Uncertainties

Economists laugh at risk lovers and hail risk-averse preference based on their utility models, while psychologists make fun of these meaningless curves and straight lines, arguing that people's misperception of losses and gains leads to poor decision making. Uncertainties can be so annoying in the real world as it prevents us from future planning. With certain results, a lot of things can be arranged in advance. If I know the result of my bidding, I can be better prepared for the coming projects; even if it's a rejection, at least I'd know whether to go for alternatives. If I know where I'll be in the next years, I can plan my settlement better, rather than keeping all my stuff packed. If I know my boyfriend is going to propose by the end of this year, I could start planning our lives from now on. But uncertainties impede us from doing any of this. Thus in the real world, majority still prefer certain results under the same expected outcomes. (As shown in the graph, D in superior to B in terms of expected outcomes, but the their utilities are the same.)

But uncertainties can be very enjoyable if you don't have to pay the bill. I'm one of those who like watching people doing exercises more than exercising by myself. When I watch Olympics (sorry again), I find events like swimming, gymnastics more entertaining than table tennis or diving: the medalists in former two events are always uncertain, where traditional teams and emerging powers compete fiercely, while the latter two are basically dominated by Chinese. It is relaxing to watch games when you can foresee the results, but the real excitement lies behind uncertainties. It's fun to guess whether they will surprise us - either by extraordinary performance or mistakes, and stirring to see how youngsters will challenge their predecessors. Things could change in a few seconds (depending how fast Bolt can be), but until then everything is still a mystery.

Likewise, the uncertainties in our lives may be fun to others as well. For strangers, it is sometimes interesting to see how we can finally get things done, and what results we'd be able to get in the end. But for those who really care about us, they'd enjoy the uncertainties less. And for people who have a big share in our losses or gains, they'd be very happy to reduce as many uncertainties as they can. The best we can do is to play the role of "strangers", pretending the result is irrelevant and focusing on pushing the process towards the best outcome. The worst situation that we'd easily get trapped in is to worry about others' unknown future when we couldn't be any sort of help.

No matter how hard we have tried, uncertainties never leave us. They come one after the other, like a series of blanks to fill. Have you ever listed the top 10 must-do before turning 30, and did you "check" all of them when celebrating the day after the last day of your 29-year old. Have you ever been inspired by "I have a dream" speech and proudly claimed to have your own, and did you ever reckon whether you were on the right track to this ultimate dream? Once we accomplish or fail to accomplish something, new options always follow, which may or may not be the ones we want. Then should we reduce uncertainties by choosing one from them or increase uncertainties by exploring more options? There will be only one fact in our biography, but we all had the opportunities of writing it in a different way. Now we probably aspire for stable careers and lives, but when we have got old, we may cry over the opportunities missed over the period of our life time.

So facing such a fast-changing world, a wise choice is to go easy with uncertainties. Do what we want to, and leave the outcomes to the fortune. Sometimes we may pull off what we are yearning for, sometimes we may not. But even the failures will be worthwhile if we can still surprise ourselves and surroundings occasionally, and have some unplanned sweets.