"The Best Possible Question" joke
A man does a good deed and as a reward his guardian angel appears and offers him the answer to any question he wishes to ask. But she says to take his time and she will return in two days. Well the man immediately realized he could become very rich: Which stock will go up the most over the next five years? Which horse will win the Kentucky Derby? Who will win the next Superbowl? etc. But then he thought, why waste this chance of a lifetime on money? After all, money is only a means to happiness. With the right question he can determine the secret of happiness itself! But the more he thought about it, the more he worried about tricks the angel might play: for example, suppose he asked, "What will make me the happiest man in the universe?" And she answered, "Go live on planet Rigel III" - perhaps true, but perfectly useless.So our careful questioner decided to take this problem to the nearest philosophy department for assistance. He put the problem to the chair. The chair loved the challenge and as it happens, they were having a departmental meeting that evening anyway, so he told the man to return the next day. When the man returned, the chair beamed and informed him that the department put its best minds together and came up with the best possible question to ask the angel - and naturally he told the man the question to ask.The next day the angel appeared and asked, "Well, do you have a question for me?" "Yes," the man replied with a great deal of confidence in his voice. "What are the members of the following ordered pair: the first member of the pair is the best possible question I could ask you, and the second member of the pair is the answer to that question?"The angel smiled and said, "You know, you couldn't have asked me a better question. In fact the first member of the pair IS the question you just asked. But that means the second member is the answer I'm giving you now."
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