i. the consultation room and the meeting room

There’s a particular quality of silence that fills a room when someone realizes they’ve been performing certainty for so long they’ve forgotten it’s a performance. Or, if not performance, it’s a device, a more or less conscious trickery, an opaque or transparent illusion. I’ve witnessed it in two distinct settings: the psychotherapy consultation room and the corporate meeting room. The silence has the same texture, a kind of hollow density, like the air itself has become aware of its own emptiness.

In the consultation room, it might arrive when a patient who has spent months explaining their life through an elaborate theoretical framework suddenly stops mid-sentence. It can be an “aha” or an “uh oh” moment. Either way, their carefully constructed narrative falters. The map they’ve been using to navigate their existence reveals itself as a drawing they’ve been making while walking in circles.

In the meeting room, it manifests when someone presenting quarterly projections is asked a simple question that their PowerPoint, often prepared by someone with lower rank or a consultant, hasn’t anticipated. Watch their face in that microsecond before they recover. There’s a flicker of something—panic? recognition?—before the professional mask reassembles itself and they begin speaking in the curious corporate dialect that sounds like language but carries no meaning.

I’ve spent two decades moving between these two worlds, and I’ve come to believe we’re witnessing something that deserves attention, not just clinical but existential: a collective pathology of certainty that has infected our organizational life, our social discourse, and our relationship with knowledge itself.

This isn’t simply about overconfidence or hubris. This is something more systematic, more pervasive. A syndrome in the true medical sense, a clustering of symptoms that point to an underlying disease process that has the risk of being recognized as a pandemic.

ii. symptomatology: reading the signs

Studying psychopathology, we learn to read symptoms not as isolated phenomena but as expressions of deeper organizational principles of the psyche. A patient doesn’t simply have “anxiety”; they have a particular way of organizing their relationship to uncertainty that manifests as anxiety. Similarly, our contemporary certainty syndrome reveals itself through a constellation of observable behaviors that, taken together, suggest a profound disorder in how we relate to knowledge, doubt, and the limits of human understanding.

Let me sketch a preliminary diagnostic picture.

the primary symptoms

1. epistemic rigidity with compensatory flexibility display

This is a fascinating symptom: an actual inflexibility of thought coupled with an elaborate performance of openness. The executive who begins every meeting with “I’m totally open to different perspectives” before systematically dismissing any view that challenges their predetermined conclusion. I’m particularly tired of listening to people say that they are consensual or that they aim for consensus, when in fact they just want to put up a show of apparent participation to end up enforcing their hierarchical power to push through the decision they already made before the meeting.

I see this in teaching and facilitation as well: the teacher or facilitator who asks for the characteristics of a certain kind of leader, for instance, appearing to listen and consider what the audience is shouting out, but ultimately ending up with the list they had prepared beforehand. Of course, there’s always the thought leader who preaches “embracing uncertainty” through a rigid ten-step framework; the consultant who sells “agile methodologies” through inflexible implementation protocols.

It reminds me of what psychoanalysts call “reaction formation”: a defense against an impulse by ostentatiously displaying its opposite. We’ve become so terrified of uncertainty that we’ve created entire industries dedicated to performing comfort with it.

2. predictive compulsion

The uncontrollable need to forecast, project, and scenario-plan every aspect of existence. This goes beyond prudent planning into something more symptomatic. Five-year strategic plans with monthly KPI tracking. Daily mood monitoring apps. Relationship trajectory mapping. Career path optimization algorithms.

I once worked with a client who created a sophisticated spreadsheet to predict, plan and organize how they would manage email on a weekly basis. Sadly, the point was to gain two extra hours each week. The person was about to have their first child and didn’t want to spend too much time working. So naturally, the solution was to create yet another system—a new way to do work about work—rather than simply doing less.

They spent about five hours creating and adjusting this thing, but at least enjoyed it because they felt in control—a rare feeling for this person. The spreadsheet predicted the volume of incoming messages based on historical patterns, categorized them by urgency and sender, and allocated specific time blocks for responses. Three weeks into fatherhood, the spreadsheet was abandoned. Reality doesn’t read spreadsheets.

