As I struggle to finish my philosophy paper on freewill, my mind starts to wander off on its many tangents and leaves me to suffer the ill effects of my weeklong procrastination. Rather than focus on the task at hand so I can leave this despicable library that only brings forth misanthropic thoughts, my mind prefers to ponder on the nature of uncertainty and human decision-making.
I have come to the realization that there is nothing in this world that the human knowledge can ascertain to be absolutely certain, except for the truly trivial which is so trivial as to be irrelevant. Human nature and human intelligence is limited and not quite capable of achieving or coming to grasps with certainties and those among us that claim the ability of achieving certainty in their knowledge are nothing but modern day fraudsters (at best). All we are ever capable of is achieving a close enough probabilistic chance that allows us to just get-by in the stochastic world that we inhabit. None of the decisions we make are completed with any absolute certainty, but only with the knowledge that it is more likely than not that we are correct.
Forgive me if it sounds too philosophical (I am in that current state of mind), but do not throw the argument into the grave where other philosophical thoughts have been left. I say this because ever since I had this idea, I cannot help but see numerous examples where people, who should clearly see the stochastic process in their scenarios, instead disregard the uncertain (and the random) and pretend they possess 100% of the information and no other scenario is plausible.
We make predictions and forecasts that reject the unforeseen and the uncertain and we live by the predictions of these models. We make decisions believing them to be absolutely accurate only to shortly see errors in our decision, but in all these, we keep making the same heuristical errors in our judgments. We leave no room for uncertainty and act naïve in the presence of these unpredictable outcomes. We are not predisposed to believe that we are human, but maybe we need to start realizing our limitations before we can even start to attempt to surpass them (if at all possible).
Anyway, enough tangential thinking for me; it is back to the contemplation on the nature of freewill. Hooray (and yes, that was sarcasm).
