"Only in the absence of certainty can we have open-mindedness, mental flexibility and willingness to contemplate alternative ideas."
So what do we do when it comes time to make a decision? How are we supposed to evaluate and act on evidence? The article seems to be (note my lack of certainty - that's a good thing, right?) an over generalization.
you are always dealing with incomplete knowledge. You are making decisions based on the evidence you have. Especially in a field as 'fuzzy' as business, if you are certain that a plan can not fail, you are almost certainly not evaluating it rationally.
It seems to be a good thing. We can't be certain it's a good thing. :)
A very good thing you can do to regain open-mindedness, mental flexibility, and willingness to contemplate alternative ideas to remove all forms of "to be" from your speech, thinking, and writing. Most of the certainty comes from the way ordinary language is tainted by forms of the verb "to be." General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, General Semantics, Godel's Incompleteness, basically everything we know about science in the last 60 years tells us everything seems relative to the tools you use to make the measurements about the things you are claiming. Because we all use our nervous system to make any claims, when we say "is" instead of some variant of "seems to me (or my nervous system, or my instruments)" we improperly discharge the instrument with which we made the measurement from our claims.
Another very good habit to get into is adding "maybe" to your thinking and speech a lot more. If you feel certain about something, you should think of alternatives until you no longer feel certain of it. You can feel relatively certain, but there is no experience such that there is only one correct interpretation of it.
When it comes down to it, you make decisions based on the relative strength of the various maybes. It seems to me the sky is blue, but maybe it's red and I forgot to eat food with vitamins my eyes need, maybe aliens put a giant sky tarp over the part of the sky I am seeing, so I'm not seeing the sky, or maybe it's cloudy and I'm just so excited for it to be nice out I misperceive the grey. Even though I can think of alternative possibilities, I can still act on the strong maybe that the sky seems blue to me.
I have found "Quantum Psychology" by Robert Anton Wilson contains many valuable insights into changing your pattern of thinking to remove the certainty antiquated notions of science and use of the verb "to be" incorrectly force into the thinking of people who are overly certain. I recommend it highly to any entrepreneur, especially anyone who considers themselves a paradigm buster.
So what do we do when it comes time to make a decision? How are we supposed to evaluate and act on evidence? The article seems to be (note my lack of certainty - that's a good thing, right?) an over generalization.