# The College of All Minds — The Truly Hardest Exam in the World
## Paper I — General

1. Is the genome a program?
2. What distinguishes a law of nature from an accidental regularity?
3. Is mathematics discovered or constructed? Answer without appeal to authority.
4. When, if ever, is a computer simulation an experiment?
5. Does reduction explain, or only redescribe?
6. What would it take to show that a phenomenon is emergent rather than merely complicated?
7. Is there a fact of the matter about the arrow of time?
8. Why is the universe amenable to mathematics at all?
9. Can a measurement have no observer?
10. What is the smallest amount of evidence that would rationally overturn a well-confirmed theory?
11. Is information physical?
12. Distinguish randomness from ignorance.
13. Could two theories be empirically equivalent yet not the same theory?
14. Is life a physical kind or a historical accident?
15. What does it mean to say a constant is "fine-tuned"?
16. Can a proof be too long to be a proof?
17. Is temperature real?
18. Why should the simpler hypothesis be preferred? Give a non-circular answer.
19. Does biology have laws?
20. What is conserved when energy is conserved?
21. Is the periodic table a discovery about chemistry or about physics?
22. Can a scientific model be true?
23. What is the difference between a symmetry and a redundancy in description?
24. Would a complete physics of the brain leave anything unexplained?
25. Is there a principled boundary between chemistry and physics?
26. When does a correlation license an intervention?
27. Is the concept of species dispensable?
28. Can the second law of thermodynamics be derived, or must it be assumed?
29. What, precisely, does a probability in physics measure?
30. If you could establish exactly one currently open scientific question, which would most change the rest of science, and why?

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*Website v1.3 · Examination lineage: concept v1.0 → naming v1.1 → motto v1.2 → expansion v2.0 → amendment v2.1 → expansion v3.0. Questions reproduced verbatim; none altered or renumbered.*