This compulsion to predict reflects something deeper than simple planning anxiety. It suggests a fundamental refusal to accept that some dimensions of existence resist quantification, that control is often an illusion, and that the future is genuinely open in ways that no amount of data can close. ¹

3. ambiguity intolerance syndrome

It’s the physical and psychological distress when faced with genuine uncertainty. This can manifest as:

• Somatic responses: elevated heart rate when someone says “it depends”
• Cognitive flooding: inability to think clearly without clear parameters
• Behavioral avoidance: creating false certainties to avoid dwelling in ambiguity
• Emotional dysregulation: anger or anxiety when faced with open-ended situations

As explored in the research on intolerance of uncertainty ², this phenomenon is transdiagnostic, appearing across various psychological conditions from anxiety disorders to OCD to depression.

4. certainty performativity disorder

The compulsive need to appear certain regardless of actual knowledge. This creates a kind of “confidence theater”: elaborate performances of supposed knowing that mask fundamental ignorance. The tell-tale signs:

• Speaking in buzzwords and jargon to avoid substantive statements
• Using data visualization or starting interventions with “studies say that…” to create an aura of scientific certainty
• Transforming guesses into “data-driven insights”
• Confusing correlation with causation, then presenting both as destiny
• Blatantly lying

In my late teens, during a night out in Sesimbra (a coastal town south of Lisbon), our hometown, I remember a friend claiming to have seen a movie that had not started filming yet (it was a sequel that had been announced). When confronted with this incongruity, he just shrugged his shoulders and said: “You guys never believe in me!”

secondary manifestations

The primary symptoms generate a cascade of secondary effects:

Intellectual Bulimia: Consuming vast amounts of information without digestion, then regurgitating it as “thought leadership.” The modern professional reads executive summaries of books about summaries of research, then speaks with authority about fields they’ve never actually studied.

I remember a friend and mentor telling me a tale about a colleague he had when he was in the army who didn’t know how to swim. That colleague wanted to learn to swim and spent some nights reading in the barracks library where he found a swimming manual. A few weeks into his “instruction,” moved by shame, he threw himself into the pool. Luckily, my friend was on night watch near the pool and heard the water splash with the distress of his colleague, and knew how to swim.

Paradigm Addiction: The compulsive need for new frameworks, models, and methodologies. Like addicts needing ever-stronger hits, we cycle through management theories, productivity systems, and organizational paradigms with increasing speed, each promising to finally deliver the certainty we crave.

Personal Development Groupies: They normally inhabit the self-help and self-improvement territories. They’re the ones who certify as coaches in a weekend, after a PNL workshop, followed by a non-violent communication program that includes a cocoa ritual, while dancing ecstatically. All this following self-proclaimed gurus running probable pyramid schemes. ³ It’s not uncommon for these people to emancipate and create a role, job title with words that do not exist, and to create “Frankensteinean” self-named methodologies that are even less prone to rigor, depth and breadth than the ones they’re based on. They just arrogantly, while dressed in a shroud of humility and openness, do “their thing.”

Complexity Allergy or Imperious Pragmatist: An immediate rejection response to anything that can’t be reduced to a simple model or metric. Nuance becomes the enemy. Paradox is intolerable. “It’s complicated” sounds like an admission of failure rather than a recognition of reality.

iii. the wellness-certainty complex: a case study in paradox

Recently, I found myself in conversation about vaccination—a topic that has become curiously divisive. I was speaking with someone deeply embedded in what we might call the “wellness-industrial complex.” Someone who regularly attends retreats, practices various forms of bodywork, and speaks fluently the language of chakras and energy fields. The conversation took a revealing turn when I suggested that perhaps we needed to respect different perspectives on the issue, even if we disagreed with them, with the explicit intention to note what was happening between us in that conversation.

The response was immediate and absolute: “Excuse me, but those who vaccinate put others at risk, not just the ones around but also they undermine our genetic future, and whoever allows that to happen does the same!” The vehemence was striking, especially from someone who moments before had been extolling the virtues of openness and non-judgment.

