“Confusion exists in the map, not in the territory. Unanswerable questions do not mark places where magic enters the universe. They mark places where your mind runs skew to reality.”
A comment on Wrong Questions http://lesswrong.com/lw/og/wrong_questions/ (March 2008)
Context: Mystery exists in the mind, not in reality. If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself. All the more so, if it seems like no possible answer can exist: Confusion exists in the map, not in the territory. Unanswerable questions do not mark places where magic enters the universe. They mark places where your mind runs skew to reality.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Eliezer Yudkowsky 56
American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence resea… 1979Related quotes
“Every thought deserves its own place in the universe. How & where do you capture yours?”
7 February 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/8780594220
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
https://twitter.com/wise_chimp/status/1488946174321205253?s=21
“Emotions arise in the place where your mind and body meet”
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
"Wild Things" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De30ET0dQpQ, Know-It-All (2015), New York: Def Jam Recordings
"Wild Things" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De30ET0dQpQ, Know-It-All (2015), New York: Def Jam Recordings
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), "The Edge of Forever" [Episode 10]
Context: But we don't yet know whether the Universe is open or closed. More than that, there are a few astronomers who doubt that the redshift of distant galaxies is due to the doppler effect, who are skeptical of the expanding Universe and the Big Bang. Perhaps our descendants will regard our present ignorance with as much sympathy as we feel to the ancients for not knowing the Earth went around the Sun. If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding Universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the Universe devoid of all matter and then the matter suddenly somehow created, how did that happen? In many cultures, the customary answer is that a God or Gods created the Universe out of nothing. But if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: where did God come from? If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the Universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step, and conclude that the Universe always existed? That there's no need for a creation, it was always here. These are not easy questions. Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, questions that were once treated only in religion and myth.
"Dear God"
A Picnic of Poems in Allah's Green Garden (2011)
Context: Dear God I've heard your name from teachers, family and friends, you made the universe and so will live on when it ends. Everyone I know admits they’ve never seen your face, they’re not sure where you live and have no map to the place.
Original: (fr) La souffrance forme le tissu de l'existence, elle est le lieu où la vie devient vivante, la réalité et l'effectivité phénoménologique de ce devenir.
Source: Michel Henry, L'Essence de la manifestation, 1963, t. 2, § 70, p. 828
Source: Books on Phenomenology of Life, The Essence of Manifestation (1963)
Extra-judicial writings, Speech to the Board of Regents (1952)