Dancing With Doubt: The Art of Being Gracefully Unsure

When someone proclaims anything with absolute certainty, I cringe. And when a politician does it, I double over in laughter. History and literature are littered with “sure things” that weren’t—from Goliath’s swagger to Macbeth’s fatal loophole about who counts as “of woman born.” Even Newton’s supposed iron laws wobble in the strange fabric of Einstein’s spacetime. So why are we so uneasy living with uncertainty?

Uncertainty, after all, is our oldest companion. We descended from people who survived by assuming the rustle in the bushes might be a dinner bell for a lion, not a friendly neighbor stopping by with banana bread. Our brains still run that ancient software, buggy updates and all. Give us an ambiguous situation and we’ll fill it with an explanation that offers us control. Certainty is a warm blanket, even if it’s woven with tenuous threads and smells faintly of denial.

I fight against this comforting placebo. Alexander Pope noted, “Some people will never learn anything because they understand everything too soon.” Modern psychology agrees. David Dunning and Justin Kruger’s research showed that confidence often peaks precisely where competence bottoms out. The cocksure are the least reliable—an observation that never seems to trouble the cocksure. 

A casual fan curses the batter who whiffs at a pitch splitting home plate that “anyone could hit,” usually shouted between sips of beer by someone whose last athletic achievement was walking to the mailbox. The professional knows how difficult it is even to see a 98-mile-an-hour fastball. 

Similarly, a criminologist understands the complex amalgam of factors that influence crime and predict recidivism; the lawmaker, eyeing reelection, prefers the blunt instrument of long incarceration—clumsy, expensive, but bumper-sticker-friendly. This concept is hardly new. Charles Darwin noted, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

As a psychologist, I find our dance with uncertainty fascinating. The Covid-19 pandemic tested the whole world at once. The initial danger compelled most to overwash hands and eschew social contacts. I wanted to trust my resilience to combat this virus, but its reported lethality made my faith waver. 

People handled this uncertainty in very different ways—from chasing the latest folk remedy to ignoring the menace altogether. I turned to a shifting science because it boldly admits uncertainty. I fully expected the recommendations to change when new data was gathered; indeed, I would have been suspicious if virologists failed to adjust their guidance. For me, this uncertainty was a feature, not a bug. Many couldn’t ignore that buzzing insect.

Religion presents a particular quandary. The average worshiper demands a steadfast road map with the present on one side and eternity on the other. Yet, any god that simplistic wouldn’t survive the entrance exam to pantheon school. Serious theologians see God as awesome and unknowable, revealing only hints to limited human intellect. For example, the New Testament insists that God has “unsearchable judgments” and “inscrutable ways.” Certainty about any respectable deity occupies an altitude far too lofty for humans to breathe.

This leaves me agreeing, uneasily, with Voltaire, “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.” Let’s face it, reality has more permutations than a galaxy of stars. So what’s our takeaway?

Benjamin Franklin observed, “The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.” I’ve long known of my knowledge deficits, but perhaps I now see less consequence in admitting them. Declaring “I don’t know” or “I’ve changed my mind” may at least deliver me to the wisdom-sanctuary threshold. The hard part, of course, is granting that same amnesty to everyone else. I’d like to say I’ve mastered the art of being gracefully unsure, but that would be a proclamation of absolute certainty—and I’ve already made my position on that perfectly uncertain.