What struck me wasn’t the position itself but the certainty with which it was held. Here was someone whose entire professional identity was built around flexibility, flow, and accepting what the universe provides, yet who displayed a rigidity that would make a fundamentalist proud. The irony was lost on them entirely. ⁴

This certainty-within-uncertainty paradox reveals something deeper about how we use therapeutic and spiritual frameworks to avoid political engagement. The wellness practitioner’s absolute certainty represents not just individual rigidity but a broader pattern where psychological language substitutes for structural analysis. Their certainty about vaccination becomes a way to feel politically engaged while remaining safely within individualistic frameworks of personal choice and bodily autonomy. ⁵

This encounter exemplifies a broader phenomenon I’ve observed in what we might call the “transformational space”: that ecosystem of wellness retreats, circles, ecstatic dances, and plant medicine ceremonies. As documented in recent investigations ⁶, there’s a curious pipeline from yoga studios to conspiracy theories, from meditation retreats to anti-vaccine activism, from self-care to various forms of extremism. The common thread? Certainty masquerading as openness.

the ancestral wisdom monopoly

One particularly striking manifestation of this paradox is the “ancestral wisdom monopoly.” In these circles, there’s often a wholesale dismissal of modern knowledge—philosophy, science, medicine—in favor of indigenous practices and ancient wisdom. The shamans knew, the argument goes, and we’ve been wrong for thousands of years.

Now, I have no quarrel with learning from indigenous wisdom or ancient practices. What troubles me is the certainty with which modern knowledge is dismissed and ancient knowledge is embraced. It’s simply another form of fundamentalism, dressed in feathers instead of lab coats.

I once attended a gathering where someone declared, with absolute conviction, that if you read classical philosophy, you were perpetuating colonial thinking patterns. When I gently suggested that both Plato and plant medicine might have something to offer, I was met with the kind of rigid dismissal usually associated with the very institutional thinking these communities claim to reject.

The irony is profound: communities built on the premise of breaking free from rigid thinking patterns have created their own orthodoxies, complete with unquestionable truths and excommunication for heretics. ⁷

the performance of flow

Watch closely at these gatherings and you’ll notice something curious: the performance of spontaneity, the choreography of flow. Everyone closes their eyes and breathes deeply on cue. The “authentic movement” follows predictable patterns. The sharing circles have their own rigid protocols disguised as organic emergence.

There’s a Portuguese comedian who has the most listened-to podcast, which is extracted from a morning radio show: Joana Marques and her “Extremamente Desagradável” (Extremely Unpleasant). She makes it her job to expose vanity and, I humbly add, self-deceptive arrogance, and by doing so, it’s frequent to feature excerpts of social media videos or podcasts where the protagonists engage in utter performative bullshit. ⁸ I’m bringing this up because I remember someone forcing someone to move in certain ways, to say certain things, in a sort of guided trance. Of course they produced evident results on the victim. Oops! I’m sorry: the client or fellow searcher of deeper meaning and existence.

This isn’t to dismiss the potential value in movement, breathwork, or group process. It’s to point out how even practices designed to free us from rigidity can become rigid systems themselves. The certainty that these specific methods, in these specific timeframes, will produce transformation is just another manifestation of the syndrome.

iv. etiology: how we became certain

To understand how we arrived at this pathological state, we need to examine the confluence of forces that created the conditions for the certainty syndrome to flourish. Like most social pathologies, this one has multiple contributing factors, each reinforcing the others in a complex web of causation.

the economic imperative

Modern capitalism doesn’t just prefer certainty, it requires it. Quarterly earnings reports demand predictable growth. Investment decisions require risk quantification. Career advancement depends on appearing to have increasingly sophisticated answers. We’ve created an entire economic system that punishes the admission of ignorance, or even doubt, and rewards the performance of knowledge. ⁹

This goes beyond simple market dynamics. The financialization of everything means that all aspects of life must be rendered predictable enough to be priced. Healthcare becomes “managed care.” Education becomes “learning outcomes,” with knowledge reduced to measurable competencies or memorized content. Even relationships are subjected to cost-benefit analysis, with dating apps promising to optimize romantic matching through algorithmic certainty.

What’s particularly insidious is how this system selects for and rewards what writer Ed Zitron calls “the business idiot” ¹⁰—a specific type of corporate performer who thrives not through competence but through the projection of competence. The business idiot excels at what Zitron describes as “managing up and out”: impressing superiors and external stakeholders while contributing little actual value. They speak fluently in corporate buzzwords, confidently presenting derivative ideas as innovation, transforming their lack of knowledge into an asset by performing certainty with such conviction that questioning them seems like the real incompetence.

