Embracing Uncertainty

A guest post from a friend of mine, Kevin Corek, a graduate from UCLA Law School who has worked for the Democratic National Committee.

Tim's post on uncertainty got me thinking about a recent TED talk (embedded below) that Tim Harford gave on "Trial, error, and the God complex." The thrust of the talk was that as humans we fail to recognize our own fallibility with respect to solving complex societal problems. Perhaps there's something instinctual to the kind of thinking that demands or proffers solutions to every problem without acknowledging our limits.

To put this in the political context, it's a rare politician who would say, "I don't have a solution to X problem, but let's try these 5 different approaches and see what works." The party system and political ideology exerts a powerful influence in shaping the discussions we have about public policy. In the prevailing atmosphere, a political party can't admit they don't have a solution or that a problem is too complex and we might just have to use trial and error. Trial and error isn't a solution in the mold of a political principle, like say, the validity of a social safety net or philosophical opposition to wealth redistribution through taxation.

If we want to change this mentality within our existing political structure, uncertainty needs to be embraced as part of a political platform. The Democratic Party is closer to this today by virtue of not disputing the scientific method and empirical evidence. But that's not the same thing as valuing uncertainty in and of itself. How do we get there? It's complicated, but to start, let's try talking about uncertainty more and see what happens.

-Kevin