This reminds me of a pretty excellent Simone de Beauvoir quote: “We must decide upon the opportuneness of an action and attempt to measure its effectiveness without knowing all the factors that are present.” (From The Ethics of Ambiguity) I quite like this quote, because I don’t interpret it as an argument against trying to measure and predict the consequences of an action, but rather, as an expression of the fact that uncertainty and incomplete information is a fact of life, and we must at some point act anyway rather than becoming paralysed by this. We should always be at least passively open to the possibility of new and unknown factors, and compassionate toward people (including our past selves) who have made mistakes or held views that turned out to be incorrect.
This reminds me of a pretty excellent Simone de Beauvoir quote: “We must decide upon the opportuneness of an action and attempt to measure its effectiveness without knowing all the factors that are present.” (From The Ethics of Ambiguity) I quite like this quote, because I don’t interpret it as an argument against trying to measure and predict the consequences of an action, but rather, as an expression of the fact that uncertainty and incomplete information is a fact of life, and we must at some point act anyway rather than becoming paralysed by this. We should always be at least passively open to the possibility of new and unknown factors, and compassionate toward people (including our past selves) who have made mistakes or held views that turned out to be incorrect.