (and it's hard to see how we can be), how can we make sense of moral accountability (and how can we live coherently without it)? Is there a subtle form of consciousness that operates independent of brain function? How can the few pounds of grey goo between our ears let us make utterly surprising, completely unprecedented, and remarkably true discoveries about the world around us, in every domain and at every scale, from quarks to quasars? Will a comprehensive mathematics of human behavior ever be created? What knowledge and know-how are our descendants at risk of forgetting as our species passes through future evolutionary bottlenecks? What will happen to human love when we can design the perfect robot lover? What ethical responsibilities will humans owe to AGI systems? What new cognitive abilities will we need to live in a world of intelligent machines? What is the upper limit for how malleable the human mind and our emotions can actually be? Why is it so hard to find the truth? What will be the use of 99% of humanity for the 1%? Is scientific knowledge the most valuable possession of humanity? Why do we get to ask questions at all? How could one last question possibly be enough? Is the actual all that is possible? Which facets of life will we never understand once biological and cultural diversity has vanished? Will reading and writing survive given the seduction of video and audio? What does it mean to be human? When will we replace governments with algorithms? Will a baby grown from an embryo constructed from human stem cells eventually become a person? What is the principle that causes complex adaptive systems (life, organisms, minds, societies) to spontaneously emerge from the interaction of simpler elements (chemicals, cells, neurons, individual humans)? Will humanity eventually exhaust the unknown? Why is it that the maximum information we can pack into a region of space does not depend on the volume of the region, but only on the area that bounds it? What would the mind of a child raised in total isolation of other animals be like? Does every mathematical symmetry have a manifestation in the physical world? What will it take to end war once and for all? How can we separate the assessment of scientific evidence from value judgments? Why is the world so beautiful? How does a thought become a feeling? What is the biological price of being a species with a sense of humor? When will race disappear? Will humanity end up with one culture? What systems could be put in place to prevent widespread denial of science-based knowledge? Will the "hard problem" of consciousness dissolve (rather than be solved) as we learn more about the natural world? What might the last fully biological human's statement be at their last supper? Are the laws of physics unique and inevitable? Is there any observational evidence that could shake your faith, or lack thereof? Why don't naked mole rats age or get cancer? How can the process of science be improved? Are dreams brief glimpses of the narrative of a subconscious alternative reality? How can we build machines that make us smarter? Can we create technologies that help equitably reduce the amount of conflict in the world? How can we achieve closed-loop neural control of human hedonics? What is the bumpiest and highest-dimensional cost surface that our best computers will be able to search and still find the deepest cost well? Can brain implants make us better human beings? Is our continued coexistence with the other big mammals essential to furthering our understanding of human cognition? What will happen to religion on earth when the first alien life form is found? Is the universe like an onion that will require science to keep peeling back new layers of reality and asking questions forever? Do we need checks and balances for virtual worlds? Why do we care so much about how well we're approximated by algorithms? How will predictive models in the social sciences achieve the accuracy and precision of those in the natural sciences? Has consciousness done more good or bad for humanity? Will human psychology keep pace with the exponential growth of technological innovation associated with cultural evolution? What proportion of "ethnic" and "religious" tensions are rooted in our genes? Are humans capable of building a moral economy? Is gravity a fundamental law of nature, or does gravity—and thereby spacetime—emerge as a consequence of the underlying quantum nature of reality? Where were the laws of physics written before the universe was born? How will advances in mental prosthetics that connect us with other human and machine minds change the way we think about expertise? What is the fundamental geometric structure underlying reality? Will it ever be possible to download the information stored in the human brain? How did our complex universe arise out of simple physical laws? How will evolution shape the biological world one hundred years from now, or one hundred thousand? Can we train machines to design and construct a humane and vibrant built environment for us? How will people focus more on forming the right question, before rushing headlong towards the answer? Why are humans still so much more flexible in their thinking and everyday reasoning than machines? How will the world be changed when battery storage technology improves at the same exponential rate seen in computer chips in recent decades? Is the number of interesting questions