I stumbled upon a quite nice philosophical clip on YouTube yesterday that addresses the difficulty of correct action in a world of uncertainty and how stories that seem to have straightforward plot lines may distort our evaluation of how the life really is. Here is an excerpt:

"The unknown can be rather terrifying but this fear is only intensified to an unnecessarily immobile state of paralysis when we maintain the assumption that there can ever be a perfect, right decision in anything that will lead to an ultimately noble resolution of everything. Rather we should perhaps work to have the fortitude to make decisions at all to forge onward through our story trying our best to navigate with decency, effort and honesty. Accepting whatever our decisions may cause and whatever events might occur to us." [MEDIA=youtube]x3EVh2jhyLM[/MEDIA]

Through study of statistics I have learned to quantify the uncertainty to a some degree. There seems to be correlations between events even though there are exceptions. And even though it's often difficult to know for sure what will bring good results, the negative is easier to see. I probably should not smoke if I want to be healthy when old.

Pragmatism can be a friend of a skeptic. To follow what seems to work and bring good. Also, while it's difficult to know how things will work out in the outer world, we have much more control over our inner world with regards to attitudes and virtues.

Learning to deal with the uncertainty is huge. Lots of disappointment can result from expecting something good from the world only to be let down even though you did seemingly everything right.