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Leitura de 15 min

Law Of Conservation of Uncertainty (Part 1)

Summary

In this episode, Jonathan Cottrell explores the human craving for certainty and its implications for developers. He begins by defining certainty as a 100% clear picture of reality, explaining that our brains are wired to seek it as a way to mitigate risk and loss aversion—a trait rooted in our evolutionary history.

Cottrell illustrates how our perception of certainty is not linear. He uses thought experiments, like eliminating 99.999% of disease versus 100%, and the lottery industry to demonstrate the “possibility effect.” Our minds create new categories for 100% certainty and 0% chance, making tiny probabilities disproportionately influential in our decisions.

The discussion then shifts to how this need for certainty affects developers’ work. Cottrell argues that uncertainty is an inherent, conserved quantity in any project, similar to the law of conservation of energy in physics. It cannot be eliminated, only managed. One common approach is for companies to “sell certainty” to clients, taking on the burden of uncertainty themselves, much like an insurance model. However, this is costly and risky, especially when paired with our tendency to overestimate abilities and underestimate timelines.

The episode concludes by framing uncertainty not as a problem to be solved, but as a reality to be embraced. Cottrell promises to explore practical strategies for embracing uncertainty in the following episode, leaving listeners with a challenge to reconsider their relationship with the unknown in their professional work.

Recommendations

People

  • Daniel Kahneman — Mentioned in the context of his concept of the ‘possibility effect,’ which explains why people buy lottery tickets despite infinitesimal odds.

Tools

  • Fuse — A sponsor’s tool described as a new way of developing apps, similar to Unity for game development. It allows developers to create real native applications for iOS and Android with a visual, connected workflow, aiming to break the decades-old cycle of coding separately from the graphical representation.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to the concept of certainty — Jonathan Cottrell introduces the episode’s theme: exploring the strangeness of certainty. He states the show’s goal is to help listeners become better developers through information, inspiration, and conversation. Today’s focus is on an internal mindset change regarding certainty.
  • 00:01:25 — Defining certainty and human loss aversion — Certainty is defined as a 100% clear picture of reality, using the example of 1+1=2. Cottrell explains that our brains crave certainty as a tool for mitigating risk and loss. This loss aversion is a deep-seated trait from our evolutionary past, where protecting resources was critical for survival, even though modern threats are different.
  • 00:03:35 — Thought experiment on perception of certainty — Cottrell proposes a thought experiment: imagine eliminating 99.999% of disease versus 100%. He explains that our minds process these figures very differently, creating a new category for 100% certainty. This nonlinear perception is exploited by industries like the lottery, which operates on the tiny “possibility effect” described by Daniel Kahneman.
  • 00:07:14 — Applying certainty concepts to developer work — After a sponsor break, Cottrell asks how the concept of certainty affects developers’ work. He conducts another thought experiment, asking listeners if they know what they’ll have for dinner in 14 days or when they’ll next get a cold, to illustrate the pervasive uncertainty in life. The point is that we cannot know the answers to many future events with 100% certainty.
  • 00:09:24 — Introducing the Law of Conservation of Uncertainty — Cottrell introduces the “Law of Conservation of Uncertainty,” analogous to the conservation of energy in physics. For any given project, a specific amount of uncertainty exists and cannot be eliminated. The key question is what to do with it. One common answer is to “sell certainty” to clients, where a company takes on the burden of uncertainty, similar to an insurance model.
  • 00:11:44 — The cost of certainty and flawed estimation — Taking on uncertainty for clients is costly and risky, as the company must shoulder unexpected fallout. This risk is compounded by another alarming fact: we tend to overestimate our abilities and underestimate the time and energy required for tasks. Therefore, even well-padded estimates often lean in a bad direction due to unmanaged uncertainty.
  • 00:12:21 — Teaser for embracing uncertainty — Cottrell concludes by asking how else we can handle uncertainty and suggests we should embrace it. He announces that the next episode will be dedicated to discussing practical ways to embrace uncertainty, thanking the sponsor and listeners, and encouraging subscription for the follow-up.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2017-05-29T13:30:00Z
  • Duration: 00:13:02

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] What is certainty? In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about the strangeness

[00:00:12] of the concept of certainty. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You’re listening to Developer Tea.

[00:00:19] My goal on this show is to provide you with the information, the inspiration, and also

[00:00:25] conversations with people on this show, the interviews that we do, and the discussions

[00:00:30] that we have. All of this is in an attempt to help coach you to become a better developer.

[00:00:38] And you’re listening to the show because you want to be a great developer. I can say this

[00:00:44] at this point, if you don’t want to become a great developer, then you probably shouldn’t

[00:00:48] listen to this show. Hopefully you leave both optimistic, but also challenged.

[00:00:55] I hope that you leave with an action step in mind, something that you can do today to

[00:01:01] actively become a better developer. Some of this is internal mindset changes, and that’s

[00:01:07] what today’s episode will be. Because we’re talking about a concept that is very often

[00:01:13] misunderstood. Certainty. What exactly is certainty? Certainty is an absolute binary

[00:01:25] that is used to define a concept. Certainties that are relatively certain are often provable.

