Winners of the Fundamental Uncertainty Essay Contest

Thanks again to everyone who submitted an essay to the contest. Without further ado, the winner of the top prize of $1000 is:

• The Uncertainty That Matters Isn’t Fundamental by Jimmy

What I like about this essay and made it the winner is that it offers an alternative way of understanding the same ideas as I present in Fundamental Uncertainty from a different perspective. As an author, I’m frequently guilty of writing to explain things either to my past self or people who disagreed with me. Jimmy does me a real service by explaining the same core insights in way that will land with a different set of readers, and it’s what pushed his essay to the top.

The winners of the two $500 prizes are:

• Review of Fundamental Uncertainty by TAG
• Further thoughts on fundamental uncertainty by Nikon Okdell

TAG offers rationalist-style book review, meaning it’s half book report and half pointing out areas of disagreement and places where there was more to say and I didn’t say it. Nikon, meanwhile, offers more of an exploration of related ideas in epistemology, and I greatly liked the promise it represents that he’ll have more of interest to say in the future.

I enjoyed reading the other essays, too. A few words about each of them:

• Avril Shakira Villar treated us to “Everything Adds Up to Normality”, which applies the themes of Fundamental Uncertainty to Philippine politics. I liked the insights this gave me into a part of the world I don’t know nearly enough about.
• In “Questions for the reader (and writer) of “Fundamental Uncertainty””, Mitchell Porter identifies and engages with many of the unstated assumptions in my work, and I appreciate him doing this since I would have liked to address those more directly in the book but found them hard to work in while keeping the book short and focused.
• Stanislav Krym took a critical eye to the book in “Fundamental Uncertainty: Alternate Framework and Pointwise Reduction”. I’m glad he did this, but alas he didn’t change my mind about anything. Still, I applaud the effort and want to encourage him and others to continue to take a critical eye on my writing.
• Finally, in “The Paragraph Behind “I Don’t Know””, Gina Jon ties the book’s themes into a personal story that points to how we can embody fundamental uncertainty—something that I hope more people learn to do as a result of reading the book.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read the linked essays. I’ll be reaching out to the winners shortly to coordinate payment.

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