h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: What is the question to 42? - A451595
Author: Olli - U96637

I've thought about this one and have come up with 3 possible questions:

What is the number of moments of true happiness that each human can expect to experience in their lifetime?

Or a corrollary:
What is the number of moments of true fear and dread that each human can expect to experience in their lifetime?

Or my personal choice:
What is the exit # to the "Perfect World". (Of course, part of it also depends on finding the right road. I can tell you one thing for sure, that it is NOT the Long Island Expressway.)

Hi Olli,

I admire your imaginative look at possible answers from those past sages (I noticed that you did not include any future ones); but this doesn't seem to be Edited Guide material, and therefore does not belong in Peer Review.

It seems to be guesses and imaginings suited more for the UnderGuide perhaps (where one of my pieces wound up for similar reasons). And, the commentor was right about Arthur coming up with the question 'what do you get when you multiply six by nine'.

----------------------------------------

Hi hipcat99,

As regards the question, you must first remember the actual problem given to Deep Thought. The programmers designed it to compute 'The ultimate answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything'. DT promised a 'simple answer' that was 'tricky'; the answer, of course, being 42.

With this criteria, I'm afraid, all of your three possible questions are too strictly human-based or earth-based to be explanative of Everything, to limited to be a Universal answer, and don't really address the ultimate Life questions.

----------------------------------------

There is only one ultimate question to which the answer 42 responds at all levels, and which explains 'Life, the Unviverse, and Everything'. The question was not as hard to determine, given the criteria and the answer, although mental hypergymnastics is involved.

It must answer all the 'hows' and 'whys', and even 'whos' that could matter to beings who could exist in our universe.
[The 'what' is already determined by the term Everything, as is the 'where' by the term Universe. The when is throughout space-time.]
The only question it need not answer is 'how much', because value would be based on comparing the worth of a thing to itself.

Obviously, the question cannot be limited to address only the human experience; nor can it be a question that merely speaks to physics, philosophy, religion, economy, politics, morals, mathematics, or any other subset of 'Everything'.

Finally, it must explain it all in a manner in which the programmers (and, presumably, we) could understand the answer, in relationship to the question.

If you care to try another guess, I'll be glad to tell you if you get it right.

As I've written before, I think it's actually that Deep Thought, being a computer, gave a numerical answer rather than an emotional one - the actualy answer is 'fortitude'.

FordsTowel:
Olli didn't actually put the entry in PR (s/he's been absent from the site for a long while, apparently), hipcat99 did.

Fortitute - that is such a clever idea!

Hi Jimster,

I do love the 'translation problem' concept!

But this does still have two major problems.
One: Would the word 'fortitude' answer the request for a 'simple answer' to 'Life', or the 'Universe', much less 'Everything'?

Two: It hinges on the English spoken number 42 and the English word fortitude. If the real answer had been so badly misinterpreted, it would be the alien word for the number '42' and whatever its alien homynym means, wouldn't it?

Sorry, Niwt, I hadn't meant to ignore you!

Thanks for the clarification, which I forgot to add to my last message.


Obviously, I got a grin out of the clever 'fortitude' idea as well.

Later,

I propose this is sent back to entry immediately as it is't suitable material for the EG and the author elvised years ago, and so won't be working on improving it.

Pimms Lettuce

I think that this can be arranged...

* sharpens scythe *

GD

In the original work "The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy Chapter 25-28 you will find the following
Many millions of years ago a race of hyperinteligent ...beings.. got so fed up with bickering about the meaning of life...to this end they built a stupendous super computer
two somberly dressed programmers Lunkwell and Fook...O Deep thought computer... we want yopu to tell us the answer...The program will tqake a while to run...seven and a half million years
seventy five thousand generations ago and in all that time we will be the first to hear the answer...fourty Two said Deep Thought with infinite majesty and calm...So once you do know what the question actually is you will know what the answer means... Look, all right, all right, can you just please tell us the question?...Deep thought pondered a minute...But can you do it?...Finally No, he said firmly The moral of this story is never ask a computer for answers unless you have a way to check and see if it was right. Those prograsmmers were willing to wait seventy five thousand generations for the meaning of life but they had not asked for the meaning of life they had asked for the answer to everything and that is a completely different question. by asking for the answer to Everything the computer did what computers do best and examined quadrillions of bits of data applied occams razor and lowest common denominator and found an answer so bland that it could apply to practically anything. I read somewhere that Douglas Adams wanted a
number that was not Prime and not odd and settled on 42
He later noticed that it was 6 times 7 in base 13.
in a subsequent story he tried to imply that this was the question
What is six multiplied by seven- he forgot to mention that he was using base 13 not base 10. If you are trying to fit the answer to a seven and a half year long program into a thirty second sound bite you will get an answer that is incomprehensible and who knows that answer just might be 42.

I should have proofread that comment more
I meant to say In a subsequent volume Douglas adams implied that
the question was "what is six times nine (not six times seven)

Actually, the only reference to 'six times nine' is in the first radio series (second book) where they pull scrabble letters out of a bag at random to create 'what is six times nine' - which was intended to show that just by landing on Earth the Golgafrinchums had mucked up the programme as the question the planet is working towards is not giving the right answer.

(and yes, this should go back to the entry - I'm actually on a break form the office, so if it isn't done by next week I'll pop back here and sort it)

The thing about the Ultimate Question - the thing that makes it funny - is that it's deliberately vague. It could have been 'whassit all about?' or 'What's the point of existence?' The fact that the question is 'what's the answer to life, the universe and... well, everything' means that my theory does work. 'What's the answer to life? Fortitude! What's the answer to coping with the universe? Fortitude!' etc.

Of course, my theory's not actually funny, and should be discounted for being too clever for its own good