Certainty

The Devil’s Advocate™ →Go uptown File:Certainty.jpg I don’t want knowledge. I want certainty. In which the curmudgeonly old sod puts the world to rights. Index — Click ᐅ to expand: The Devil’s Advocate Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

If there was certainty, ninety-five percent of you wouldn’t show up for work.

—The Jolly Contrarian

If there was certainty, ninety-five percent of you wouldn’t have any goddamn work.

—Also the Jolly Contrarian

Be careful what you wish for. A world of certainty is a world of no doubt, no mystery, no je ne sais pas; no contingency, no disclaimers that past performance is no indicator of future results, not because it suddenly is an indicator, but because that accursed inductive mode of reasoning is at long last obsolete, all data is at hand and the future can be arrived at deductively, from first principles, the same way that rice pudding and income tax can be deduced from “cogito, ergo sum”.

See also

• Doubt