When Jeb Bush, not long ago, kept mangling his answers after being asked whether, knowing what we know now, he would do what his brother George did when he launched the ruinous Second Gulf War, in March, 2003, he eventually said that he would not, but also that he didn't want to "get back into hypotheticals".
But he was lighthearted and earnest when it came to answering the morning's most memorable question — whether, knowing what he knows now, he would take back his lavish 60th birthday party, which reportedly cost over $3 million and included a performance by Rod Stewart.
Now that Jeb Bush (R-FL), the last Republican holdout, has admitted the Iraq War was a mistake, "knowing what we know now," the next logical question is whether, knowing what you thought you knew then, then, whether you would have waited to determine if you were right before invading.
Whether knowing the answer is a good thing or not is one of the many ambiguities here.
We talked at the end about whether knowing the authors were female had affected how we read.
I do wonder whether knowing too much about someone's personal life interrupts an audience's ability to suspend disbelief, to really invest in the characters.
The three researchers asked whether knowing the Fed's action in advance could add any predictive power to commercial forecasts of what the report would say.
Beattie questioned whether, knowing that Sophie and Ryan had already died in July, Katie's bone marrow transplant in August should have been suspended earlier.
But in the opening program of his engaging Reflections series on Wednesday evening, "Divine Inspiration or Intelligent Design?," the violinist Gil Morgenstern pondered whether knowing the source of inspiration actually enhances the experience for musician or audience.
I asked him whether, knowing there is nothing he can do about the desperation that brings people here, and providing a service that is necessary while knowing it's all over, he had to have the conscience of a cancer doctor.
Inside Autism: At Crooked Timber, the Dutch philosopher Ingrid Robeyns wonders whether knowing what it is like to be autistic — that is, truly grasping the phenomenology of the condition — is possible for those not afflicted, and whether such knowledge might lead to better care for those suffering from it.
