The Importance of Uncertainty

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. Lazy habits of thinking mean we get trapped into thinking we have thought well when we haven't.

Years ago I wrote on the wisdom of uncertainty. Well, today I want to go a little deeper on just how important uncertainty really is.

I’m sure all my A Bug Free Mind readers will remember what I also wrote on the word ‘believe’, and how using this word was like a cancer to your dreams because it basically stated to the Universe, “I don’t have this thing I really want but I am trying really hard to hope I am going to get it.” 

So a near-perfect statement of lack… 

By saying this, they stated lack and doubt, and no confidence to the Universe, then wondered why their dreams didn’t come true. They conveyed the feeling of ‘I doubt I’ll get this’ and then the Universe gave them more of what they were asking for, which was more doubting they were going to get it. So they got exactly what they specifically asked for. 

So I taught people to use the word ‘know’ instead, and the feeling of knowing something being an absence of doubt. Because the state of knowing something is absolute. 

It says to the Universe, “I know this is going to happen!” In other words, it already has. It just hasn’t happened yet. Saying, “I know what to do,” is demonstrating confidence and detachment as it has effectively already happened. When you do that with complete absence of doubt then the Universe conspires to help you.  

The Universe loves confident people, and it helps them. But as with all useful magical tools, they also need constraint, or rather a check on themselves. Especially when we know something that we are not the full controllers of. 

Our human problem is, often we know things for certain which later turn out not to be true.

For example, we have just gone through a period of observing people who knew for certain that Covid was really deadly. So certain in fact, that they were willing to give up freedoms, wear masks, stay home, use passes to enter shops, take experimental gene-altering therapies… All because they knew it was right.

Now here’s where if they had just believed it was right, then many more would’ve not gone down the wrong road, as belief contains an element of doubt. Whereas knowing something means there is no doubt.

Now, if instead of knowing and instead of believing, they had decided to be a little uncertain about anything, then the tragedy that knowing something has just allowed to happen, simply could not have happened.

There was wisdom in uncertainty, and it was life-saving wisdom. But because of poor quality, low-level thinking, certainty took us the wrong way.

Before the world really went insane in late March 2020, I had spent January touring the Caribbean and Florida. Then on my return to the UK in February, I attempted to point out that the maths was showing that this new virus was approximately as deadly as the flu. Boy, did that fall on deaf ears or rather did that make a lot of people angry with me.

This made me begin to see there was this mass wave of ‘something’ over-powering people’s ability to think well.

Then March came along and the footage out of Italy came in, and it made me consider things more carefully… After all, the facts had potentially changed, and therefore checking my premise is all part of rational thinking.

Could I be wrong? - Yes I could. 

If I am wrong, what would be the best course of action? - Get your Mum to self-isolate, and go and do some research. So I did this.

This was prudent action because it was what had happened throughout human history. Villages used to isolate the old, let the young catch it and create herd immunity to protect the old. So it wasn’t rocket science. It was just rational thinking based on historical precedence, which was basic knowledge taught to anyone with an interest in history.

Then the world went nuts and everyone locked down. Purely on a maths basis, I knew this was wrong, and I stated it publicly. I saw Sweden was going the right way, so I said that too. But again almost no one listened to rational thought, they were only listening to the cult of experts who had been paraded out so that we may abdicate control of our lives over to them, that they may save us.

There was only one problem with this plan to a rational thinker… It was bollocks! I have spent my life proving experts wrong after questioning their expertise such as in the fields of the economy, psychology, medicine, health, accounting, production and many more… 

But the problem for all my naysayers was, they knew for certain I was wrong. Many Bug Free Mind readers told me they couldn’t understand why I was saying these things that were going against the mainstream narrative. My thoughts on their questioning was clearly that I had failed to teach them how to think well.

So my next step was to go away and research it. I think it was within a month I had called bullshit on the whole thing. As soon as I did I told my Mum she didn’t need to isolate anymore, just take a preventative number of supplements. 

However, even though I knew it was way less of a problem than anyone was saying, I didn’t know for certain I was right. Or rather, I didn’t allow myself to know for certain.

