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The best of thinkers, in contrast, are willing to question and so are agile. They do not, as Aristotle once warned, measure a fluted column with a straight edge. And this wisdom can begin only with a realization that the world is imperfect, and so are you.

When trouble strikes, a mismatch emerges between old expectations and new reality, between routine and change. Recognizing this gap, we are caught short, and what follows is the key to human adaptability. For at that moment, a frisson of not-knowing ignites a “sense of unusualness” that spawns greater engagement with an issue and a widening of attentional focus. You become highly alert to what’s new and better able to learn. Working memory, the capacity to hold an idea in mind and work with it, expands when we are unsure, studies suggest. The brain is directing energy to itself; this is why leading researchers consider uncertainty a good form of stress. Our uncertainty is both a signal of possible danger and the state of mind that involves the considered thinking needed to update a now-deficient understanding of the world.

The deadline nears, an answer is demanded; this is just the time that - corner office or no - we yearn simply to act, not to decide when, how, or why. But superior thinkers do not assume that all is easily in hand. They face their ignorance and wake up to its implications, leveraging trouble into agility through the power of their uncertainty.

…

“Being uncertain means that I lack confidence.” “There really is no such thing as a problem that can’t be solved.” “I should be able to organize everything in advance.” These are statements drawn from the “Intolerance of Uncertainty” and “Tolerance for Ambiguity” tests, classic assessments that have been attracting new attention as tools for unlocking the upsides of not-knowing. (Ambiguity, the state of being inexact or open to multiple interpretations, is a source of uncertainty.) In essence, the tests measure the degree to which people view being unsure as a challenge or as a threat, a distinction that affects how well we learn, argue, explore, invent, and solve problems.

Those who shun the indefinite tend to see the world in shades of black and white, ignoring the gray. They are prone to jump to answers and are distressed by chaos and surprise. Their “cognitive map” is narrowed to “rigidly defined tracks,” wrote Frenkel-Brunswik. In contrast, people who operate on the other side of the scale are more likely to be curious, flexible thinkers who revel in complex problems and in new experiences from living abroad and trying a new delicacy. They may even be in better charge of their minds; evidence suggests that such thinkers have more gray matter (i.e., neural volume) in brain regions related to executive control.


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A novice can’t see the strategy hidden in the fray. “Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition,” concluded Herbert Simon, a 1978 Nobel laureate in economics who was deeply influenced by de Groot.

Thinking in action typically does not begin with laboriously crunching all the possibilities before you. Who has time for endless pros and cons? Instead, we first swoop down on a good-enough answer by turning to the cognitive shortcuts that Simon dubbed heuristics. One repertoire of quick thought draws from rules of survival that emerged over tens of thousands of years, a kind of innate day-to-day expertise inherited from our ancestors. We are prone, for example, to assume that strangers are threatening; evolutionarily speaking, it’s far better to err on the side of being wary of new potential friends than to place fatal trust in a possible aggressor. A second class of heuristics draws on a no less influential realm of learning: our own stock of cognitive shortcuts, accrued over time. This is the gift of knowledge that de Groot helped uncover: with practice, we perform ever more complex tasks using less of our brain, whether we are turning c-a-t into cat or sensing how to checkmate Kasparov. What is laborious at first - clamp? - becomes automatic - cut! - as the lessons of the past equip the behavior of the future.


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The catch-22 is clear. We yearn for clarity when we know least about our predicament. Under duress, we fall into carryover mode, barreling on with the well-honed assumptions that form the bedrock of competence in more predictable times. Moreover, once we head down the road of a snap-judgement, we become loath to turn back. In Kruglanski’s terms we seize, then freeze, growing more confident in our cursory judgments. Ready-fire sureness saves us from paralysis time and again. but when routine falls short - a box is not just a box - carryover mode cannot save the day. Just when we urgently need to raise our sights, we hunker down with a good-enough answer, guarding at all costs the underbelly of our ignorance. And most alarmingly, the more expert we are, the more deeply we fall into this trap.

… In two sonnets inspired by the visit, he first professes inadequacy for the task of speaking “definitively on these mighty things; Forgive me that I have not Eagle’s wings - that what I want I know not where to seek.” But then, as the poems progress, he realizes that he need not choose between single-minded worship or derision. His lines begin to celebrate life’s contradictions and ambiguities, from “Grecian grandeur” marked by time’s “rude wasting” to the “dim-conceived glories” of an inspired mind, as biographer Nicholas Roe notes. Coming full circle, Keats realizes that only by not knowing something can he start to grasp it well. … By contrast, Keats asserts, life’s complexities demand an intense unassumingness that he calls negative capability, a capacity to dwell in “uncertainties, Mysteries,doubts” without impatiently leaping to conclusions. This stance is central to great achievement, he writes.


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…Moulton realized that true expertise begins in the unsettling transition from automaticity to a readiness to work with the unknown. Superior judgment starts with the shifting of cognitive gears from an ancient system designed to shut down deliberation in a crisis to one that seeds intentional, flexible thought. Here is the time for what Moulton calls “slowing down when you should” so that “you can actually be in charge of the moment.” The challenge is, will we welcome the discord of not-knowing into the ease of our fluency?

The surgeon confronting trouble is often caught by surprise. Like a chess grandmaster blind to anything but a familiar strategy, she fails to notice signs that normalcy is crumbling and drifts into trouble.


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… But when confronted with tricky game predicaments, they chose the first move that came to mind only about one-fifth of the time. “You’re in a different mode because you’re uncertain,” Moulton tells me. “You’re creating a space to think about holding your options open, gathering information.”

