Quotes About Uncertainty

Some of these terms had startlingly wide ranges, which I imagine you experienced in your four-person survey. For instance, "real possibility" had a range of about 20% to 80%. A quarter of the people taking the survey thought the term meant 40% of the time or less. A quarter thought it meant 40% to 60%. A quarter thought it meant 60% to 75%. Finally, a quarter thought it meant over 75% of the time.

Most decisions have a mix of upside and downside potentials. When figuring out whether a decision is good or bad, you are essentially asking if the upside potential compensates for the risk of the downside.

The actual outcome casts a shadow over your ability to remember what you knew at the time of the decision.

Poker players live in a world where that risk is made explicit. They can get comfortable with uncertainty because they put it up front in their decisions. Ignoring the risk and uncertainty in every decision might make us feel better in the short run, but the cost to the quality of our decision-making can be immense. If we can find ways to become more comfortable with uncertainty, we can see the world more accurately and be better for it.

When we field our outcomes as the future unfolds, we always run into this problem: the way things turn out could be the result of our decisions, luck, or some combination of the two.

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If our only options are being 100% right or 100% wrong, with nothing in between, then information that potentially contradicts a belief requires a total downgrade, from right all the way to wrong. There is no "somewhat less sure" option in an all-or-nothing world, so we ignore or discredit the information to hold steadfast in our belief.

I know viscerally how likely 60–40 and 70–30 favorites are to lose (and, of course, the opposite). When people complained that Nate Silver did his job poorly because he had Clinton favored, I thought, "Those people haven't gotten all their chips in a pot with a pair against a straight draw and lost.

What good poker players and good decision-makers have in common is their comfort with the world being an uncertain and unpredictable place. They understand that they can almost never know exactly how something will turn out. They embrace that uncertainty and, instead of focusing on being sure, they try to figure out how unsure they are, making their best guess at the chances that different outcomes will occur.

We are much more bothered by the downside potential of changing course than we are by the downside potential of staying on the path we're already on.

For any single decision, there are different ways the future could unfold—some better, some worse. When you make a decision, the decision makes certain paths possible (even if you don't know where they lead) and others impossible. The decision you make determines which set of outcomes are possible and how likely each of those outcomes is. But it doesn't determine which of that set of outcomes will actually happen.

Luck exerts its influence between your decision and which of the possible paths you end up on. It is the element you have no control over that determines which of the possible outcomes you actually observe in the short run.

Poker teaches that lesson. A great poker player who has a good-size advantage over the other players at the table, making significantly better strategic decisions, will still be losing over 40% of the time at the end of eight hours of play. That's a whole lot of wrong. And it's not just confined to poker.

When people complained that Nate Silver did his job poorly because he had Clinton favored, I thought, "Those people haven't gotten all their chips in a pot with a pair against a straight draw and lost." Or, more likely, they've had those things happen throughout their lives and didn't realize that's what 30% or 40% feels like.

Are you ready to really wrap your arms around uncertainty, like great decision-makers do? Are you ready to embrace this redefinition of wrong, and to recognize you are always guessing and that those guesses drive how you place your resources? Getting comfortable with this realignment, and all the good things that follow, starts with recognizing that you've been betting all along.

In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing. We are constantly deciding among alternative futures:

This makes us more compassionate, both toward ourselves and others. Treating outcome fielding as bets constantly reminds us outcomes are rarely attributable to a single cause and there is almost always uncertainty in figuring out the various causes.

It is uncomfortable to think about the possibility of failure, but it's worth it to live in that discomfort because you will be better prepared if things don't turn out according to your ideal.

most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing.

When you make a decision, the decision makes certain paths possible (even if you don't know where they lead) and others impossible. The decision you make determines which set of outcomes are possible and how likely each of those outcomes is. But it doesn't determine which of that set of outcomes will actually happen.

Of course, the world is uncertain and the world does change. That means that our goals ought to change in response. But the goals we set are remarkably unresponsive to new information.

our brains evolved to create certainty and order. We are uncomfortable with the idea that luck plays a significant role in our lives. We recognize the existence of luck, but we resist the idea that, despite our best efforts, things might not work out the way we want. It feels better for us to imagine the world as an orderly place, where randomness does not wreak havoc and things are perfectly predictable.

Job and relocation decisions are bets. Sales negotiations and contracts are bets. Buying a house is a bet. Ordering the chicken instead of the steak is a bet. Everything is a bet.

In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing. We are constantly deciding among alternative futures: one where we go to the movies, one where we go bowling, one where we stay home.