What are the Risks of Certainty? 2040's Ideas and Innovations Newsletter

Issue 143, January 18, 2024

Human nature, at its deepest core, reinforces our longing for certainty and the prospect of security and stability. We don’t want things around us to change. We want assurance that what we know is true and real. We want certainty that we made the right decisions and choices so that outputs and outcomes will be what we expect. Ambiguity creates anxiety and insecurity and makes us defensive. Ambiguity makes most of us feel uncomfortable, yet ambiguity and uncertainty can result in our biggest jumps forward in progress.

Toto, I’ve Got a Feeling We Aren’t in Kansas Anymore 

Operating in today’s ever-changing, highly disruptive, unpredictable, asymmetrical marketplace is far from ensuring certainty. Darwin’s theory of natural selection appears especially relevant today as the operative mode to survive and thrive. As Professor Scott Galloway says, “The species that survive are not the smartest, strongest, or fastest … but the most adaptable.” That seems to be true t…