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Bravo to Jemima Kelly (“In uncertain times, confident-sounding experts are the ones we should question”, , January 15) for breaching a near-taboo and uttering the word — uncertainty.

In my own field, the meaning of “uncertainty” is limited to complete knowledge of all the possible outcomes and their respective probabilities. It seems that as the world grows ever more complex, leaders and experts, out of the insecurity remarked upon by Ms Kelly, double-down on precision and quantitative measurement.

The Enlightenment was indeed critically important, but it is high time to develop some humility about what we can know and what we cannot.

Professor Mariano Torras
Professor of Economics, Department of Finance and Economics
�鶹ֱ��, Garden City, NY, US