**Links to**: [[000 Question]], [[Predicate]], [[Prediction]], [[What]], [[What is grounding]], [[What is happening]], [[What is philosophy]], [[Whence]], etc. # 『W』『h』『a』『t』 # 『i』『s』 『a』 # 『q』『u』『e』『s』『t』『i』『o』『n』 ### [[000 Postulate]]: very briefly, the designation of an investigation space, the _pre-search-space_ of prediction. This is treated more extensively in [[000 Question]] and [[Prediction]], below are just some musings. ### What is a question? The idea to answer this self-referential question came to me as I was trying to think about the question: “what could [[cellular automata]] be if they were something else?” After having this thought, I had the thought: “how is this question helping me get beyond where I am now? Am I going to understand something new about cellular automata by asking this question?” What also crossed my mind at the same time was Sara Walker’s remark about cellular automata during an interview with Lex Fridman: “they’re interesting, they’re pretty...”^[Paraphrasing, find exact quote, #todo .] What is it about aesthetic appeal that makes cellular automata interesting? It’s all of it: their complexly broken symmetry, their half-predictable behavior, their pattern-ruled existence. Why are we so fond of patterns? Perhaps questions are ways of forcing patterns out of the world. Questions do this: 1) Demand that a pattern exists/be found, 2) Confirm the existence of a suspected pattern, 3) Invent a new pattern. This way, like a ripple effect; the universe keeps making new patterns. The old noise become patterns, the new patterns become noise, dialectically, _ad infinitum_. _Who else has asked this (similar) question?_ See also: [[Misosophy]] + [[ground]] ([[Deleuze]]). %% ahmed 2023, p 147: And: ![[ahmed question.png|500]]