[00:01:28] For example, one plus one equals two. We are almost 100% certain that this is true. Of course,

[00:01:37] we’d have to break down what those words mean to different cultures. And assuming that we

[00:01:44] can get to a common understanding of one item being added to another item would result in two

[00:01:53] items. Then we can agree that it’s true. And if we can get to a common understanding of one item

[00:01:55] being added to another item, then we can agree that the outcome of one plus one being two

[00:01:58] is certain. That’s what certainty is about. Having a 100% clear picture of reality.

[00:02:05] And our brains are wired to crave certainty. Or maybe a better way of saying that is our brains

[00:02:13] are wired to use certainty as a way of mitigating our risks, of mitigating our losses. We want to

[00:02:23] be certain about any decision we make. We want to be certain about any decision we make. We want to

[00:02:24] be certain about any decision we make. We want to be certain about any decision we make. Because we

[00:02:27] don’t want to lose anything. We have a huge sense of loss aversion. This has been proven over and

[00:02:33] over by behavioral economists, by psychologists, even by a regular economist. We have a large

[00:02:40] loss aversion. This comes from early human history, where we effectively had to protect

[00:02:47] everything that we had. We were constantly under siege. We have predators knocking on our door,

[00:02:53] and they want to eat us. We have predators knocking on our door, and they want to eat us. We have

[00:02:54] to eat us. We don’t have that anymore. But our brains are still wired. They’re slow to catch up

[00:03:01] with our new reality, where loss is not as big of a threat as it used to be. So we’re incredibly

[00:03:07] loss averse, and we use certainty as a measure of understanding how likely loss could be.

[00:03:18] And we’re terrible at scaling this. We’re terrible at actually measuring how certain we really need

[00:03:24] to be. And we’re terrible at scaling this. We’re terrible at actually measuring how certain we

[00:03:24] need to be. So perform this very simple thought experiment with me, and then we’ll take a quick

[00:03:30] sponsor break and come back and talk a little bit more about how certainty affects our day-to-day.

[00:03:35] But first, the thought experiment. Imagine that you had the opportunity to eliminate 99.999%

[00:03:46] of all disease. This is a great prospect, right? This is a very positive,

[00:03:54] potential opportunity. But imagine the difference between 99.999% elimination and 100%

[00:04:04] elimination. Our minds process these two different numbers incredibly differently. Because if I were

[00:04:12] to say 99.998%, your brain very likely processes that to be nearly equivalent to 99.999. The

[00:04:23] difference when we reach 99.998% is that our brain processes 99.998% of all disease. And if we

[00:04:24] 100% certainty creates a new category of thinking. In the same way that 0.0001% is extremely different

[00:04:36] to our minds, at least, than 0%. And there are entire industries that are built on these very

[00:04:44] tiny slivers of margin. For example, the lottery. In fact, your chance to win the lottery is 0.000000%

[00:04:54] . That’s 1 in 175 million. In other words, your chance of winning the lottery is incredibly close

[00:05:04] to zero. And yet, the entire industry is built off of that very small sliver at the edge.

[00:05:12] Because once again, we have a new category. If you bought a lottery ticket, I would not

[00:05:18] logically be able to claim that I am certain that you would lose.

[00:05:24] Because certainty requires a 100% guarantee. In this case, it would require a 0% chance of

[00:05:34] winning. And because of this small sliver, what has been called the possibility effect

[00:05:40] by Daniel Kahneman, this very tiny sliver of possibility, that it is quite simply possible

[00:05:47] from a logical perspective. Because of that, millions of people buy lottery tickets.

[00:05:54] So how does this affect your work? How does this affect what you do as a developer?

[00:06:00] We’re going to discuss exactly that right after we talk about today’s sponsor,

[00:06:03] Fuse. Fuse allows you, as a developer, to focus more on the product. What this is,

[00:06:11] is a new way of developing. We’ve done development for decades basically the same

[00:06:18] way. Coding in one area of the screen and then going back over to the other,

[00:06:24] the graphical representation of the thing that we’ve coded, and back and forth and back

[00:06:29] and forth. Very often, we can’t even realize how disconnected these two things are. We’ve

[00:06:35] done this unchanged for decades, but Fuse is changing this concept, particularly for

[00:06:40] app development. This is very similar if you were a game developer or if you’ve ever

[00:06:45] worked on a game or seen someone else working on a game. It’s basically like Unity for app

[00:06:51] development. Fuse runs on Mac OS and on Windows. It’s a very similar concept to Fuse. It’s a

[00:06:54] and it lets you make real native applications for iOS and Android. The Fuse installer includes

[00:07:01] everything you need to get started, and there’s no complicated setup process. Go and check it out,

[00:07:06] spec.fm.fuse. That’s spec.fm.fuse. Thank you again to Fuse for sponsoring today’s episode

[00:07:14] of Developer Tea. How does this concept of certainty affect our work? We know humans are

[00:07:23] wired to be wired. We know humans are wired to be wired. We know humans are wired to be wired.

