LSD-1 Wise Man Admits Uncertainty

Wise Man Admits

Uncertainty

By Benjamin Franklin

[Benjamin Franklin discovered static electricity by flying a kite with a key tied to it, under a thunderstorm. But he is also well-known as the elderly statesman who helped craft the Constitution of the United States of America. Ready to disappoint the multitudes that idolized him, Franklin admitted uncertainty and his attitude towards uncertainty in his comments on the draft Constitution.]

I CONFESS that there are several parts of this Consti­tution which I do not at present approve… But I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller con­sideration, to change opin­ions on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.

It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men, indeed, as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of the whole truth, and wherever others differ from them, it is so far error…

Though many private persons think as highly of their own infallibility as that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who... said, "I don't know how it happens... I meet with nobody but myself (who is) always in the right.".

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