Are You Feeling Uncertain? Great!
How
developing a taste for uncertainty can create great opportunities
In Ursula Le Guin's Schrodinger's
Cat, a science-fiction story about the difficulty in knowing things for
certain, she has a character, an experimenter, who laments: 'Certainty. All I
want is certainty.' It is an understandable desire, isn't it? In many
situations it is helpful to know what's going to happen or what needs to be
done. Whether we are packing bags for a long trip or negotiating a deal or
reorganizing a dysfunctional department, a certain degree of predictability is
a good thing, even a necessity.
But the quest for certainty also blinds us to possibility. True, if we knew what to do and how things would turn out, we could act and achieve, without surprise, the results we'd expected. That's one way to live, and at the end, it may be adequate to have the epitaph read: as expected. Kidding aside, the quest for certainty has three serious drawbacks.
First, it encourages a bias for focusing on what we think we know. But knowing what we don't know is at least as useful. At the Darden school, where I teach, we use the case method, a contemporary application of the Socratic method. The students come from very different backgrounds. For example, the Class of 2014 has 320 students representing some thirtythree countries. When I first began using the case method, I found it disconcerting that students were not considerate enough to ask me only about what I knew. That forced me change the way I prepared for class. I had to become comfortable with what I did not know.
Eventually I had an "Aha!" moment. As I became more open with my ignorance and got students to think about their own, I leaned more and more on their experiences, their varied backgrounds. The case discussions were most fun, most intense, most thought-provoking when the whole class worked in this manner. In accepting our ignorance, we are able to let ourselves rely on others and not waste what they might know.
Friedrich von Hayek saw this process as the heart of the economic enterprise. "The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources… it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality." An organization that acts in this economic spirit has an intrinsic advantage over one that relies on power or fear or luck or superior foresight to get things done.
Awareness of our ignorance also helps overcome a second problem with the quest for certainty. This has to do with a bias in the way we see opportunity costs. More certain outcomes are given more value than less certain ones. Suppose you are asked to pick between a cheque a lakh and a sealed envelope, possibly empty. What is the opportunity cost of picking the check? Obviously, since you can't know what is inside the envelope, it depends on how you feel about losing a lakh. In other words, the opportunity cost calculation comes down to what you know; the alternative is irrelevant.
A real-life example of this problem arises in the so-called 'plunge decision'.
Should you keep your job or quit it and become an entrepreneur?
In one hand, your monthly paycheck; in the other, an opaque envelope. If you knew for certain what was inside the second envelope, life would be so much easier. It's a tough decision, but here's the important thing: the envelope is only opaque, it isn't sealed. Even if it turns out to be empty, you may have a say in what the envelope is going to contain and who it will be addressed to. This is because you are part of the new venture; you will be able to shape events. Does the choice now become more appealing? Unlike the sealed-envelope scenario, the alternative here is very relevant because you are part of it.
Does this mean that we should always choose the unknown, always embrace uncertainty? Of course not. Neither did Hayek exalt ignorance over knowledge. Instead, the idea here is to understand the Socratic maxim, common to all ancient civilizations, that a recognition of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom, here, means not to undervalue something simply because it has an uncertain reward.
This leads to the third way in which a quest for certainty blinds us to possibility. When we focus on certainty, we acquire a bias for not acting. Imagine you're doing business in a country under a colonial power. All around you are millions of poor illiterate people. You have many pressing problems. What would explain your decision to write a letter urging your son to: "Be sure to lay wide streets planted with
shady trees, every other of a quick-growing variety. Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens. Reserve large areas for football, hockey and parks. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques and Christian churches."
Jamsetji Tata wrote this in a letter to his son Dorab. The cynical may dismiss this as the grandiose dreams of a powerful and wealthy old man. Yet while Jamsetji did not die a wealthy man and even though only one of his four dream projects were realized in his lifetime, they were realized because he never failed to see possibility in uncertainty. And we're the better for it just as his sons and grandsons were. Think of anything you find enjoyable or worth waking up in the morning for. Gadgets and tools. Rights and opportunities. Each was made possible for you because someone somewhere chose the opaque envelope.
At the end of Le Guin's short story, the quest for certainty fails. But as the experimenter stands bewildered, the roof unexpectedly flips open and the open night sky is revealed with its glittering stars. His reaction is perhaps the only epitaph worth striving for: Wow!
