Quotes About Uncertainty

Ordinary people may not understand artificial intelligence and biotechnology, but they can sense that the future is passing them by.

Then what will happen tomorrow? Nobody knows.

there are so many contradictory accounts that it is hard to know what to believe.

How do you live in an age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed and no new story has yet emerged to replace them?

To satisfy both optimists and pessimists, we may conclude by saying that we are on the threshold of both heaven and hell, moving nervously between the gateway of the one and the anteroom of the other. History has still not decided where we will end up, and a string of coincidences might yet send us rolling in either direction.

It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time. Today

Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won't be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is 'shit happens'.

Hence paradoxically, as we accumulate more data and increase our computing power, events become wilder and more unexpected.

Yet since we have no idea what the world and the job market will look like in 2050, we don't really know what particular skills people will need. We might invest a lot of effort teaching kids how to write in C++ or speak Chinese, only to discover that by 2050 AI can code software far better than humans, and a new Google Translate app will enable you to conduct a conversation in almost flawless Mandarin, Cantonese, or Hakka, even though you only know how to say "Ni hao.

It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league.

Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfed and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?

How can we act morally when we have no way of knowing all the relevant facts?

People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions.

The system may push us in that direction, because it usually rewards us for the decisions we make rather than for our doubts. Yet a life of resolute decisions and quick fixes may be poorer and shallower than one of doubts and contradictions.

In] the twenty-first century, you can hardly afford stability. If you try to hold on to some stable identity, job or world view, you risk being left behind as the world flies by you with a whooooosh. Given that life expectancy is likely to increase, you might subsequently have to spend many decades as a clueless fossil. To stay relevant - not just economically, but above all socially - you will need the ability to constantly learn and to reinvent yourself, certainly at a young age like fifty.

que nadie imaginaba ni deseaba.

The more we know, the less we can predict

We mortals daily take chances with our lives, because we know they are going to end anyhow. So we go on treks in the Himalayas, swim in the sea, and do many other dangerous things like crossing the street or eating out. But if you believe you can live forever, you would be crazy to gamble on infinity like that.

If you feel like running down the street crying 'The apocalypse is upon us!', try telling yourself 'No, it's not that. Truth is, I just don't understand what's going on in the world.

To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need a lot of mental flexibility and great reserves of emotional balance. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best, and learn to feel at home with the unknown.

Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot questions.

We cannot be sure of the specifics; change itself is the only certainty.

At the close of the twentieth century it appeared that the great ideological battles between fascism, communism and liberalism resulted in the overwhelming victory of liberalism. Democratic politics, human rights and free-market capitalism seemed destined to conquer the entire world. But as usual, history took an unexpected turn, and after fascism and communism collapsed, now liberalism is in a jam. So where are we heading?

As strangeness becomes the new normal, your past experiences, as well as the past experiences of the whole of humanity, will become less reliable guides.