Where to start

New here? This is the fast version — what the site is, how a question is put together, and three ways in.

What is Unfinished?

A collection of questions that get easier to stop asking as our tools get better at answering them — kept in one place, each with the claims, thinkers, sources and counter-questions that bear on it. Nothing here is a settled answer, including the site itself: it grows by adding questions, not by resolving the ones already here.

Why questions, and not answers

A tool good enough to answer a question also makes it possible to stop noticing you had it. That is not always a loss — plenty of old friction was never doing anything worth keeping — but it is never neutral. This site is a place to keep noticing.

How to read a question

  1. 01
    The questionStated plainly, with the context that made it worth asking.
  2. 02
    Why it mattersWhat is at stake in asking it, and what changes if nobody does.
  3. 03
    IdeasThe claims and positions that bear on it, each attributed to whoever holds it.
  4. 04
    PeopleThe thinkers behind those claims, and the traditions they argue from.
  5. 05
    SourcesWhere each claim actually comes from, cited by name.
  6. 06
    Counter-questionsThe questions it opens, and the ones that pull against it.
  7. 07
    PathsGuided walks that carry the question into a longer argument.

Try one

Start with the question the site is named after — What are we no longer forced to ask?

Or walk a path

Prefer a guided order? This path walks the site's central argument end to end, including the strongest case against it — What the Tool Took

Or just look

Every question, claim and source on the site, and how they connect, in one navigable map.

Open the map