We can never see past the choices we don't understand
Yay, more armchair philosophy!
I’ve heard that quote in The Matrix - it’s hard to explain how mind bending, or mind-expanding - that movie was, if you hadn’t seen it as a student.
It’s both a trivial and profound statement. At its core, it says that it’s useless to predict the future past a decision point which isn’t understood. The use of AI is one such decision point - but the statement is generally applicable to all walks of life.
For example, you can not see how picking an education / college will influence your life if you don’t have vast information about the industry you’re going to embark on, especially in comparison to all the others. That we routinely ask kids to make that choice in their teens should have been considered barbaric, if not for the fact that life is short, and decisions must be made.
If we don’t understand the choices available, or why we need to make decision in the first place, we can’t possibly predict the possible paths that making such decisions will take us. And if we can’t predict something exactly - we speculate. This willingness to speculate is what I think is a good predictor of ambition or entrepreneurship: maybe you’ll be wrong, but at least you’re willing to make the decision.
Of course, this can be further trivialised by saying that nothing is certain - or that “no one knows the mind of God” - but that’s a useless statement.
Join the discussion - have you ever been in a situation where you needed to make a decision with little or no understanding what the consequences would be?