Nine years ago, Yuval Harari said something like, “We are facing the greatest uncertainty humanity has ever known.”

When I heard that, my teenage daughter (sitting next to me) just burst out laughing.

She whispered, “Really? What about the Blitz? The Black Death? Come on…”

Honestly, I didn’t know whether to be proud of her critical thinking or just hide under the chair. (lol)

Thinking back, though, she had a point.

If 2014 was “peak uncertainty,” what would we even call 2022?

Uncertainty isn’t ignorance — it’s worse

Uncertainty is kind of weird, right?

It’s not the same as just being ignorant.

It’s like… you know something’s going on — climate change, new diseases — but you also know you don’t have enough information to predict what’s next.

There’s no lack of data. There’s too much!

And it’s all ambiguous.

Probability models can’t really touch it — it’s too messy, too layered.

Which, obviously, makes humans super uncomfortable.

We’re wired to hate not knowing.

And when that discomfort kicks in?

We do all sorts of strange things.

Neuroscientists say our stress levels spike.

Behavioral economists say we freeze up when making decisions.

Psychologists even proved we’d rather definitely get an electric shock than maybe get one. (Pffft. Humans.)

In short: uncertainty stresses us out way more than bad news itself.

The desperate chase for certainty

And so… we get desperate.

We grab onto anything that promises certainty.

History?

Sure, let’s pretend “history repeats itself” — even though any decent historian would roll their eyes at that.

The Vietnam War? Oh, it’s just like WWII, right?

(Except… no. Not even close.)

Economic models?

Yeah, they predict everything!

(Except for the part where Nobel Prize winners admit the most important stuff always gets left out.)

Technology?

Step counters tell you you’re “healthy” just because you walked 10,000 steps.

(Meanwhile, your brain quietly forgets how to judge your own body without an app.)

In chasing certainty, we end up outsourcing our own judgment.

And we lose it.

Isn’t that kind of scary?

Artists and scientists: masters of the unknown

Meanwhile, in a totally different universe…

Scientists and artists are pretty chill about uncertainty.

Physicist Carlo Rovelli says science isn’t about knowing.

It’s about doubting.

About hanging out in that vast, murky middle ground between “total ignorance” and “absolute certainty.”

Artists live there too.

Every painting, every song, every sculpture — it’s just a hypothesis.

A guess.

“I think this will mean something to someone.”

They don’t seek safe answers.

They leap into the unknown, hoping someone out there will meet them halfway.

Maybe that’s why art feels so alive?

Maybe… not knowing is enough

Sometimes I wonder…

What if we stopped chasing certainty so hard?

What if we leaned into the questions?

Listened more carefully to those little nagging doubts?

(“Maybe the foundation isn’t safe,” “Maybe the medicine won’t work…”)

Maybe, in embracing the not-knowing, we’d actually make better choices.

Or maybe… we’d just be slightly less wrong.

(And maybe that’s enough.)