The end of not knowing
In a world of instant answers, doubt may be a valuable thing to practice
Used to be that you could have an argument in a bar for hours. What year did that film come out? Who scored the winning goal in that match? People would trade their own…often differing…memories. Triangulate from different anecdotes. They’d build complex, elaborate, cases to explain why their version was correct.
The point wasn’t just to have the answer. It was sparring, reasoning, a collective act of not knowing.
There’s little space for that these days. Search engines combined with smart phones got rid of that factual uncertainty. In a couple of taps the questions about the year, the goalscorer, are all settled. Outside of “phones banned” quizzes, those old pub arguments died quietly.
AI has taken it even further. AI doesn’t just give you a factual answer, it constructs reasoning. It helps you build arguments, pull together your logic, helps to give you the counterpoints before you’ve even finished your argument! It’s another polishing away of the friction of not knowing.
It gives us a strange inversion. The unknown itself is now increasingly unknown. We encounter it rarely, and it can feel intolerable when it happens.
The rise of certainty
Certainty is the dominant mood of the age. If we have instant facts, we think our access means mastery. If AI lets us generate arguments on demand, we think that fluency means conviction. And it’s created an expectation for certainty - politically, culturally, personally.
We can see it everywhere. Politics punishes doubt. We expect leaders to speak with an unwavering confidence, even when the future is in always in doubt. Hot takes are great media tools, because they project certainty and provoke equally heated response. And on a social platform, it’s really easy to lose the faith of your audience with a momentary hesitation.
We expect certainty. And, then, we cling to it, too - whether it’s real or imagined. Our competing certainties harden into distinct camps. We entrench ourselves in polarized convictions rather than share uncertainty. And we don’t debate in a space of doubt…where we might learn, or be convinced. We shout at each other from behind barricades where a challenge feels like an existential threat.
Simple answers are seductive
Certainty is appealing, because it’s simple.
A confident statement, a decisive stance, some solution that comes in a neat and understandable package. We might meet these with a real sense of relief. The world is complex and messy, certainty pushes that into clean, straight lines and containers.
But the awkward fact remains; the world is still complex and messy. So a simple certainty is false when reality is layered, tangled, couched in contingencies. Politics is a web of different trade-offs needed to actually govern, not easy answers. We can’t define a “fix” for systems of interlocking feedback loops. Even our own individual identity is often shifting and multifaceted.
But the media ecosystem feeds the idea of simplicity. Ten word answers are strong. Politicians who speak with nuance are branded weak, or deliberately misunderstood. Hot take shouting matches beat out considered, provisional, analysis. It’s reinforced by social platforms seeking the fastest, definitive, viral soundbite. Certainty presents as simplicity, and gets amplified.
It reinforces that complexity is something to be feared or avoided. Ambiguity is failure and doubt feels like weakness.
Simplicity is a story we tell ourselves. The world has never been simple.
The value of doubt
Uncertainty isn’t just a lack of something, though. It can be an active space. And a space that we’d benefit from.
If we don’t know something, then we have to fall back on our reasoning. We’re forced to work with incomplete information, and construct provisional stories and answers. We test and revise them. It might teach us a little humility, because we’re forced to recognize that we only have a partial understanding, that we might be wrong, or that there are valid competing opinions.
Doubt can fuel a conversation. Certainty ends it. We close the claim, finish the debate. If our position is entrenched then there’s nothing more to say or do. And, no doubt, it can be really satisfying in the moment. You had the last word, you “won” the argument. But it’s locking us into brittle positions.
Certainty turns the fluidity of ideas into rigid identities. Doubt, uncertainty, keeps us flexible and able to shift and adjust.
Certainty feels stronger, doubt is what keeps us alive and learning.
Can we recover uncertainty?
We can’t undo search engines and AI. And we wouldn’t want to, they’re just too useful. So the question becomes how we live alongside them, and how we might maintain a human space for uncertainty even when the answer might be right there.
There’s some personal options. If we chose to let the question linger longer before our immediate response is to look it up. Or try to build comfort in ending a conversation unresolved. Treat doubt as something that helps you exercise your brain.
We can live in cultural spaces that are defined by their uncertainty, or subjectivity. If we seek art, myth, stories, we’re interacting with forms that don’t have neat closure, that don’t just resolve into simple fact. Topics and mediums that treat ambiguity as a celebrated fact of human life.
And in our relations with others, we can be more open. Invite uncertainty back into a debate. Instead of seeking to “win”, think about what you might not know, whether there are doubts worth keeping alive. If you’re using AI, don’t make it an arbiter. Make it a foil for your own thinking, something that acts as a partner to bounce ideas off, and test you.
Doubt is a gift
In a world which demands instant certainty, uncertainty might be the rarest thing left. Uncertainty isn’t ignorance, or indecision. It’s making room for doubt. Doubt is something that can nurture more, create growth, not a failure to be pushed back.
Our tools don’t stop us rediscovering our uncertainty (even if they might tempt us). But we can finish our own thoughts instead of reflexively letting them do so for us. Uncertainty is a gap in knowledge, yes. It’s also the space where doubt, imagination, and the human mind are at their most open.
Certainty feels powerful but closes doors. Rediscovering uncertainty makes us human.