It turns out that something has been watching the Earth in minute detail since before the solar system was formed, down to a sub molecular level. It can give you the answers to any historical questions, but not things like what someone was thinking or feeling.
All the world’s problems have been solved, and the information is only used with the strictest privacy, e.g. you can only get information on living people with their permission, or if you’re a member of law enforcement solving a crime.
The question is, if you have a hobby, job, or other reason to research the past, like being a geologist or genealogist, would you take the answers, or would you prefer to do the research yourself?
I would take the answers. I would just consider this as another reason to explore other things.
Out of curiosity, what sort of things would you explore? I enjoy researching certain things, so having all the answers would spoil that for me.
as to my understanding, the thing/being can only answer how questions and will probably be poor at why questions.
knowing some event happened can be a step on explaining a more generic pattern to events. this could be one of the avenues of exploration.
I wonder how much something like that would answer the why too. As an example, if a person threw something across a room and broke it without an obvious reason, could you look at a complete record of their history, and the history of the people around them, and figure out the reason. Would you be able to see signs of anger building through the day and look back to the root cause?
It really depends on the goal. Some people’s goal on why questions just needs how answers. An example would be a question asking “Why does the balloon grow big?” and a probable satisfying answer is “because someone is blowing air in it”.