Most people will say I did, but I never did, and I do not know for certain now. As I never ever reach the stage of certainty over something I am not the controller of.

I can reach the state of certainty regarding what I control, and the only thing I control in the world is what is inside my mind. But even there I have to remain aware that the programming/conditioning I have experienced throughout life will in many ways be affecting my ability to consider unhindered. 

So by refusing to be 100% certain it leaves in place a crucial little bit of room for doubt, it leaves space for me to be wrong. 

Side note, the fear of being wrong is one of our ego’s greatest traps. If you need to have a fear then a much better fear to have is the fear of not changing your mind when the facts have changed. I digress… 

The reason people are not waking up en masse is because they have left no room to be wrong, and being right has become part of their identity.

But that tiny fraction of uncertainty means an escape from our own ego’s needs. 

Which are; 

a) to keep us safe (death is safe to the ego)

b) to keep us trapped in the past (we have always survived the past, so it’s safe to stay there)

c) to feed our need to be right, (support our own importance, providing a continual source of distraction).

If you have a tiny doubt then you begin to question, as you begin to question, you begin to think. As you begin to think you begin to open up to other answers.

But when you know something for certain, you leave no space for all that magic to happen.

So being open to being wrong is also a tiny, but crucial part of your ability to discern well. 

This is how science works. Questioning the science is how you do science. Probably the most unscientific statement in the last two years was, we’re following the science. Yet they were suppressing the people who were questioning the science and calling people like me unscientific conspiracy theorists.

Through their foolish certainty, they had lost the wisdom of uncertainty which is of course where good science lives. Science says this is what we think until we learn to think better. 

The morons running this switched off the opportunity for the world to think better and then they wonder why the real thinkers of the world called bullshit on them. They had gotten drunk on their own kool-aid.

The problem with certainty means you can be wrong and not realise it. 

The gift with uncertainty is you are always open to being wrong and adjusting your position.

To this day I have avoided making any decisions on anything to do with this whole subject unless I needed to make them. Instead, I researched until the answers were self-evident and needed no decision to aid them. Which meant I remained in the perfect state of ‘enough certainty to act’, but not too much to be blinded by being 100% certain. 

All learning ceases when we know something for certain.

Great decision making is all about avoiding making a decision. As when a decision becomes self-evidently correct, no decision is necessary. Most people confuse good decision making with forced decision making, i.e. a decision you have to make before the self-evidently correct way has presented itself.

The ability to discern well means you can trust your ability to evaluate things which you have no training to evaluate. 

For example, I am no rocket scientist, but if you showed me two Rocket projects, I’d be able to evaluate them both and tell you which one was more likely to succeed. A great discernment ability means you can look at things outside of your area of expertise and trust your ability to know which is the way to go. 

This is how I have confounded numerous experts in their respective fields for decades.

Thanks to the work I have done on my mind as I laid out in my A Bug Free Mind books, and my attention to the fine nuances of the words we use and the feelings they generate, I am able to spend my entire life protected from my ego, and protected from being wrong on subjects which by their very nature dwell in the unknown.

I credit this rewarding experience in a long way to a state of me being comfortable living in the wisdom of uncertainty. Because it always enables me to be very comfortable in uncomfortable positions. 

I suggest you look at what you know for certain to be true, and begin to question it more regularly… As quite often a whole different experience of life awaits those who can see past the trappings of their conditioning.

As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Just how many lost lives, destroyed livelihoods and decimated economies could’ve been avoided had the world been even just a little more uncertain?…

Best wishes,

Andy

P.S. Thank you to everyone who has commented and left messages for me. I appreciate your encouragement to write the book. However, I do not know if I want to put myself under the sort of pressure to write it. Frankly, I live the life of my dreams now, and to add in pressure is to go against the grain because I have spent years removing anything that looked like pressure from my day to day life. But I am still considering it, and continuing to make notes. If I can summon up the energy to write a short sales page, then who knows, maybe I’ll actually do it :-)