I don’t care how smart you are. Your data set is incomplete. You cannot know everything.

On Friday, a friend mentioned effective altruism, and not in a good way. I’m familiar with the term and concept, though I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest. A lot of people assume that I study many philosophies and approaches in a scholarly manner. The expect me to quote definitions, cite authors, and compare arguments. I typically do not.

Effective altruism sounds great, doesn’t it? Both of those words are positive. Effective means it works, and altruism is an unselfish regard for others. What’s not to like?

It seems to get better: Effective altruism believes in using evidence and reason to figure out how to direct action to benefit others as much as possible.

I am a big fan of both evidence and reason! A lot of my coaching involves helping people take right actions by making decisions using reason to evaluate evidence.

So, what’s the problem?

The problem is in the arrogance of thinking your evidence is complete. Even Einstein knew this.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
– Albert Einstein

I recall a moment in college physics when my professor explained that Einstein was confident in his theory of relativity (E = mc²), but he also discovered how it was limited. The theory isn’t wrong; it’s merely incomplete because in some circumstances, it does not work. The professor’s point was that even when you think you’ve found the answer, there’s probably something you haven’t yet discovered.

One example is described in a Hidden Brain podcast—when new research contradicted a finding from decades earlier, the establishment at first rejected the new results. Rather than accept that its existing knowledge base was limited, the establishment set about trying to refute the new findings.

As it turns out, the knowledge held sacred by the establishment was based on original experiments using college students as subjects, because college students were cheap and plentiful. Unfortunately, the results of that experiment were taken to be equally applicable to both college-age people and older adults. That knowledge then became canon on which a lot of policy and further research were based.

The assumption that it applied equally to young and old alike was flawed, but no one ever tested that until recently.

The original research was not wrong. It was merely limited. Thus, decades of policy affecting older adults was decided based on bad assumptions. Some of those policies probably ended up doing more harm than good for the people they were supposed to help.

So, I still believe in the idea of effective altruism. The problem is not in the idea of it. It’s in the arrogance of the people who believe they know everything based on current knowledge.

One of my favorite questions is what else could be true? It reminds me that my knowledge is limited. If I had a bit more knowledge or a different perspective, might I interpret reality a little differently? Might I make a better decision?

My data set is incomplete.

Some of you might be thinking that the solution is to achieve a complete data set. If you know all the things, you will surely make the best decision.

A complete data set for any decision worth thinking about, however, is an impossibility. You cannot know everything. You cannot take into account every possible value of every possible variable.

Remember that scene in Avengers: Infinity War, where Dr. Strange compares more than 14 million possible futures and finds the one single path to success? That doesn’t happen in real life.

We all wish we could eliminate uncertainty and know the one best path forward that will guarantee success. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

If you ever find yourself in that situation, bask in it. It is rare indeed, if it ever happens at all.

So somehow you have to find the balance to be able to make a decision and move forward, but not so confidently that you are unable to adjust when new knowledge interferes. Commit to a course, but don’t commit so completely that you can’t adjust course when needs arise.

This is true whether you’re engaging in physics research, effective altruism, a job search, caregiving for a loved one, raising children, or even just deciding which route to take when you pull out of the driveway.

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