Uncertainty

Being a person means constantly navigating deep and genuine uncertainty. We are uncertain about what we think, how we feel, what might happen, and what we should do.

Being uncertain means confronting the limits of our knowledge or our foresight in our lifelong efforts to persist and thrive, to seek safety and security, to find companionship and community, so make some sense of the world.

We live in a digital media and social environment that tries to take advantage of that, that monetizes and exploits our desire for security and certainty. Some of the same cognitive biases and shortcuts that mean we can't ever be fully certain and secure when making our way through this very complex existence also make us susceptible to charismatic misinformation.

Transcript

Credits

Written, recorded, and produced by Steve McCullough.

The music is “Dirt Rhodes" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons - By Attribution 4.0.

The cover art features “Concentric squares forming a geometric maze pattern” by Cansu Sarp.