One of the pleasures of writing is discovering that a good question often survives much longer than an easy answer.<\/p>\n
Some of the questions on this page have occupied me for years.<\/p>\n
Others have emerged only recently.<\/p>\n
A few may eventually prove to be wrong.<\/p>\n
I’m perfectly comfortable with that.<\/p>\n
This page isn’t a list of conclusions.<\/p>\n
It’s a map of where my thinking is currently taking me.<\/p>\n
Many websites present certainty.<\/p>\n
I’m more interested in curiosity.<\/p>\n
Questions have shaped almost everything I’ve done.<\/p>\n
Writing software.<\/p>\n
Managing programmes.<\/p>\n
Editing memoirs.<\/p>\n
Exploring artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
Writing books.<\/p>\n
Again and again, progress began not with an answer but with a better question.<\/p>\n
I think that’s still true today.<\/p>\n
We often use the words interchangeably.<\/p>\n
I’m increasingly convinced they describe very different things.<\/p>\n
Information can exist for years without ever becoming knowledge that someone can safely use.<\/p>\n
The answer may have very little to do with reasoning.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it begins much earlier.<\/p>\n
With the knowledge supplied.<\/p>\n
This question has become increasingly important to me.<\/p>\n
If people remain responsible for systems they no longer fully understand, what happens to professional judgement?<\/p>\n
I currently call this The Comprehension Boundary.<\/p>\n
Writers remember living their stories.<\/p>\n
Readers encounter them for the first time.<\/p>\n
Understanding that difference continues to fascinate me.<\/p>\n
For many years we assumed that better decisions required more information.<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence makes me wonder whether better preparation may prove even more important than greater intelligence.<\/p>\n
We often behave as though uncertainty is failure.<\/p>\n
Perhaps uncertainty, honestly prepared, is actually one of the most useful things we can present.<\/p>\n
Many organisations seem to solve the same problems over and over again.<\/p>\n
I’m interested in whether preparation can become continuous rather than constantly restarting.<\/p>\n
For centuries professionals were expected to understand the systems they used.<\/p>\n
What happens if future systems become too complex for complete human understanding?<\/p>\n
Does judgement itself begin to change?<\/p>\n
Some questions have already led me somewhere unexpected.<\/p>\n
For example:<\/p>\n
I originally thought AI’s biggest challenge was intelligence.<\/p>\n
Today I think preparation may prove to be the more important problem.<\/p>\n
That isn’t the answer I expected to find.<\/p>\n
Those are often the most interesting discoveries.<\/p>\n
Some questions probably don’t have permanent solutions.<\/p>\n
Instead they become better questions over time.<\/p>\n
I think that’s perfectly acceptable.<\/p>\n
Progress sometimes means improving the quality of our questions rather than pretending to possess complete answers.<\/p>\n
I try not to ask questions simply because they sound interesting.<\/p>\n
I look for questions that change practical work.<\/p>\n
Questions that influence:<\/p>\n
writing;<\/p>\n
editing;<\/p>\n
professional judgement;<\/p>\n
organisational knowledge;<\/p>\n
artificial intelligence;<\/p>\n
decision-making.<\/p>\n
Those are the questions worth spending years exploring.<\/p>\n
One of the reasons I enjoy publishing questions is that someone occasionally asks a better one.<\/p>\n
When that happens, the original question often disappears.<\/p>\n
That’s progress.<\/p>\n
If something on this page makes you think of a better question, I’d genuinely like to hear it.<\/p>\n
Many of these questions eventually become:<\/p>\n
articles;<\/p>\n
book chapters;<\/p>\n
talks;<\/p>\n
practical examples.<\/p>\n
If you’d like to see where several of them have already led, I’d recommend:<\/p>\n
I’ve gradually come to believe that curiosity deserves more respect than certainty.<\/p>\n
Certainty often finishes conversations.<\/p>\n
Good questions begin them.<\/p>\n
This page will continue changing because I hope I never stop discovering better questions to ask.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the pleasures of writing is discovering that a good question often survives much longer than an easy answer. Some of the questions on this page have occupied me for years. Others have emerged only recently. A few may eventually prove to be wrong. I’m perfectly comfortable with that. This page isn’t a list … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-623","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/symcox.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/symcox.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/symcox.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symcox.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symcox.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/symcox.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":743,"href":"https:\/\/symcox.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/623\/revisions\/743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/symcox.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}