In the spirit of the Halloween week let me ask, of one of the greatest congregations of strong mind with little to do, which is scarier; a question with no answer or the answer to a question no one asked? (PS I'm sitting bored at the waiting room of the DMV)
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I'd say the answer to a question no one asked. Because then the burden is on you to figure out (and wonder) why anyone (much less you) would ASK that. And sometimes, no matter what, theres NO good context in which an answer is given.
Imagine (if you will), someone coming up to you giving you these "answers". No context. Maybe you've known them all your life, maybe this is a stranger on the bench next to you.
"I'm STILL not thinking about your mother".
"Supple and oily"
"Witnesses"
"burrowing behind your eyes"
I'm being intentionally creepy, to be sure. but I think that an answer searching for question is by far the scarier.
An "answer searching for a question" is scarier because it is more open-ended and in applying a question to it we reveal more about ourselves than in answering a "question without an answer".
If someone had come on here and started a thread and the text was:
A question no one asked.
It would be way creepier than this thread was before anyone answered.
So I'll have to agree with the others.
A question with no answer might not scare me per se, but it would definitely drive me howling into the depths of absolute madness (granted, it's a short trip), so I definitely vote for that one.
"Is there beauty in a forest, if no creature stops and calls it lovely, now and then? Isn't that what 'sapience' is for?"
--David Brin, "Brightness Reef"