finite or not? When in the evolution of animal life did the capacity to experience love for another being first emerge? How much of what we call "reality" is ultimately grounded and instantiated in convincing communication and storytelling? What is the master principle governing the growth and evolution of complex systems? Why are people so seldom persuaded by clear evidence and rational argument? Is love really all you need? Are humans ever really capable of regarding others as ends in themselves? If the sum of all significant knowledge is finite, what proportion of it can humans, aided by intelligent machines, eventually attain? Will we be one of the last generations in human history that dies? Can major historical events, from the advent of moral religions to the industrial revolution, be explained by changes in life history strategies? What is the most intelligent and efficient way to minimize the overall amount of conscious suffering in the universe? If we discover another intelligent civilization, what should we ask them? Is the brain a computer or an antenna? Is there an evolutionary advantage to building societies that favor entertaining over understanding? Does religious engagement promote or impede morality, altruism, and human flourishing? Are there limits to what we can know about the universe? Why do humans who possess or acquire unaccountable power over others invariably abuse it? In what situations does the capacity for low mood give a selective advantage? What does the conscious mind do that is impossible for the unconscious mind? What is the flow of information through human beings? Why do humans behave as though what can be known is finite? What is the purpose of it? When will "human being" cease to be a meaningful category to speak of? How can AI and other digital technologies help us create global institutions that we can trust? Does the future belong to non-human entities? How did our sense of mathematical beauty arise? What can humanity do right now that will make the biggest difference over the next billion years? Why do even the most educated people today feel that their grip on what they can truly know is weaker than ever before? Is a single world language and culture inevitable? Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century? Is the assertion "Nothingness is impossible" the most fundamental statement we can make about our existence? Can we engineer a human being? What is the most important thing that can be done to restore the general public’s faith and trust in science? Will humans ever prove the Riemann Hypothesis in mathematics? How can we empower the better angels of our nature? Are we smart enough to know when we’ve reached the limits of our ability to understand the universe? How far will we go in predicting human behavior from DNA? Will blockchain return us to the golden age of ownership of information licenses that can be resold like books and records? Will artistic invention enlighten the age of AI? What will it take for us to be fully confident that we have found life elsewhere in the cosmos? Does the infinite multiverse of cosmologists, in which all that is physically possible occurs, contain realizations of our unruly paradoxes of infinity (Hilbert’s Hotel, Thomson Lamp, 1+2+3+4… = -1/12; etc.)? What quirk of evolution caused us to develop the ability to do pure mathematics? Can a single underlying process explain the emergence of structure at the physical, biological, cognitive, and machine levels? Will questioning be replaced by answering without questions? Will the universe observed today someday begin to contract, bounce, and be reborn? Why should we prize the original object over a perfect replica? Is the botscape going to force us to give up the use of the first-person singular nominative case personal pronoun, I? Does something unprecedented happen when we finally learn our own source code? How can we sculpt how individual brains develop to avert mental illness? How can we rebel against our genes if we are biological creatures without free will? Can humans set a non-evolutionary course that is game-theoretically stable? Will the frontiers of consciousness be technological or linguistic? Why did we acquire our extraordinary human capacity for social learning? Will we ever be able to predict earthquakes? Can the human brain ever fully understand quantum mechanics? What would the ability to synthesize creativity do to cultural evolution? How do our microbes contribute to that particular combination of continuity and change that makes us human? How do ideas about biological evolution change once one species has control over the origin and extinction of all other species? Will we ever find an organization form that brings out the best in people? How can we reap the benefits of the wide and open exchange of data without undermining the values that depend upon the scarcity of information? Why are the errors that our best machine-learning algorithms make so different from the errors we humans make? Why is sleep so necessary? Why do some people act inside the law, others outside, and others create the law? Will our AI future forms need the natural world? How will humanity change in light of the increasing use of non-sexual methods of reproduction? What is the cosmic perspective to the future of life? Why is Homo sapiens the sole non-extinct species of hominin? Will the behavior of a superintelligent AI be mostly