Quotes About Uncertainty

Actually, they soon discovered, you had to reduce the amount of the certain loss even further if you wanted to get people to accept it. When choosing between sure things and gambles, people's desire to avoid loss exceeded their desire to secure gain.

The production of a compelling scenario is likely to constrain future thinking," wrote Danny and Amos. "There is much evidence showing that, once an uncertain situation has been perceived or interpreted in a particular fashion, it is quite difficult to view it in any other way.

Al realizar predicciones y juicios en condiciones de incertidumbre, la gente no parece seguir el cálculo de probabilidades ni la teoría estadística de la predicción. Más bien se basa en un limitado número de heurísticas que a veces dan lugar a juicios razonables y otras veces conducen a graves y sistemáticos errores.

Even as she helped the team of software guys and former Obama officials build the model that persuaded Newsom to shut down the state, Charity had decided that she was leaving. As children, she and her older sister had a phrase to describe the unsettling sensation of fresh doubt about some situation or some person: black smoke. The black smoke had rolled into state government with the virus and never left.

What could go wrong?

Maybe the mind's best trick of all was to lead its owner to a feeling of certainty about inherently uncertain things.

Era como si fuéramos en un avión a diez mil metros que se hubiera averiado y Wachovia todavía tuviera unos cuantos paracaídas a la venta. Nadie más vendía ya paracaídas, pero en realidad tampoco nadie quería creer que se necesitaran. […] Después de eso, el mercado se cerró por completo.»

The Irish people and their country are like lovers whose passion is heightened by their suspicion that they will probably wind up leaving each other.

Spivey was a worrier. He thought that when a person took risks, the thing that went wrong was usually a thing the person hadn't thought about, and so he tried to think about the things he wouldn't naturally think about.

I'm seeing comments from people asking why WHO and CDC seem to be downplaying this," wrote Carter. "I'm certainly no public health expert . . . but no matter how I look at this, it looks bad." On January

A lot of what people did and said when they predicted things, Morey now realized, was phony: pretending to know things rather than actually knowing things. There were a great many interesting questions in the world to which the only honest answer was, It's impossible to know for sure.

As the U.S. stock market had grown less comprehensible, it had also become more sensationally erratic.

The trait [Morey] looked for was awareness that they were seeking answers to questions with no certain answers--that they were inherently fallible. I always ask them, 'Who did you miss?' he said. Which future superstar had they written off, or which future bust had they fallen in love with? If they don't give me a good one, I'm like, 'Fuck 'em.

What was the point of laying out the odds of a gamble if the person taking it either didn't believe the numbers or didn't want to know them.

There is nothing like the ticker tape except a woman – nothing that promises, hour after hour, day after day, such sudden developments; nothing that disappoints so often or that occasionally fulfills with such unbelievable, passionate magnificence.

says. "There's only one Moses, but I'm not sure there's a Moses here." But Howard Mudd, who coached the Chargers' offensive line at the time, an

I shut my eyes, turned away for a moment, and it came: a shiver of finality like the one when you decide, in your own mind, that you're going to have to tell someone who loves you that you don't want to be with them anymore. Terror, and relief; relief and terror, so intermingled that they feel like the same thought.

But how could I bring it up? I'd actually be asking something else, and I wasn't sure I was ready to open that box. Even if it turned out to be empty, it would never be properly reclosed. Utterance is a one-way street. Questions can never be unasked.

People always find it so frustrating that there's no structure they can see, that they just have to follow the river downstream and see what they find. They want to know the plot so they can guess the end, because they're afraid of what it might be. I can understand that, even though I know it's not the way things work. I never know what the hell's going to happen next, but I can live with that.

Someone once asked me what I thought horror fiction did. What its purpose was . . . I replied that when I wrote horror fiction, I tried to take the improbable, the unimaginable, and the impossible, and make it seem not only possible--but inevitable.

A false sense of security is the only kind there is.

In these dark and uncertain times, there can be great value in imagining a bit of star in each human soul. Not just that it gives some hope for humanity at a time when man's inhumanity to man seems ever on the increase; but also because it points to an inner brightness that can light the way in dark times.

Personally I like going places where I don't speak the language, don't know anybody, don't know my way around and don't have any delusions that I'm in control. Disoriented, even frightened, I feel alive, awake in ways I never am at home.

Moonglum sighed. "Elric—this once, let us not court the danger.