Week 35: Answering the Wrong Question

I’ve recently came into answering this question:

Why is democracy the best form of government?

That’s the wrong question. But I’ll try and answer it first: Who said it’s the best form of government and why this question is enforcing it? It shows lack of knowledge of history and how democracy came to be. One can see that Democracy is not the best form of government but the most viable form of government that we have in recent times. And that’s a big difference. Reading Popper, Von Mises, and most importantly, Bertrand Russel, will prove how wrong the question is.

Now, I’ve answered the question, here are my thoughts: I’ve learned from Peter Thiel that I shouldn’t always answer the question that’s being asked since it may well be the wrong kind of question or the wrong question. What I should do is that I should always answer the right kind of question and the right question – which entails that I should, sometimes (and most of the time these days), change the question being asked altogether.

This proves hugely important business, in management, in 1:1s and in asking what we should work on next.

Salam, peace.