Quotes About Uncertainty

Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.

There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.

Poor decisions and bad luck are contingencies of most horror films.

In truth, NO MAN KNOWS, and no man has ever known, what heaven or hell is like, nor does any man know if either place actually exists.

Indecision crystallizes into DOUBT, the two blend and become FEAR!

Life is strange, and often imponderable!

When in doubt, do something, even if it is no more than to walk around the block and think what to do.

La indecisión se cristaliza en la duda, ¡los dos se mezclan y se convierten en miedo!

No human being has sufficient foresight to build plans which need no alteration or change.

If you hear a prominent economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.

I want to live happily in a world I don't understand.

Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.

Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense

The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.

If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death.

No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word.

The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren't for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without uncertainty, and an ethical life isn't so when stripped of personal risks.

Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race "looking out for its best interests," as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.*

Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain. You are hence fragile.

This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can't know) is the central idea of uncertainty.

When things go our way we reject the lack of certainty.

Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind.

Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.