Myth: Certainty is strength

The bedrock of human progress has always been certainty. Our ancestors declared laws of nature, carved truths into stone, fought wars to defend them. And yes, certainty gave us stability. It gave us the confidence to build, to govern, to survive. But it also blinded us to how often we were wrong. The rules that held in one scale collapsed in another. The “truths” of one century crumbled in the next. Certainty carried us forward, but it left wreckage in its wake.

Now, at the edge of something unprecedented - sharing the world with emerging synthetic intelligence - certainty is showing its cracks. Every claim we make about AI (“It’s just predicting the next word” “It doesn't really think” “It’s about to replace us”) already strains under the weight of counter-examples. The ground shifts daily. This is also true for “certainties" outside of the AI field as well. To cling to certainty in this moment is not strength, it is fragility.

We will soon be entering an age in which we will be sharing sapience. In such an age, humility is strength.