We say that we like having answers. We ask questions, research, and experiment to find exact and satisfactory answers about the world. However, at the same time, it seems that we are always hesitant to say that a result found is the correct answer. In other words, we always tend to include some uncertainty in our answers that although what we know is most likely correct, it might not be. What is uncertainty for us and why do we have it all the time?
Uncertainty is very common in various fields of academia under different names. In economic history when constructing equations to find certain indicators, an “ignorance factor” is often added as an unknown constant. In statistical analysis, models have the greek letter epsilon, representing the “error term.” As such even the academic fields concerning itself with exact numbers and equations make sure to include an uncertainty factor to account for the fact that the results might not be correct to some extent.
Uncertainty presents itself in our daily languages as well. In Korea, the short phrase “몰라" [mol-la], which means “I don’t know,” is often quoted as one of the most common filler words that native speakers use in conversation. When asked a question, Koreans would start their answer with this phrase even if they do know the answer and will provide it the next second. Among the languages that I am familiar with, Korean uses this phrase most often, but the phrase “I don’t know” is often heard in conversations in English as well. Sure, now it has become a habit for many people to say the phrase without actually meaning it, but why did it become so common to say that you don’t know the answer when you do, in the first place?
This question has been a big curiosity of mine for a long while. I have not found a satisfactory answer to the presence of uncertainty everywhere yet, however I have thought of a reason that I think have contributed to embedding uncertainty in our society. We all have a fear of being wrong. We want to be correct and we want to avoid making mistakes. More importantly, we do not want to make mistakes in front of other people, because that would be embarrassing. Hence, we want to keep a loophole for us to escape through in the case that the answer that we provided turns out to be wrong. As there are technically no exact boundaries as to how large an uncertainty value can be, any miscalculation can be treated as an error term in statistical analysis. If I provided the wrong answer to a friend’s question, I have a somewhat valid excuse for my mistake that I was not sure of my answer. Hence uncertainty gives us leeway from the potential embarrassment of getting something wrong.
As I thought more about this question, my train of thought became more philosophical and metaphysical: maybe uncertainty exists because there actually is no absolutely right answer. Maybe everything we think is true is not actually true. We would never know if something is true, because the entire world might be a deceit. Whatever the reason is, uncertainty is always present near us in our formulas, books and conversations. What are your thoughts about this topic?