Adam Kucharski

Thanks for having me.

Yes, I think that's a great question.

And I think my background's in maths.

So I think a lot of my kind of training was around this idea that you can have this definitive knowledge that something is true.

And I think it's something that people grappled with across fields.

I mean, one of the stories that really struck me was Abraham Lincoln, when he was training to be a lawyer, came across this word demonstrate.

And he had this kind of beyond reasonable doubt, this certainty.

And he's like, I don't really understand what this

And he actually went back to all of these ancient Greek mathematical texts to understand how can we take the knowledge we have, build on that, prove new theorems, use that to prove subsequent knowledge.

But I think one of the things that...

Was really the motivation for the book and something that I think anyone who works with information and decision making and evidence happens across very often is it can become quite a shifting concept.

I mean, even in mathematics, things that people thought were proven.

turned out had some hidden assumptions or human judgments that were kind of lurking there and caused a lot of that to collapse.

So I think it's a kind of fascinating concept because it's something that's so important in life, not just having knowledge that we gradually accrue, but for many of the things we care about, whether it's dealing with emergency, whether it's a legal case.

whether it's even just a kind of minor business decision in our day, we have to work out where we set the bar and how we evaluate what we've got.

And I think for me, that was really the launching off point to explore this.

You know, how do we converge on certainty and what happens when it goes wrong?

I think that's a great question.

And without going down the kind of philosophical rabbit hole, it could have been a book on it.

What is reality?