Quotes About Uncertainty

There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

Such visible failure and a sense of lost moorings can be – for the individual as for society – not only a cause for concern but an exhausting emotional process. Where once there was an overriding explanation (however many troubles that brought), now there is only an overriding uncertainty and question. And we cannot unlearn our knowledge.

We do not live our lives and experience our existence as solved beings.

The metaphysics that a new generation is imbibing and everyone else is being force-fed has many points of instability, is grounded in a desire to express certainty about things we do not know, and to be wildly dismissive and relativistic about things that we actually do know.

And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.

We don't care where the ball lands, as long as it doesn't land on us.

Diversification is the compliment that humility pays to uncertainty.

Myth: When you have a lot of uncertainty, you need a lot of data to tell you something useful. Fact: If you have a lot of uncertainty now, you don't need much data to reduce uncertainty significantly. When you have a lot of certainty already, then you need a lot of data to reduce uncertainty significantly. In other words—if you know almost nothing, almost anything will tell you something.

Instead of being overwhelmed by the apparent uncertainty in such a problem, start to ask what things about it you do know.

Measurement: A quantitatively expressed reduction of uncertainty based on one or more observations.

Understanding how to measure uncertainty is key to measuring risk. Understanding risk in a quantitative sense is key to understanding how to compute the value of information. Understanding the value of information tells us what to measure and about how much effort we should put into measuring it.

we need to treat measurement as observations that quantitatively reduce uncertainty.

Definition of Measurement Measurement: A quantitatively expressed reduction of uncertainty based on one or more observations.

For all practical decision-making purposes, we need to treat measurement as observations that quantitatively reduce uncertainty.

When we conduct a penetration test on a system, we are not changing the state of the application with this inspection; rather, we are changing our uncertainty about the state of the application.

The commonplace notion that presumes measurements are exact quantities ignores the usefulness of simply reducing uncertainty, especially if eliminating uncertainty is not feasible (as is usually the case).

If we incorrectly think that measurement means meeting some nearly unachievable standard of certainty, then few things will be measurable even in the physical sciences.

The first 100 samples reduce uncertainty much more than the second 100. In fact, even the first 10 samples tell you a lot more than the next 10. The initial state of uncertainty tells you a lot about how to measure it.

For all practical decision-making purposes, we need to treat measurement as observations that quantitatively reduce uncertainty. A mere reduction, not necessarily elimination, of uncertainty will suffice for a measurement.

whether a finding is statistically significant is not the same thing as whether your current state of uncertainty is less than it was before or what the economic value of that uncertainty reduction would be.

The fact is that the preference for ignorance over even marginal reductions in ignorance is never the moral high ground. If decisions are made under a self-imposed state of higher uncertainty, policy makers (or even businesses like, say, airplane manufacturers) are betting on our lives with a higher chance of erroneous allocation of limited resources. In measurement, as in many other human endeavors, ignorance is not only wasteful but can also be dangerous.

what makes a measurement of high value is a lot of uncertainty combined with a high cost of being wrong.

Uncertainty was part of the appeal. That was just one problem with ministering to the youth of today?—?riding the wave of cool and contemporary youth ministry was like surfing the big ones, and with one false move, there you were with sand in your trunks.