We used to call these people “con artists”; we’ve legitimized the con artist. The business idiot doesn’t need to understand; they need only to project understanding with sufficient force. They’re the ones who can speak for thirty minutes without saying anything substantive, who can transform a simple concept into a complex-sounding framework, who rise through organizations not by creating value but by creating the appearance of value. And Silicon Valley mentality, that has expanded far beyond its geographical territory, has perfected this art—selling the promise of future success has become more valuable than actually solving problems. ¹¹

The gig economy adds another layer: when everyone is an entrepreneur, everyone must project certainty to attract clients, investors, or employers. Doubt becomes literally unaffordable. The freelance consultant who admits uncertainty doesn’t get hired. The startup founder who acknowledges the possibility of failure doesn’t get funded. We’ve created a system where honesty about uncertainty is economically suicidal.

the technological amplification

Digital technology hasn’t created our need for certainty, but it has amplified it beyond all previous bounds. We now have tools that promise to make the unpredictable predictable: big data analytics, machine learning algorithms, predictive modeling. The promise is seductive: with enough data and processing power, we can transform fundamental uncertainty into manageable risk. ¹²

Social media adds its own dynamic. In the attention economy, nuance doesn’t sell. Complexity doesn’t go viral. What spreads is certainty, regardless of veracity. The more absolute, the better, despite all certainty already being absolute. The tweet that admits ambiguity gets ignored; the one that proclaims universal truth gets retweeted. We’re training ourselves (and our AI systems), through millions of daily interactions, to perform certainty regardless of our actual knowledge. ¹³

the psychological substrate

At a deeper level, our certainty syndrome reflects fundamental anxieties about control, meaning, and mortality. In a world that feels increasingly chaotic and unpredictable (though every era’s inhabitants likely felt similarly), the performance of certainty becomes a psychological defense against existential terror.

Our certainty syndrome might be seen as a contemporary manifestation of the ever-present fear of death. If we can just predict accurately enough, plan comprehensively enough, control tightly enough, we can keep chaos and death at bay. Or maybe it’s not death we’re trying to escape from, but the lack of meaning. And if this is true, this is another consequence of the economic, technocratic world we created for ourselves, where meaning is easily depleted by meaningless tasks, occupations and lives.

This connects to what psychoanalysts call “omnipotent thinking”: the infantile belief that our thoughts can control reality. Most of us outgrow this in its crude form, but it persists in subtler ways. The executive who believes their strategic plan can control market forces. The life coach who thinks visualization can manifest reality. The technologist who believes algorithms can eliminate human unpredictability.

v. the clinical insight: certainty as symptom

My experience of clinical study and practice has led me to the following observation: virtually all psychopathologies manifest with some form of pathological certainty. This isn’t merely a correlation: it appears to be a core feature of psychological distress.

As Léon Grinberg noted, psychopathology results from “an increased intolerance to ambiguity and uncertainty, while mental health relates to a greater capacity for adaptation to the complexities, ambiguities and uncertainties of human life.” ¹⁴ This clinical insight has been substantiated by decades of research on intolerance of uncertainty as a transdiagnostic factor in mental disorders. ¹⁵

Consider the manifestations:

• The depressed person knows with absolute certainty that they are worthless and the world is meaningless;
• The person with OCD knows that catastrophe will occur if they don’t perform their rituals;
• The manic individual knows they are invincible and their plans cannot fail;
• The person with schizophrenia may construct elaborate certainties to organize their fragmented experience.

In each case, the pathology involves not just the content of the belief but its rigid, unquestionable nature. Health, by contrast, correlates with the capacity to tolerate uncertainty, ambiguity, and the unknown. The psychologically, emotionally, spiritually flexible person can hold convictions while remaining open to revision. They can say “I believe” rather than “I know” and sleep soundly with that distinction.

This clinical insight has profound implications for our broader culture. If certainty is a symptom of individual pathology, what does it mean that our institutions—corporate, educational, political—increasingly demand and reward displays of absolute certainty? We may have created systems that are inherently pathologizing, that actively cultivate the very rigidity that creates psychological suffering.

vi. case studies in institutional certainty

To see how the certainty syndrome manifests at scale, let’s examine some institutional case studies that consolidate the patterns we’ve been exploring.

the strategic plan delusion

I once consulted for a company in the technology/telecommunication sector that proudly unveiled a strategic plan with detailed projections spanning several years into the future. The document ran to more than 100 pages, with detailed projections for market share, technology adoption, and revenue growth. Every assumption was footnoted, every projection backed by data.

