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I struggle to strike a balance between certainty and circumspection. Our culture has a tendency to favor certainty, while one of my favorite and frequent fall-backs—seldom wrong—is: “we don’t know.” Certainty is often the hobgoblin of decontextualized, rigid, (only) logical thinking: an artificial by-product of incomplete mental models. That said, I feel that I can do more than throw up my hands on every issue. I can be fairly certain that I will never perform a standing jump to the moon or breathe underwater (without apparatus) like I often do in dreams.
Thus, I write this post in full appreciation of the red flag around certainty. Yet, in full consideration, I can indeed identify some elements of reality about which I can be fairly certain—to a reasonable degree. At the very least, these things would appear to be consistent with a robust account of how the world appears to work.
I’ll skip an exhaustive list of certainties, and stick with points that have some bearing on the meta-crisis of modernity. But for illustration that certainty is not misplaced, I think most would agree that we can function under certainty that in the next billion years, say, gravity won’t turn off; the sun will continue to shine; Earth will keep rotating to produce the familiar day/night pattern; if I pound my fist on the table my hand won’t sail through it, etc. We are justified in “taking these to the bank.” The items below are not all as completely iron-clad, but are helpful in forming a basis. I have asked myself for each one: “could I be convinced otherwise?” Generally the answer is “yes, I suppose,” to varying degrees, but some would be a tough pull, requiring solid evidence. Most of the content is a repackaging of points I have expressed before, but I hope in a useful, consolidated form.
So let’s get to it: here are things I am reasonably (functionally) certain about:
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