It is difficult to accept not knowing something. To have a definitive answer is to embrace certainty, to be in control of a situation. It is hard to blame a person for being wary of another for admitting not to know an answer, even an answer that a person should know. Can one be convinced by an argument prefaced by “I don’t know, but based upon what I do understand I think X“? The phrase “I don’t know” might connote a certain mistrust of what follows after it.

Some feel science is fraught with uncertainty, in no small part to its very foundations of hypothesis testing, verification and replication. Perhaps those most afraid of science are exerting their overarching fear of uncertainty in their own lives. There is comfort in teleology, a precise conviction that you know. Science, on the other hand, adopts statistical language. Conclusions are supported, not proven, despite what may be read in the all too ‘certain’ world of media outlets and taught in some introductory science courses.

What does it mean to support a conclusion? Conclusions stem from results. Results are the uninterpreted products of data. Conclusions are limited by the type and amount of data collected. Conclusions aim to make the results applicable to something else in a broader sense, to interpret the data in a context. Conclusions are therefore not objective, whereas data and the results of the entire data collection are. Data is certain. Conclusions are defined statistically by the community of researchers, and are by their essence uncertain.

While science may thrive on uncertainty, and in fact exploit it, not all groups of people enjoy this characteristic. Authoritarian institutions, such as military, political enclaves, and organized religions, see uncertainty as a threat to their stability. It is stressful to be uncertain about one’s future. To know how you will spend eternity can either be a nightmare or a dream, depending on your religious leanings. In the former, a lifetime is spent agonizing how you will be judged. While in the latter, you may throw caution to the wind and behave more recklessly knowing that you are still covered under God’s insurance plan. It is almost as if life is but a rental car and you signed up for the damage waiver. Though these may the extremities of a reaction continuum, these cases are likely numerous enough to warrant highlighting.

There is much joy to be uncovered in uncertainty. A reassurance that it is all right to not know. A comfort in admitting you are wrong. Fortitude to change your mind based on evidence to the contrary. My conclusions may be absurd, but they are based upon data that you can view and judge for yourself. It causes you to assess the probability of your action’s outcomes. When you embrace uncertainty in your life you embrace the unknown. You have no plans, aside from decomposition, after your death. Uncertainty promotes self-restraint.

I feel sorrow when I meet people who are certain of the outcomes of their lives. I inevitably ask “how do you know?” The answer is often “faith”. Faith is certainty, but a false sense of certainty. Mark Twain sums it up in Following the Equator (chapter 12):

There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”

Certainty breeds confidence and fear. You might know, but your foundations are laid down upon a falsehood. The house that faith built comes shattering down in the face of reasonable evidence. This is where fear commences as one struggles to reconcile the corrosive events that just transpired with their worldview.

The open mind is more capable of filtering new information and judging the validity of statements and evidence without the inhibitions of prior conceptions. This is the joy of uncertainty. A pleasure in admitting you don’t know and a willingness to reject fear of the unknown. A pleasure in listening to other people without preconceptions of the meaning before the words escape their mouths. A joy in taking each moment as it comes and not agonizing about the moments that don’t. A joy in finding things out for yourself and not… taking it on faith. A pleasure in not knowing what the future holds.

Do not be afraid to be uncertain, there is a joy in what we do not know.