[Gem]

It can be an all-powerful computer or any other conception of omniscience. But, the rules are still the same. All that matters is humanity gets to ask any question, but only one question, which the omniscient will answer.



Ordnael brings up interesting points. The question 'how not to make any mistakes?' has a flavour of thought of coming up with one question which supercedes all other questions, or IOW, makes other questions superfluous, and that is a good way of coming up with the best question.


But then, this great knowledge's effect on free will, I'm not certain how that applies, but will, knowledge and power - as expressed by Nietzsche as 'the will to power', and re-expressed by Foucault as 'the will to knowledge' - since 'knowledge is power'.

“And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by “nothingness” as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be “empty” here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms striving toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self- creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself— do you want a name for this world? A solution for all of its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?— This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!”

~ Nietzsche

Perhaps we should abandon the belief that power makes mad and that, by the same token, the renunciation of power is one of the conditions of knowledge. We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not
simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that doe not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.

~ Foucault

There is something deeper, much more, for the omniscient with all knowledge exerts no will. Whereas man, so indecisive in their comparative ignorance, vies to know but one thing...