Stepping out from routine know-how, we face a trompe l’oeil landscape of unknowns. Are we willing to think them through? Both true expertise and the work of thinking in action - emerging from automaticity, seeking that crucial second take, and the problem’s hidden dimensions - barely correlate with intelligence. We may have knowledge or smarts yet fail to give ourselves fully to the messy problem before us. Adaptive experts, in contrast, are prepared to take charge at any time by stilling the knowing mind and admitting the promise of uncertainty. They are curious, skeptical, and alert event amidst routine. This is the remarkable cognitive skill set that offers a new future for expertise at a time when its very existence is increasingly questioned.

… It is critical to question past ideals and outdated hierarchies of expertise. The notion that superior skill is synonymous with fluency; that heuristics - from gut assumptions to ready-fire algorithms - suffice; and that discomfitting uncertainty is the province of novices: these are the telltale marks of the routine experts whose overreliance on shortcut know-how has led us astray. For too long, we have placed false idols on the altar of expertise.

Going forward, we must not mistake the bravado of those sated with limited knowledge - routine experts or overconfident novices alike - for the courage of those who ceaselessly expand the limits of their understanding. For that is the foundation stance of superior adaptive performers: they continually work at the outer edge of their knowledge and capability. (The term expert derives from the Latin verb experiri, “to try.”) In quiet times and rough, the best thinkers look ahead for subtle signs of impending problems and deficiencies in their own thought. They operate in the borderland that routine experts shun, where hope of ease gives way not just to an expectation of trouble but to a willingness to continually take on ever-greater challenges. Great surgeons sign up for the most complex cases. The most proficient artisans, says wood-carver David Esterly, inhabit “a world permeated by error.” By seeking to extend - not just apply - their knowledge, they ward off the “arrested development” of routine expertise. This is the wisdom that should count.


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In essence, our innate inquisitiveness means that we do not just yearn for information in the wake of the unexpected; we are born with a capacity to pursue surprise itself. “Seeking information is like bringing prediction error [into play] earlier,” says Bromberg-Martin. “You could think of it as seeking out prediction error.”

… Mesmerized by the stakes of the situation, people become trapped in the cage of their own expectations and tune out of the play, sometimes literally suffering blind spots in their attention as they perform, studies show. Just when they need to be on their toes and attuned to the world, they grow disengaged from the dynamic situation at hand. They refuse to not-know.

… What then helps to loosen the chokehold that an overfocus on outcome can have on us? Some of the most promising routes to combating this kind of performance anxiety entail back-burnering the specter of “utility” and fully tuning in to the work at hand. Today, athletes from high schoolers to professionals are trained to use brief personalized mental prompts known as “cue words” to nudge their attention from the future consequences of their play back to the twists and turns of the game. For example, a competitor might quietly tell herself mid-game to “focus on every play.”


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Unless we honor the discomfiting work of not-knowing, we squander the potential of a perceptive mind.

“The popular view that scientists proceed inexorably from well-established fact to well-established fact … is quite mistaken,” Turing once wrote. “Conjectures are of great importance since they suggest useful lines of research.”


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Here again is the fallow hour’s sleight of hand: a gap in time that seemingly sets us back winds up propelling us forward. “I believe in this strongly,” she tells me. Across her career, she has worked to persuade her colleagues, her students, and herself to slow down at times not just to think in action but also to not actively think. When we set aside decisions, research, and ideas to percolate, “the thinking doesn’t come from thinking harder,” she tells me, “it comes from letting our thoughts sift” and then confronting them once again.


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Ever ambitious, Collins constantly urges his stable of young scientists to attempt seeming impossible feats … It can’t be done, the student reported after two weeks of research. Sounds like a great project, said Collins. Keep up the good work.) … Why be sated with a step forward when you might make a leap? He turns to his student, “Are you daring enough to try?”


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What is the gift of tolerance? It is far more than a living and a letting be. In the riskiest of moments, we have the potential to see a human worthy of connection, a person bearing perspectives wholly unlike our own. Then if we wish, we may shed the ease of disregard and move forward with the help of those we have shunned. …

All around us, doors are closing and siege walls tower higher. Who among us will dare to complete the journey that tolerance can spark? Who is willing to engage in mutual uncertainty-in-action and potentially be changed? Each age has its unsung heroes. Each in a way repeats our sins. Bear witness then to what we all can do when we see possibility where we least expect it. It might happen when we answer a stranger’s knock or hear the other out. It might happen when we are mortally tested by another’s dark side. What if we stand up for those we hate and take a stand that changes all? If the most partisan among us can do so, perhaps we can too.


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LIberated from the pressures of homophily and cohesion, groups with acknowledged differences became more willing to probe contested perspectives. Their disagreements were at times vociferous, their dialogue more open-minded. “Diversity is not about harmony,” historian Robin Kelley reminds us, “but about unleashing creative dissonance, of being able to see the world in all its complexity.” It’s about coming together to explore the new, eye-opening realms we find on the other side of blind unity. And yet rarely do we recognize this dynamic as a path to success.


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When I say “Yes” and you say “no,” we can probe the intricate spaces between these realms and ultimately reach an accord based on a full understanding of the issue and on the airing of all views. Here on uncommon ground, disagreement becomes in essence collective uncertainty-in-action. This is a work of courage and of equity. For when we awaken to the distinctions between us, we discover what we should have known all along: the onus of collaboration is on us all.