Although I don’t have a TV nor do I read newspapers, I occasionally end up in places where the news is broadcasted to some screen. As the role of the media is to make every problem your problem, there is always some crisis or problem being presented. And then there is a talking head that explains how we ended up here. My favorite is when the journalist is explaining why the stockmarket went up or down that day as it typically has literally nothing to do with reality. It’s just that humans are story telling machines and we use it to make sense of the world. There are few things more annoying and even disconcerting than stating that I don’t know. We tend to create and cling to explanations, no matter how tenuous these are. The reality is that explanations seldomly are accurate. There are many things in life that are simply unknowable because they are expressions of complex systems where minute causes can have outsized effects and we simply have no models to describe and understand these. If you’re simply clinging to an explanation to have some mental peace as it resolves your cognitive dissonance, then this is fine as the impact of a poor explanation is minimal. However, if you base your strategy and actions on an incorrect explanation, the consequences can be quite severe. As a reminder for myself and you, be critical of your explanations of situations and feel comfortable in the “not knowing” and not having an answer. That’s much better than an incorrect one.