20.10.07

Uncertainty

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.

Richard P. Feynman in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.

4 comments:

Zhoen said...

Yes! Yes! Well, provisionally, at any rate.

Kayt Ludi said...

That is gorgeous and amazing - and I need to make "I don't have to know an answer" my mantra. Thanks for posting this :)

Bobby said...

Here you go, guess the author (easy):

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

Pacian said...

He steers clear of the unknown knowns - the things he doesn't know he knows - but that's actually the most common kind of (un)knowledge for politicians.