Physics, Poetry & Paradox
What is the value of uncertainty?
Headlines about AI seem to always speak in absolutes. AI is/isn’t a bubble. AI will/won’t doom humanity. AI is a revolutionary/normal technology. Experts with entrenched world views about the power and potential of artificial intelligence appear certain in their convictions and equipped with data, proof points and patterns to back them up. They leave little-to-no space for the questioning of assumptions or predictions.
And yet, science and innovation are inherently about the spirit of discovery in the face of what we do not know. Rarely do true scientists speak in absolutes. Instead, they posit hypotheses and lean on theories and principles to assert an educated prediction of what might occur, but always leaving a little room to be proven wrong.
Physics offers a compelling object lesson in how uncertainty governs even the smallest scales of nature – quantum particles. As Werner Heisenberg enumerated in his Uncertainty Principle, the more precisely one physical property of a particle is known – say its position, the less precisely the other – say its momentum – can be known. In other words, the more precisely you know the initial conditions of a system, the greater the uncertainty in predicting its future. There’s a lesson for us all in that axiom!
Uncertainty seems to be hard coded in nature but not the human psyche.
In fact, we humans absolutely hate uncertainty and are by default wired to resolve tension and seek certainty. Our brains evolved to look for patterns to predict dangers and find resources to survive and any ambiguity triggers a stress response that puts us on high alert.
Now think about what that means in the context of leadership. We are wired to seek patterns – in human behavior, in market dynamics, in past events – at a moment in human history when what came before is no longer a reliable proxy for what is to come. The AI revolution, post-truth media ecosystem, climate change tipping point and geopolitical shake-up are concurrent and interwoven disruptions – summed up by the concept of metacrisis – redefining the world around us in real-time.
What is the value of uncertainty?
As our operating environment becomes more complex, we need evolved leadership capacities to override our ancestral instincts and learn to sit in uncertainty. This is where poetry comes into play.
In the British Romantic era, two poets came to represent the paradox of looking for answers versus living the questions of humanity. John Keats, one of the so-called Young Romantics, possessed a rare creative genius that perhaps predisposed him to embrace the ineffable qualities of beauty and the mysteries of life. In contrast, Samuel Taylor Coleridge – a philosopher, theorist and poet of the first generation of Romantics – preferred precision and to reveal the why of beauty. In a letter to his brothers calling out Coleridge, Keats coined the term “negative capability” – meaning “when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
This negative capability is the superpower of contemporary leadership but is hard to come by. It requires sitting in the discomfort of not knowing, waiting when there’s pressure to do something now, seeing the echo chamber behind a false consensus reality and allowing inconvenient truths to puncture dominant narratives. But it is the best way to resist the allure of easy answers and false prophets who peddle in certainty when there is none to be had.
Now imagine the mass adoption of generative and agentic AI tools designed to deliver plausible answers packaged as truth. What happens to our capacity to sit in the discomfort of not knowing when easy answers are to be found and the limited transparency about how they are derived and delivered is the whole point of the magic of the technology? How might our development of these tools be different if we valued negative capability as core to the human experience?
Leadership in the age of AI will face many tests. An early one is how to resist the allure of a frictionless answer machine in favor a more profound search for truth and shared reality.
Getting comfortable with uncertainty takes courage.
There are numerous experts and tools out there to help cultivate courage in the face of uncertainty and seductive technology. Many are explored in this blog. Two thinkers with a timely take on the fundamentals of negative capability are social work researcher Brené Brown and organizational psychologist Adam Grant. The two have engaged in a series of podcast conversations unpacking the ideas in Brené’s most recent book, which is all about courageous and vulnerable leadership.
As Adam asserts, “if knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.” That wisdom is hard won by investing in what old-school leaders often look down upon as touchy-feely soft skills like empathy, compassion, humility, self-awareness, adaptability. Those soft skills are juxtaposed with more stereotypical leadership qualities such as authority, decisiveness and control.
One practice that can aid in cultivating capacities fit for the complexity of leadership today is what Adam calls “rethinking” to open your mind.
Start in a posture of intellectual humility to make explicit what you don’t know.
That in turn leaves room for doubt, the precursor to curiosity.
As you become curious about what you are missing and what else could be true you spark to new discoveries.
The act of discovery reinforces humility as you realize how much you still don’t know.
And the cycle repeats.
As a poet greatly inspired by Keats, Rainer Maria Rilke picked up the thread of negative capability and summed up what we must do in his Letters to a Young Poet:
“Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Further reading:
Brown, Brené. Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit. Penguin Random House, 23 Sep. 2025.
Grant, Adam. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Penguin Random House, 26 Dec. 2023.
Lewis, Marc. “Why We’re Hardwired to Hate Uncertainty.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Apr. 2016.
Popova, Maria. “The Art of ‘Negative Capability’: Keats on Embracing Uncertainty and Celebrating the Mysterious.” The Marginalian, 23 Dec. 2019.
Popova, Maria. “Live the Questions: Rilke on Embracing Uncertainty and Doubt as a Stabilizing Force.” The Marginalian, 1 Jun. 2012.