My CMS The View from a New City

About ten days ago I watched a Ted Talk by a paleo-anthropologist named Melanie Chang. In her talk she said that she and her colleagues draw their conclusions about human evolution from a small set of hard-to-find data and in the face of a sea of unknowns. She said that almost every new discovery causes the profession to alter its conclusions. She used a quote from Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of State, which contained the phrases , “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”, unknown unknowns being things we don’t even know we don’t know. She said that the conclusions of paleo-anthropologists’ experience revolutionary “perturbations” with every discovery from the realm of the previously unknown unknowns.

To keep this short, and not belabor the obvious, I want to jump right to my advice to my grandchildren: You are, or soon will be, making some of the most important decisions of your life and you will necessarily make those decisions based on a small set of data-points and in the face of a whole sea of unknowns, both known and unknown. If you make those decisions with faith, hope and charity, you will be much happier and come much closer to the truth than if you make those decisions with skepticism, fear and anger. That is my advice and my experience.