On Uncertainty
Let’s examine uncertainty.
The subject has made it’s way into common parlance in 2020/2021. In the last 18 months, I’ve heard/used the word, in the context of both, my professional and personal life — as an employee, a team member, leader, parent, partner, friend.
Even Deloitte released an article titled “COVID-19: Confronting uncertainty through & beyond the crisis”. The article presents a point of view about uncertainty and COVID in the business/leadership context. The author states that “The COVID-19 pandemic, however, is changing — or has already changed — our collective calculus of uncertainty because there is no reference case for the COVID-19 crisis in living memory.”
I had many questions as I started writing this series —
Has COVID introduced uncertainty? Or has COVID amplified uncertainty? Or has COVID revealed something else about the nature of certainty? Was uncertainty absent before COVID? Or was it hidden away from sight within our data sets, forecasting models etc? Is uncertainty quantifiable/measurable entity or is it just a quality? What is the relationship of certainty to uncertainty? Is certainty the opposite of uncertainty? What has COVID revealed about the relationship between certainty and uncertainty? Is there something different that can be done?
This essay is an investigation into the experience of uncertainty as a quality — not as a quantitative, measurable mathematical problem of probability.
After much examination and observation, I’ve arrived at this —
Uncertainty is an irrefutable fact of the human condition.
This seems obvious. Human life is, always has been and always will be uncertain. Uncertainty is a quality of human existence. Uncertainty cannot be removed/separated from human existence. There is absolutely no phenomenon, no data sets, no forecasting models, no artificial intelligence, machine learning, no crystal ball, no magic spells that will remove uncertainty from our lives. This is a fact. We know this.
And yet somehow, we are completely unprepared in the face of uncertainty. We perceive it as a problem that needs solving instead of accepting it as a fact. Why?
Why do we not want to examine uncertainty as an irrefutable fact? Why we are so grossly unprepared to accept this fact?
I will come back to these questions again and again until they’re deconstructed.
We perceive it as a ‘problem’. Then, we try to solve this ‘problem’ by continuously attempting to create certainty by any means possible. In our public and private systems, we attempt it through data sets, quantitative models, complex but inadequate mathematical calculations. In our personal lives, we do it using faith, and belief. We are continuously pursuing certainty. In our business strategies, personal goals, family life, and in our prayers. We worship certainty feverishly in all aspects of living.
However, certainty is not a fact of the human condition. It is a calculation. Certainty is manufactured. It uses knowledge, data and patterns or belief as a response to avoid or mitigate or navigate uncertainty. We have a vast amount of knowledge but our knowledge is limited in space and time. One can see that in this famous picture which Carl Sagan called “the pale blue dot” shows us how far into the universe our knowledge extends.
COVID has only pointed that our manufactured certainty — both based in data and/or belief is limited and that we are overly reliant on this limitation. Uncertainty directly challenges the idea of continuity — The tripartite form of time. A neat past, a neat present and a neat future as if separate from each other. We love continuity. Who are we without continuity? Can we imagine a world without continuity? That requires looking at ourselves silently. Without analysis, just for a minute.
That is a terrifying proposition.
Even as I type these words, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of the implications of this realization. I am deeply terrified of uncertainty. So terrifying is this proposition that as soon as I arrive at it, I want to move away from it. So, I treat it as a problem. I try to ‘solve’ it by seeking what I perceive is the opposite of uncertainty - certainty.
Certainty however limited or inaccurate, is a comforting notion and preferable over the discomforting/unsettling idea that everything is uncertain. This terror is evident at all levels of my life— personal, interpersonal, systemic, structural. It’s evident when I look at politics or economics or health or environment. Our systems/structures rely heavily on the notion of certainty which has now been challenged by this pandemic. And I rely heavily on these systems to define myself.
So back to the question — Why am I so grossly unprepared to accept uncertainty as a fact?
The answer to this question has far reaching tentacles. It requires inquiry. I must approach this carefully. For now, I must sit with the discomfort of this question before going any further and examine this realization not just intellectually but in my experience.