Within two years, not a single major prediction had proven accurate. They had failed to anticipate major technological shifts, social media phenomena that hadn’t yet emerged, work pattern changes, supply chain disruptions, and dozens of other factors. But here’s what’s diagnostic: instead of acknowledging the failure of prediction, they hired consultants to create a revised plan that retrospectively explained why all these changes were actually part of the original vision. This reminds me of one of the anecdotes that David Graeber left us in his books. ¹⁶

This is institutional certainty syndrome in pure form: the inability to say “we don’t know” even when your not-knowing has been definitively proven. The pathology isn’t in failed prediction—it’s in the inability to acknowledge the limits of prediction itself.

the measurement compulsion meets the innovation theater

A software company I worked with became obsessed with “data-driven decision making.” They installed analytics everywhere: employee keystroke tracking, bathroom usage patterns, meeting room temperature preferences, cafeteria purchase histories, employee mood assessment via the same devices used to evaluate the cleanliness of bathrooms in airports. They had dashboards for their dashboards, metrics for their metrics. Simultaneously, they opened an “innovation lab”—a spacious loft with exposed brick, whiteboards covering every wall, post-it notes arranged in rainbow patterns, beanbag chairs scattered like colorful fungi.

The result? Complete paralysis. Every decision required data, but the data could support any position depending on how you sliced it. Meetings devolved into battles of competing visualizations. Simple questions like “should we offer free coffee?” spawned multi-week analytics projects. Meanwhile, the innovation lab ran on rigid schedules. Creativity was time-boxed into “sprint sessions.” Breakthrough thinking was expected on quarterly cycles.

This represents two variants of certainty syndrome converging: the belief that enough measurement can eliminate judgment, and the fantasy that innovation can be systematized. It’s the corporate equivalent of checking the door lock seventeen times while simultaneously believing you can schedule spontaneity. ¹⁷ The compulsion itself becomes the problem it was meant to solve. ¹⁸

the false adoption of complexity

I’ve observed a number of organizations that appeared to take a different approach to strategy—no 100-page plans but intentions set in brief documents. The result: everyone complained about the lack of clarity, the freedom of interpretation, the ambiguous nature of the wishes. But the real problem was that the mentalities of those in charge remained in the control-and-predict paradigm. Those brief strategy documents were wishful thinking at best. It’s not enough to “wish to like” something. As one might say, “I wish I liked to go to the gym… I don’t and I don’t see enough advantages in doing so without liking it.”

vii. the phenomenology of false certainty

What does it feel like to live inside the certainty syndrome? There’s a particular phenomenology to false certainty—a lived experience distinct from both genuine knowledge and honest ignorance.

the hollow core

At the center of performed certainty is a peculiar emptiness. Unlike genuine expertise, which has texture and depth, false certainty feels smooth and frictionless. It’s like the difference between a real apple and a plastic one. The surface may look similar, but the moment you bite down, the distinction is unmistakable.

I remember in the beginning of my career struggling with the fact that I was a young, inexperienced, baby-faced man who needed to be perceived as credible, knowledgeable and helpful to people who searched for psychological and emotional help, and for very different reasons, to people I had to convince to buy the services the company I was working for offered. I remember sharing this with an HR manager of an important law firm, in a workshop where we both were participants, and she advised me to grow a beard, start wearing suits, and begin using business-English jargon. That was the advice they gave to young attorneys at their firm. I remember replying: “I can’t grow a beard. I don’t have enough.”

I think of a management consultant I worked with in therapy who described her work as “professional pretending.” She had frameworks for everything—change management, digital transformation, organizational culture—but admitted she had no idea if any of it actually worked. “The weird thing,” she said, “is that after a while, the frameworks start to feel real. You forget they’re just ways of organizing ignorance.” ¹⁹

the anxiety of maintenance

False certainty requires constant maintenance. Unlike genuine knowledge, which tends to be stable and self-supporting, performed certainty is inherently fragile. It must be continuously propped up, defended, reinforced.

