>_Automation means prolonging the past for the sake of what is now called ‘certainty’. Predictable profit. Predictable growth. Predictable planet death. Good to know that will happen in advance. Creativity means uncertainty. It means you might not know whether your plan is right. It means knowing that your plan can never be perfectly right. It will always have a flaw. Your economics, your ecology. It will never map earth perfectly. Never one to one. How wonderful is that. Acknowledging finitude. To exist is to be flawed. To be broken. To be wounded._ > >Timothy Morton [^1] We often think of uncertainty as the direct opposite of certainty. After all, *un-certain* is simply the negation of *certain*, right? If we understand what certainty is, then uncertainty must be its inverse. This argument seems intuitive, but it hinges on a crucial assumption: that we actually know what certainty *is*. But do we? As we explored in the section on [[Ignorance]], the past centuries have witnessed a profound unraveling of certainty in the sciences—an ***explosion of ignorance***, if you will. Even physics and mathematics, long regarded as bastions of certainty, have abandoned the notion of absolute knowledge. We now know that if the position of a subatomic particle is determined, its momentum must be uncertain (Schrödinger). We have proof that if a formal whole-number system is consistent, it must be incomplete (Gödel). This raises an unsettling question: If certainty itself is an illusion, what, then, could its opposite be? One might dismiss this as a purely academic quandary—idle musings reverberating off seminar walls. After all, in our daily lives, we do not rely on absolute certainty. What we need is ***practical certainty***—the ability to make decisions based on the best available knowledge at a given time. In the absence of absolute certainty, we turn to something more attainable: ***credence***—a belief held with enough confidence to guide our choices. But this realization should give us pause. Credence, or practical certainty, is built upon three fundamental pillars: ***belief***, ***trust***, and ***choice***. This highlights a crucial point—our actions are not based on certain knowledge, but on beliefs strong enough to warrant trust. In classical epistemology, this is known as "justified true belief." A belief is considered knowledge only if it is justified by supporting evidence. Suppose I believe today is sunny. I justify this belief by looking out the window and seeing the sun. Simple enough. However, as Edmund Gettier famously pointed out in 1963[^2], we can mistake something for evidence and thereby hold a false belief. Suppose I believe it is raining. I glance outside and see a wet garden and overcast clouds. My belief is justified—but I may still be wrong. Perhaps the garden is wet from sprinklers, and the clouds are about to clear. This reveals something unsettling: certainty is not an objective feature of knowledge but something far more elusive. Certainty is not about facts—it is about ***faith***. It is the trust we place in our beliefs, an intangible force underpinning all our decisions. From this perspective, uncertainty takes on a more profound meaning. It is not merely the absence of certainty but an active force—one that corrodes, undermines, and dissolves the trust we grant our beliefs. It erodes the habitual reflexes of decision-making, forcing us to reconsider, adapt, and confront the unknown. Uncertainty is the destroyer of credence—and the creator of possibility. [[Truth about Truth|Next page]] <hr> [^1]: Lecture to the UF School of Art + Art History. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P4oNrE1zPZY (9th minute) [^2]: https://courses.physics.illinois.edu/phys419/sp2019/Gettier.pdf