Risk vs Uncertainty: What People Confuse

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1. 28 July 2026 · corrected by Emir Baycan

   Flagged one quotation's uncertain provenance: 'Uncertainty is not the absence of knowledge. It is the presence of unknowns.' is a widely circulated paraphrase of themes from Frank Knight's 1921 Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, but this exact wording does not appear to be a direct quotation from the text. Verified accurate and left in place: Frank Knight's risk/uncertainty distinction (1921), Keynes's A Treatise on Probability (1921) and its parallel distinction, and the Good Judgment Project's documented superforecaster practices (explicit uncertainty acknowledgment, Bayesian updating, question decomposition).

   Before

   The article presented a specific quotation as a direct Frank Knight quote without noting its uncertain provenance.

   After

   Added a note that the quotation is a widely circulated paraphrase rather than a verified direct quotation from Knight's original text.

   Why: The quotation is commonly attributed to Knight online but its exact wording does not appear traceable to his 1921 book. Correction adds the appropriate caveat rather than removing the (broadly accurate) idea it conveys.

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1. Correction 28 July 2026

   Emir Baycan: Flagged one quotation's uncertain provenance: 'Uncertainty is not the absence of knowledge. It is the presence of unknowns.' is a widely circulated paraphrase of themes from Frank Knight's 1921 Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, but this exact wording does not appear to be a direct quotation from the text. Verified accurate and left in place: Frank Knight's risk/uncertainty distinction (1921), Keynes's A Treatise on Probability (1921) and its parallel distinction, and the Good Judgment Project's documented superforecaster practices (explicit uncertainty acknowledgment, Bayesian updating, question decomposition).

   Proof record →