This creates a particular kind of anxiety. Not the honest anxiety of facing the unknown, but the meta-anxiety of maintaining a facade. Every question becomes a threat. Every request for clarification risks exposure. Every new piece of information must be quickly integrated into the performance or deflected as irrelevant. ²⁰

viii. differential diagnosis: navigating the spectrum

Not all certainty is pathological. The clinical task is to distinguish healthy confidence from symptomatic certainty. This requires differential diagnosis: the ability to discern between superficially similar presentations that have fundamentally different underlying structures. ²¹

healthy certainty

Genuine expertise does produce a kind of certainty, but it has distinctive features.

Bounded Confidence: Real experts know the limits of their knowledge. A good surgeon is certain about anatomy but uncertain about outcomes. A seasoned investor is confident in their process but humble about predictions.

Texture and Nuance: Healthy certainty has texture. It includes qualifications, exceptions, contextual variations. It says “usually” more than “always,” “it depends” more than “definitely.”

Comfort with Questions: Those with genuine expertise welcome questions because questions help refine understanding. They’re curious about edge cases, interested in exceptions, eager to explore what they don’t know.

As I explored in earlier work, healthy certainty does not diminish our curious impulses. The pathologic or pathologizing certainty extinguishes curiosity. ²²

pathological variants

The certainty syndrome manifests in several distinct variants.

Brittle Certainty: Rigid and defensive, shatters when challenged. Often seen in newly minted MBAs or recent converts to any ideology.

Elastic Certainty: Shape-shifts to maintain appearance of being right. Common in consultants and politicians. Today’s absolute truth can become tomorrow’s absolute opposite without acknowledgment.

Grandiose Certainty: Expanded beyond any reasonable boundary. Found in tech evangelists, thought leaders and self-help gurus. Not content with knowing their field, they know all fields.

Spiritual Certainty: A paradoxical variant, found in those who’ve replaced traditional certainties with alternative ones. They’re certain that ancient wisdom trumps modern knowledge, that their particular practice is the path, that everyone else is trapped in illusion.

ix. cultural metastasis: how certainty spreads

The certainty syndrome isn’t confined to individuals. It metastasizes through organizational and cultural tissue, creating systemic pathologies that reinforce individual symptoms.

the wellness-to-extremism pipeline

As documented in investigations of how wellness culture can lead to extremist beliefs ²³, there’s a troubling pathway from yoga studios to conspiracy theories, from meditation retreats to political extremism. The common thread is the certainty that one has found the truth that others are too blind to see.

This pipeline operates through several mechanisms:

1. Distrust of Institutions: Wellness culture often begins with healthy skepticism of pharmaceutical companies or processed food, but this can metastasize into wholesale rejection of scientific expertise.

2. Alternative Epistemologies: Once you’ve accepted that chakras are real or that water has memory, the jump to believing in chemtrails or 5G mind control becomes smaller.

3. Community Reinforcement: These communities provide belonging and identity, making it psychologically costly to question their certainties.

4. Persecution Complex: Any questioning is interpreted as evidence of closed-mindedness or being trapped in “the matrix.”

market mechanisms

The wellness industry itself becomes a vector of transmission. Weekend workshops promise transformation. Online courses guarantee awakening. Supplements ensure optimization. Each product sold with absolute certainty about its effects, despite the inherent uncertainty of human change.

The certainty economy extends beyond wellness. We have life coaches certain about success formulas, business gurus certain about disruption patterns, political commentators certain about complex geopolitical outcomes. Uncertainty doesn’t sell; certainty does.

x. resistance and recovery: toward negative capability

If the certainty syndrome is the disease, what might recovery look like? Here I want to explore not cures—which would itself be a symptom—but rather ways of developing a different relationship with uncertainty.

cultivating negative capability

The poet John Keats wrote of “negative capability,” and psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion expanded on this concept—the ability to remain in uncertainty and doubt without irritably reaching after fact and reason. This strikes me as precisely what our age lacks and needs. ²⁴

Negative capability isn’t passive acceptance of ignorance. It’s an active, creative stance toward the unknown. It requires strength to hold questions open rather than collapsing them into premature answers. ²⁵

This also connects to what Bayo Akomolafe calls “staying with the trouble,” a posture that resists the quick fix in favor of dwelling with complexity. Just as meaningful change rarely comes from individual solutions alone, our response to the certainty syndrome can’t be individual tolerance of uncertainty alone. It must include structural changes that make uncertainty bearable, even generative, at a collective level. ²⁶

the practice of uncertainty

Like any capacity, comfort with uncertainty must be practiced. Some approaches I’ve found valuable:

Uncertainty Rounds: In clinical training, it’s usual to have “morbidity and mortality rounds” where cases that went wrong are discussed. Organizations could institute “uncertainty rounds” where leaders share what they don’t know, what surprised them, where their predictions failed.