[00:07:24] We know that we want certainty because we use it as a proxy for mitigating our losses. We

[00:07:35] believe that allowing for certainty or having certainty is going to put us in some position

[00:07:41] of control. But I want you to do another thought experiment with me real quick. Do you know what

[00:07:47] you’re going to have for dinner in 14 days from now? Some of you might have a vague idea,

[00:07:54] but it’s very likely that probably 99.9% of you do not have any idea of what you are going to have

[00:08:03] for dinner. You certainly don’t know exactly what time you will sit down to eat dinner. Some of you

[00:08:09] may not even have dinner that day. Of course, your dinner plans don’t really have a huge effect

[00:08:14] on whatever you’re working on today, but the reason we’re doing this thought experiment is

[00:08:19] to show you just how uncertain things can be. Do you know that you’re going to have a lot of

[00:08:24] the next time that you will get a cold? Can you predict if you will have a fender bender in the

[00:08:31] next seven days? For those of you who are driving, of course. Can you predict all of the ins and outs

[00:08:37] of the economy’s future in the next seven days? Can you predict your client’s financial situations?

[00:08:46] Can you predict your client’s staffing? Can you predict the leads that are going to walk through

[00:08:51] your door? For some of these things, we have a

[00:08:54] reasonably okay answers, right? Obviously, you aren’t really too worried about what you’re going

[00:09:00] to have for dinner, so you don’t have a need to know what you’re going to have for dinner.

[00:09:04] But even if you tried to forecast some of these questions, there are still so many variables at

[00:09:11] play that really the answer is that no, you don’t know with 100% certainty the answers to any of the

[00:09:19] questions that I just asked. As a result of this, we have this kind of emerging concept,

[00:09:24] that I like to call the Law of Conservation of Uncertainty. Not a brilliant name necessarily,

[00:09:30] but it’s very similar if you remember in your high school or even your middle school physics

[00:09:35] classes, the laws of conservation, specifically the law of conservation of energy. We know that

[00:09:43] there is a specific amount of energy in a given system. So for a given project that you are

[00:09:50] working on, there is uncertainty. There’s no way to know what’s going on. There’s no way to know

[00:09:54] to get around the fact that uncertainty exists. The question is, what will you do with that

[00:10:01] uncertainty? And there are many good and perfectly fine answers to this. For example, one common

[00:10:08] answer is, we sell certainty to our clients, right? This means that your client can come to

[00:10:16] you and you can provide to them the protection of certainty. This is very similar to, for example,

[00:10:23] insurance.

[00:10:24] You provide your client with a level of certainty, and you as a company, you take on the burden

[00:10:32] of the uncertainty. It doesn’t go away simply because you wrote a contract that was very clear.

[00:10:39] Instead, you take on the burden of that uncertainty, so that if something happens

[00:10:44] unexpected, or perhaps a better way of saying it, when something happens that is unexpected,

[00:10:50] your company’s responsibility is to shoulder

[00:10:53] whatever the fallout may be. Now, hopefully, this is getting your brain turning because,

[00:10:59] obviously, if something very horrible happens, something that is extremely costly,

[00:11:05] and your company has already made a commitment or is contractually obligated to fulfill a

[00:11:10] specific commitment, well, now you have to deal with that cost, right? So certainty is

[00:11:18] costly in that scenario because really what you’re saying is that you’re willing to,

[00:11:23] kind of roll the dice on how much that certainty will cost you. Of course, this is technically

[00:11:30] doable. If you have enough clients over a long enough period of time, you can measure a rate

[00:11:36] of uncertainty and then typically you can handle the variations in uncertainty. But when we pair

[00:11:44] the fact that uncertainty exists in projects with another alarming fact, perhaps, that we tend to

[00:11:52] overestimate our abilities and underestimate the amount of energy and time that it’s going to take

[00:11:59] to do something, then we can see that very often our estimates, however well-intentioned and however

[00:12:05] well-padded we think they may be against uncertainty, are often going to lean in a bad direction.

[00:12:13] So how else can we handle uncertainty? Well, perhaps we should embrace uncertainty. So how can

[00:12:21] you embrace uncertainty?

[00:12:23] That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about in the next episode of Developer Tea. Thank you so

[00:12:28] much for listening to today’s episode. Thank you again to Fuse for sponsoring Developer Tea.

[00:12:33] If you are an app developer and you’ve been doing the same things the same way, practically

[00:12:39] unchanged for decades, then I highly recommend you go and check out Fuse. Thank you again for

[00:12:46] listening. Make sure you subscribe if you don’t want to miss out on the next episode where we

[00:12:50] talk about how to embrace uncertainty.

[00:12:52] Until next time, enjoy your tea.

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