Certainty doesn’t exist but we’re just never aware of it.

One of the many ironies of the pandemic is the way it has intensified our awareness of how little control we have over the future. It has intensified our awareness; it has not created uncertainty. In our pre-pandemic world, we reassured ourselves with the story that we were in control. The pandemic refutes such blindness. Change is the constant.

We Must All Become Yogis

Our desire for certainty impedes exploration and keeps us trapped within the confines of the known, producing mediocre results in the long run. Most people’s lives are a living testament (no pun intended) to this thought.

[B]oth bureaucrats and businesspeople are heavily attracted to the illusion of certainty. Standard cost-cutting ‘efficiencies’ can usually be ‘proven’ to work in advance; more interesting lines of enquiry come with career-threatening unknowability…

[O]ne reason why the world is in a mess is because, for a long time, the ratio between ‘explore’ and ‘exploit’ has been badly out of whack. Entities like procurement have been allowed to claim full credit for money–grabbing cost-savings without commensurate responsibility for delayed or hidden costs.

The Illusion of Certainty