Question Quotas: Instead of demanding answers, demand questions. Make questioning a KPI. Reward those who surface important uncertainties rather than false certainties.

Complexity Sabbaticals: Regular periods where the pressure to know is suspended. Time to read outside one’s field, to pursue questions without immediate application, to let understanding develop organically rather than on quarterly schedules. ²⁷

Conversation as Practice: Genuine dialogue requires us to enter with uncertainty about where we’ll end up. The value isn’t in reaching conclusions but in the quality of exploration. ²⁸

the wisdom of insecurity

Alan Watts wrote about “the wisdom of insecurity” ²⁹: the recognition that our demand for security creates more insecurity, that our need for certainty generates more uncertainty. This paradox points toward a different way of being.

What if we understood uncertainty not as a problem to be solved but as the fundamental condition within which we operate? What if we designed systems that thrive on ambiguity rather than despite it? What if we measured success not by predictive accuracy but by adaptive capacity? ³⁰

xi. a paradoxical conclusion

I should end this essay with clear recommendations, a five-point plan for curing the certainty syndrome. That would be satisfying, conclusive, certain. It would also be a symptom of the very disease I’ve been diagnosing.

Instead, let me end with questions and observations.

The certainty syndrome is a pathology of our time, but it’s not without precedent. Every age has its characteristic ways of fleeing from uncertainty. What seems to make our version distinctive is how it incorporates the language of uncertainty into its performance of certainty. We’ve become sophisticated in our self-deception.

The syndrome serves functions—psychological, economic, social—that won’t simply disappear because we’ve diagnosed them. Any meaningful response must acknowledge these functions and offer alternatives that serve them better. We can’t simply tell people to embrace uncertainty without addressing the very real pressures that make certainty performance feel necessary.

The question isn’t how to eliminate the certainty syndrome but how to develop a more playful relationship with it. What if we could perform certainty while knowing it’s a performance? What if we could use frameworks while remembering they’re just scaffolding? What if we could make predictions while holding them lightly?

In my clinical practice, the breakthrough often comes not when symptoms disappear but when the patient develops a different relationship with them. The anxious person may still feel anxiety but no longer fears it. The depressed person may still have low moods but no longer identifies with them. Similarly, we need not eliminate our need for certainty but develop a more conscious, flexible relationship with it.

The physicist Niels Bohr reportedly said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” ³¹ He also said, “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” These paradoxes point toward a stance that can hold contradictions without collapsing them, that can work with certainty while acknowledging uncertainty.

As I finish this essay, I’m aware of my own certainty performance—the authoritative tone, the clinical metaphors, the organized sections creating an illusion of comprehensive understanding. I’ve been diagnosing a syndrome I’m simultaneously exhibiting. This isn’t hypocrisy so much as the human condition. We’re all certainty addicts trying to moderate our use.

That’s the beginning of wisdom: not the elimination of false certainty but the recognition of it, not the achievement of true uncertainty but the acceptance of our need for solid ground even when we know it’s shifting. The pathology isn’t in seeking certainty—it’s in forgetting that we’re seeking, in mistaking the map we’ve drawn for the territory we’re exploring.

In the end, the certainty syndrome may be less a disease to be cured than a very human response to inhuman demands. In a world that insists we know what can’t be known, predict what can’t be predicted, control what can’t be controlled, our elaborate performances of certainty might be seen as a kind of collective coping mechanism. The problem isn’t the coping—it’s forgetting that’s what we’re doing.

So I leave you not with answers but with an invitation: to notice your own certainty performances, to experiment with acknowledging ignorance, to play with holding questions open instead of rushing to close them. To discover what happens when we stop pretending we’re not pretending.

After all, I could be wrong about all of this. And wouldn’t that be interesting?

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