Developing a taste for uncertainty allows us to act within our lifetimes, within our means and within our limited visions of the future, even if we are acting with nothing more than the certainty of our ignorance and a certain confidence in ourselves.
But the quest for certainty also blinds us to possibility. True, if we knew what to do and how things would turn out, we could act and achieve, without surprise, the results we'd expected. That's one way to live, and at the end, it may be adequate to have the epitaph read: as expected. Kidding aside, the quest for certainty has three serious drawbacks.
First, it encourages a bias for focusing on what we think we know. But knowing what we don't know is at least as useful. At the Darden school, where I teach, we use the case method, a contemporary application of the Socratic method. The students come from very different backgrounds. For example, the Class of 2014 has 320 students representing some thirtythree countries. When I first began using the case method, I found it disconcerting that students were not considerate enough to ask me only about what I knew. That forced me change the way I prepared for class. I had to become comfortable with what I did not know.
Eventually I had an "Aha!" moment. As I became more open with my ignorance and got students to think about their own, I leaned more and more on their experiences, their varied backgrounds. The case discussions were most fun, most intense, most thought-provoking when the whole class worked in this manner. In accepting our ignorance, we are able to let ourselves rely on others and not waste what they might know.
Friedrich von Hayek saw this process as the heart of the economic enterprise. "The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources… it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality." An organization that acts in this economic spirit has an intrinsic advantage over one that relies on power or fear or luck or superior foresight to get things done.
Awareness of our ignorance also helps overcome a second problem with the quest for certainty. This has to do with a bias in the way we see opportunity costs. More certain outcomes are given more value than less certain ones. Suppose you are asked to pick between a cheque a lakh and a sealed envelope, possibly empty. What is the opportunity cost of picking the check? Obviously, since you can't know what is inside the envelope, it depends on how you feel about losing a lakh. In other words, the opportunity cost calculation comes down to what you know; the alternative is irrelevant.
A real-life example of this problem arises in the so-called 'plunge decision'.
Should you keep your job or quit it and become an entrepreneur?
In one hand, your monthly paycheck; in the other, an opaque envelope. If you knew for certain what was inside the second envelope, life would be so much easier. It's a tough decision, but here's the important thing: the envelope is only opaque, it isn't sealed. Even if it turns out to be empty, you may have a say in what the envelope is going to contain and who it will be addressed to. This is because you are part of the new venture; you will be able to shape events. Does the choice now become more appealing? Unlike the sealed-envelope scenario, the alternative here is very relevant because you are part of it.
Does this mean that we should always choose the unknown, always embrace uncertainty? Of course not. Neither did Hayek exalt ignorance over knowledge. Instead, the idea here is to understand the Socratic maxim, common to all ancient civilizations, that a recognition of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom, here, means not to undervalue something simply because it has an uncertain reward.
This leads to the third way in which a quest for certainty blinds us to possibility. When we focus on certainty, we acquire a bias for not acting. Imagine you're doing business in a country under a colonial power. All around you are millions of poor illiterate people. You have many pressing problems. What would explain your decision to write a letter urging your son to: "Be sure to lay wide streets planted with
shady trees, every other of a quick-growing variety. Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens. Reserve large areas for football, hockey and parks. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques and Christian churches."
Jamsetji Tata wrote this in a letter to his son Dorab. The cynical may dismiss this as the grandiose dreams of a powerful and wealthy old man. Yet while Jamsetji did not die a wealthy man and even though only one of his four dream projects were realized in his lifetime, they were realized because he never failed to see possibility in uncertainty. And we're the better for it just as his sons and grandsons were. Think of anything you find enjoyable or worth waking up in the morning for. Gadgets and tools. Rights and opportunities. Each was made possible for you because someone somewhere chose the opaque envelope.
At the end of Le Guin's short story, the quest for certainty fails. But as the experimenter stands bewildered, the roof unexpectedly flips open and the open night sky is revealed with its glittering stars. His reaction is perhaps the only epitaph worth striving for: Wow!
Developing a taste for uncertainty allows us to act within our lifetimes, within our means and within our limited visions of the future, even if we are acting with nothing more than the certainty of our ignorance and a certain confidence in ourselves.
Saras
Sarasvathy CDET130830
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