determined by the results of its reasoning about the other superintelligent AIs? Can behavioral science crack the ultimate challenge of getting people to durably adopt much healthier lifestyles? What does justice feel like? How will the advent of direct brain-to-brain communication change the way we think? How do I know the right level of abstraction at which to explain a phenomenon? How can aims of individual liberty and economic efficiency be reconciled with aims of social justice and environmental sustainability? Can a user-friendly computer proof assistant satisfy the mathematician’s desire for certainty without killing the pleasure? What will be the literally last question that will preoccupy future superintelligent cosmic life for as long as the laws of physics permit? What is the fastest way to reliably align a powerful AGI around the safe performance of some limited task that is potent enough to save the world from unaligned AGI? Are moral beliefs more like facts or more like preferences? Does romantic love have a biological function? Why is human communication embedded in the silence of material objects? Is a human brain capable of understanding a human brain? Why is the acceleration of the expansion of the universe roughly equal to a typical acceleration of a star in a circular orbit in a disk galaxy? How do contemporary developments in technology affect human cultural diversity? Will the individual quantum event forever remain random? How much would surrendering our god(s) strengthen the odds of our survival? Will it be possible to do surgical operations in the future without making incisions? How do we create and maintain backup options for humanity to quickly rebuild an advanced civilization after a catastrophic human extinction event? Can the pace of human evolution stop accelerating? Can technology tame evolution? How can coalitions of scholars who wish to update the content of explicit common knowledge in order to use that knowledge collaboratively detect and circumvent coalitions which are applying narrative control strategies to preserve arbitrage opportunities implicit in disparities between official narratives and reality? Could superintelligence be the purpose of the universe? Why is it so difficult to influence people’s belief systems for deeply held beliefs and so easy to manipulate belief systems when little is known about the subject? What are the beautiful curiosities that artificial curiosities can't comprehend? Clarify the differences between understanding, knowledge and wisdom that could be communicated to a literate twelve-year-old and recommunicated to their parents.How smart does another animal have to be for us to decide not to eat it? Is immortality desirable? Will we ever understand how human communication is built from genes to cells to circuits to behavior? When will we develop a robust theory of Ontological Intelligence (OI)? In which century or millennium can all humanity be expected to speak the same primary language? How diverse is life in the universe? Is the universe relatively simple and comprehensible by the human brain, or is it so complex, higher dimensional and multiversal that it remains forever elusive to humans? Why are reason, science, and evidence so impotent against superstition, religion, and dogma? Will weaving networks that blend humans and machines yield network effects? Can we ever wean humans off their addiction to religion? What will time with artifacts that simulate the emotional experience of being with another person do to our human capacity to handle the surely rougher, more frictional, and demanding human intimacies on offer? How do the limits of the mind limit our understanding? How does the past give rise to the future? What is the world without the mind? Do the laws of physics change with the passage of time? Is civilization's demand for water a dividing or unifying force? Was agriculture a wrong turn for civilization? Can general-purpose computers be constructed out of pure gravity? What will be obvious to us in a generation that we have an inkling of today? Are there any phenomena for which it will never be possible to develop parsimonious theories? Can rational beings such as Bayesian robots, humans, super-intelligent AIs ever reach agreement? Can an increasingly powerful species survive (and overcome) the actions of its most extreme individuals? Will there ever be a mechanistic scientific question that can be asked about the lone individuality of mental life, with its particular beginning, middle, and end? Will the creation of a super-human class from a combination of genome editing and direct biological-machine interfaces lead to the collapse of civilization? Will post-humans be organic or electronic? What cognitive capacities make humans so damn weird relative to all the other animals on the planet? Is there a design to the laws of physics, or are they the result of chance and the laws of large numbers? Would you like to live 1,000 years? How will we cope when we are capable of keeping humans alive longer than our optimal life expectancy? How far can we extend beyond our human limitations to more fully grasp the nature of the world? How and when will it end or will it persist indefinitely? Is there an ultimate reality? Given the nature of life, the purposeless indifference of the universe, and our complete lack of free will, how is it that most people avoid ever being clinically depressed?