Why do people avoid saying "I don't know"? There's social cost, fear of looking incompetent. Throughout our lives, we are taught that stating "I don't know" is an admission of total ignorance.

"I don't know" rarely means zero knowledge. More often, it means: I understand some of the factors at play, I can estimate likelihoods, but I cannot predict with certainty how this particular instance will unfold. That's not ignorance. That's honesty about the nature of complex systems.

The world is less predictable than we pretend. Multiple variables feed into every outcome, many of them invisible to us in the moment. Acknowledging this isn't weakness, it's the foundation for good judgment.

A great decision isn't determined by its outcome but by the quality of the process behind it, and that process depends on accurately representing what we actually know versus what we're guessing at.

Admitting uncertainty opens doors that false confidence closes. Once you accept that you don't know something, you start looking. You ask better questions. You consider scenarios you would have dismissed. You uncover assumptions you didn't realize you were making. The creative and rigorous thinking we associate with good problem-solving often begins precisely at the moment we stop pretending we have answers we don't have.

"I don't know" isn't an endpoint. It's the starting condition for finding out.