Answering a Question is (Usually) a Hopeless Task (Oliver Bräunling)

FRIAS Lunch Lecture Series 2018 "Ignorance - what we don't know"

Answering a Question is (Usually) a Hopeless Task

The rules of chess are very simple. Yet, winning a game of chess can be very hard. This is an example of a general phenomenon: Even though something is guided by simple principles, their implications can be very involved and hard to analyse. Conversely, there are some very complicated games which are easy to win, "once you know the trick". We shall discuss a little the problem how to estimate whether a question is 'hard to answer', and contrast it to the human desire for simple answers.