Quotes About Uncertainty

There is danger in both belief and unbelief.

I remember being asked at various stages last season "Would you take 17th place now?". Come the last game of the season, the answer was definitely yes. At the start of the season, then the answer was probably yes. But looking back at the season as a whole, then the answer is probably between yes and no.

What really keeps me going is the constant belief that it could all disappear tomorrow.

Jenka: Iz dis de first time hyu faced down an entire army all by hyuself vit a veapon hyu vasn't sure vos gonna vork? Gil: Well, yes ... Jenka: Vell den. Dot's just hyu body bein' all surprized hyu ain't all blowed op and dead !

The wavefunction tells us where we might potentially find an electron when we look; but what we do find in any given experiment is random, and we can't meaningfully say why we find it here rather than there.

We know that measurements of a quantum system seem to collapse the wavefunction. We most certainly don't know how, or why, or indeed if that actually happens.

In quantum theory, words are blunt tools.

T]he wavefunction of the electron in [a] box can penetrate into the walls. If the walls aren't too thick, the wavefunction can actually extend right through them, so that it still has a non-zero value on the outside. What this tells you is that there is a small chance – equal to the amplitude of the wavefunction squared in that part of space – that if you make a measurement of where the electron is, you might find it within the wall, or even outside the wall.

We are all forecasters. When we think about changing jobs, getting married, buying a home, making an investment, launching a product, or retiring, we decide based on how we expect the future will unfold.

There are no certainties in life—not even death and taxes if we assign a nonzero probability to the invention of technologies that let us upload the contents of our brains into a cloud-computing network and the emergence of a future society so public-spirited and prosperous that the state can be funded with charitable donations.

Not knowing is exciting. It's an opportunity to discover.

The truth is, the truth is elusive.

As Moltke observed, "It shakes the trust of subordinates and gives the units a feeling of uncertainty if things happen entirely differently from what orders from higher headquarters had presumed."9

The more you want to explain about a black swan event like the storming of the Bastille," wrote the sociologist Duncan Watts, "the broader you have to draw the boundaries around what you consider to be the event itself.

Counterfactuals highlight how radically open the possibilities once were and how easily our best-laid plans can be blown away by flapping butterfly wings. Immersion in what-if history can give us a visceral feeling for Taleb's vision of radical indeterminacy.

Kahneman and other pioneers of modern psychology have revealed that our minds crave certainty and when they don't find it, they impose it.

Most things in life involve skill and luck, in varying proportions. The mix may be almost all luck and a little skill, or almost all skill and a little luck, or it could be one of a thousand other possible variations. That complexity makes it hard to figure out what to chalk up to skill and what to

In one sense, all threats to your life are equivalent, since ultimately, such dangers lead to death, which is an absolute. One can be dead but not "deader." Threats

If you don't know what to do, there's actually a chance of doing something new. As long as you know what you're doing, nothing much of interest is going to happen.

That was the problem with religion. You no sooner made up your mind about something than you had to change it.

I still cannot tap on your walls and discover by the hollow or firm sounds which of your walls are merely decorative, and which ones hold everything up.

Who never doubted never half believed Where doubt there truth is -- 'tis her shadow.

No single thing abides; and all things are fucked up.

Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.