scientistsinistral (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scientistsinistral) wrote2022-05-28 12:14 am
scientistsinistral) wrote2022-05-28 12:14 am
uncertainty is not the enemy (carlo rovelli)
The scientist rambles about uncertainty, science, and changes in personal philosophy, all prompted by an essay by the physicist Carlo Rovelli. If you don't read on for my musings, I just really recommend reading the essay; it's about a 5-10 minute read. Or just the extract at the end, which is the really salient bit, but I think the musings on how mathematics and science lead to that point are lovely as well (though I'm a scientist and therefore biased).
Alright, exams are done and I finally can get back to writing and reading all the library books I've checked out! (because I volunteer at one once a week and I am incapable of leaving without a book, apparently. Despite having 17 on loan right now. Some of which are on their fifth renewal, which means they've been with me for going on four months. Volunteering is tomorrow, I have one hold to pick up, and I'll probbaly get something else too.)
But one book I'm in the middle of right now is There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness by Carlo Rovelli, which is just a series of translated essays that were originally published in Italian newspapers, now compiled. Lots of interesting reading, especially for a non-physicist scientist (I've read Rovelli's more physics-y works, like Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. Didn't get much out of it, I'll admit.), with some interesting facts (did you know Nabokov was a lepidopterist who refused to categorise his species using genes and chromosomes and went for the age-old traditional method which was to look at their genitalia under a microscope?) or strangely poetic moments (so Dante accidentally hit on a cosmological model of the universe in Dante's Inferno about 400 years before Einstein found it out through evidence) to slightly inspiring moments (Einstein got things wrong and changed his mind about science. A lot.).
But the one I want to talk about today is the essay Bruno de Finetti: Uncertainty is Not the Enemy, which you can read in full by clicking on the link. Rovelli says it much better than I ever could, so I recommend the read, but he talks an Italian mathematician, Bruno de Finetti, and his about the lack of certainty in science: how theories are only such not because they are certainly true but because there is evidence for them and no one has yet falsified it. And yet, in the absence of certainty, we can still form a shared, reliable knowledge that can be largely depended on through gathering evidence, but still taking into account some degree of uncertainty.
And Rovelli applied this to human life as well: because all human life also comes with some level of uncertainty. There are some moments where the outcome is more reliable than others and uncertainty is diminished, but there still lies this sort of grey space where something could change, and the best course is to accept it and welcome it rather than trying to get rid of it completely, impossibly.
Now, as someone who has spent a lot of time lately being anxious about uncertainty and not wanting to embark on things unless the outcome is certainly positive (see: applying for jobs), that resonated a lot with me. Because many things aren't, and that can be scary, not knowing. But also within that space there exist the possiblity for things to change - and sometimes change is bad, sure, but sometimes change has good effects, things where you look back and wonder why you were scared of making that choice. Without the possibility and propensity for change, life would be much more set and unyielding, and maybe one would get locked into a path that would make them more miserable just because nothing else could budge.
I won't say I'm not still scared by change, by uncertainty. It might take me a while before I get fully comfortable with. But... reading it definitely set of a shift in me, an almost instantaneous thing that made me go 'Oh. Oh, that's a lot better with making peace and walking with it - and right? Isn't it beautiful that we have the space to move and change?' And that... that was just a really nice thought.
I'll sign off with the final paragraph from the essay, which is beautifully written in language and tone, and also just lovely in its content.
"There is a profound lesson to be learned from de Finetti’s ideas, one that I believe relates to us all – to our daily and our spiritual lives, and to our lives as citizens: we cannot get rid of uncertainty. We can diminish it, but we cannot make it disappear. Hence we should not experience it as some kind of nightmare. On the contrary, we should be reconciled to it as our lifelong companion. In the end, it is a kind and good one. It is probability that makes life interesting. It is because of probability that we can be touched by the unexpected. It
is probability that allows us to remain open to further knowledge. We are limited and mortal, we can learn to accept the limits of our knowledge – but we can still aim to learn and to look for the foundation of this knowledge. It is not certainty. It is reliability."
- Bruno Finetti: Uncertainty is Not the Enemy', Carlo Rovelli
Alright, exams are done and I finally can get back to writing and reading all the library books I've checked out! (because I volunteer at one once a week and I am incapable of leaving without a book, apparently. Despite having 17 on loan right now. Some of which are on their fifth renewal, which means they've been with me for going on four months. Volunteering is tomorrow, I have one hold to pick up, and I'll probbaly get something else too.)
But one book I'm in the middle of right now is There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness by Carlo Rovelli, which is just a series of translated essays that were originally published in Italian newspapers, now compiled. Lots of interesting reading, especially for a non-physicist scientist (I've read Rovelli's more physics-y works, like Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. Didn't get much out of it, I'll admit.), with some interesting facts (did you know Nabokov was a lepidopterist who refused to categorise his species using genes and chromosomes and went for the age-old traditional method which was to look at their genitalia under a microscope?) or strangely poetic moments (so Dante accidentally hit on a cosmological model of the universe in Dante's Inferno about 400 years before Einstein found it out through evidence) to slightly inspiring moments (Einstein got things wrong and changed his mind about science. A lot.).
But the one I want to talk about today is the essay Bruno de Finetti: Uncertainty is Not the Enemy, which you can read in full by clicking on the link. Rovelli says it much better than I ever could, so I recommend the read, but he talks an Italian mathematician, Bruno de Finetti, and his about the lack of certainty in science: how theories are only such not because they are certainly true but because there is evidence for them and no one has yet falsified it. And yet, in the absence of certainty, we can still form a shared, reliable knowledge that can be largely depended on through gathering evidence, but still taking into account some degree of uncertainty.
And Rovelli applied this to human life as well: because all human life also comes with some level of uncertainty. There are some moments where the outcome is more reliable than others and uncertainty is diminished, but there still lies this sort of grey space where something could change, and the best course is to accept it and welcome it rather than trying to get rid of it completely, impossibly.
Now, as someone who has spent a lot of time lately being anxious about uncertainty and not wanting to embark on things unless the outcome is certainly positive (see: applying for jobs), that resonated a lot with me. Because many things aren't, and that can be scary, not knowing. But also within that space there exist the possiblity for things to change - and sometimes change is bad, sure, but sometimes change has good effects, things where you look back and wonder why you were scared of making that choice. Without the possibility and propensity for change, life would be much more set and unyielding, and maybe one would get locked into a path that would make them more miserable just because nothing else could budge.
I won't say I'm not still scared by change, by uncertainty. It might take me a while before I get fully comfortable with. But... reading it definitely set of a shift in me, an almost instantaneous thing that made me go 'Oh. Oh, that's a lot better with making peace and walking with it - and right? Isn't it beautiful that we have the space to move and change?' And that... that was just a really nice thought.
I'll sign off with the final paragraph from the essay, which is beautifully written in language and tone, and also just lovely in its content.
"There is a profound lesson to be learned from de Finetti’s ideas, one that I believe relates to us all – to our daily and our spiritual lives, and to our lives as citizens: we cannot get rid of uncertainty. We can diminish it, but we cannot make it disappear. Hence we should not experience it as some kind of nightmare. On the contrary, we should be reconciled to it as our lifelong companion. In the end, it is a kind and good one. It is probability that makes life interesting. It is because of probability that we can be touched by the unexpected. It
is probability that allows us to remain open to further knowledge. We are limited and mortal, we can learn to accept the limits of our knowledge – but we can still aim to learn and to look for the foundation of this knowledge. It is not certainty. It is reliability."
- Bruno Finetti: Uncertainty is Not the Enemy', Carlo Rovelli