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There’s a quote attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus that rings as true today as it did 2,500 years ago: “The only constant in life is change.” Heraclitus didn’t issue this statement using modern science; he looked to nature and people when he said: “No man ever steps in the same river twice.”
Today, we seem to be no more comfortable with change than those who lived in Heraclitus’ age, and, to be sure, we live in a time of great uncertainty. Between a tumultuous job market, pending elections and looming threats from artificial intelligence, it’s impossible to pin down just what our future will look like.
We can take notes from Heraclitus, though, looking to nature and our own decisions for ways to better deal with the never-ending uncertainty we face. As a neuroscientist, I know that such large-scale cognitive change can take thousands of years, but as a stoic, I believe we can drive these changes by accepting that change is constant and remaining optimistic. There is some data that agrees [ [link removed] ] with me, but the cognitive science outlining the best way to do this is scant, so I looked to my garden for clues on how nature thrives in uncertainty.
Taking Cues from Nature
One thing I’ve learned as an avid gardener is that to grow strong plants that bear a lot of fruit, you need to prune. In his book “Antifragile,” statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb similarly illustrates that an antifragile entity benefits from volatility and randomness [ [link removed] ]. He uses the example of the hydra, a serpentine monster from Greek mythology that regenerates two heads when one is cut off. I can’t help thinking about cutting a head off of Taleb’s hydra while snipping side shoots from my tomato plants—amusingly called “suckers” because they attempt to take nutrients from the rest of the plant. Pruning these suckers helps tomato plants focus energy into vining and producing fruit. Similarly, in the past few years, many people—myself included—have started pruning “suckers” from their lives too, cutting out things we don’t want and fertilizing things we care about. We too become more focused in the process.
But while pruning can be a helpful practice, it can also prove to be damaging—both in the garden and in life. The effects of pruning my vining crops for maximum growth led the heavy wire support tunnel I had made to collapse under their weight. My garden was teaching me a valuable lesson about growth without the right support system, reminding me that when I focused all my energy on my career, trying to plan for a maximum yield, my life collapsed under its own success.
I left science because I couldn’t balance managing a home, trying to raise an amazing kid, keeping up with the demands of a scientific career and exploring my creative interests. I realized I had to take a step back and decide not only what I needed to prune, but what I needed to support my growth. Like my tomatoes, I needed space for my creative off-shoots to grow. I branched off from science to study philosophy, interview thinkers [ [link removed] ], write pieces like this and synthesize all of it into videos [ [link removed] ]. Now, I’m ready to go back to work, after learning that what I needed was the proper support structure.
The world of white-collar work has been having some pruning problems of its own. The question is: Can the white-collar job market still support those looking for work? With 60,000-plus layoffs in tech, concern is mounting over the future of work in the U.S., largely due to the explosion of AI. Experts suggest that not only will AI cause massive disruption [ [link removed] ] in the job market and the global economy, but it could also lead to the creation of “minds” that can outsmart us [ [link removed] ] before we have suitable frameworks in place.
When it comes to AI, we’re on a trajectory that isn’t slowing, despite expert calls for a pause [ [link removed] ] on AI development almost a year ago. It’s safe to say that we will need a stronger framework to support this new technology, and Europe is leading the way in safe AI development [ [link removed] ]. Building a strong support system to guide AI development will be essential to making AI useful for all of us, not just for me and my tomatoes.
Companion Planting for Divergent Growth
My tomatoes thrive when they have the right companions, and in a flourishing garden, plants are happy to share their gifts. Basil, for one, serves as a great pest deterrent that keeps hornworms at bay and is pretty convenient for a caprese salad come harvest time.
Likewise, humans benefit from our own form of “companion planting.” Like-minded people’s brains sync up [ [link removed] ] when they hear polarizing information, especially in uncertain situations, but there’s evidence to suggest teams with balanced polarity produce higher-quality knowledge [ [link removed] ] than teams of moderates. With around half the world’s population voting in an election [ [link removed] ] this year, we might seek out diverse companions [ [link removed] ] to stimulate divergent thinking and higher-quality information—both of which we need to find solutions as problems continue to pop up.
In the meantime, regular people are putting more trust in crowd-shared information. According to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer [ [link removed] ], 51% of respondents said they gather information through social media. While the survey demonstrates a marked decline in trust in authority, a majority of us are good with gathering news information from our peers. This might prove a better system because, like a garden that relies on water from one source, wells run dry or are easily tainted. Decentralized information may yet be synthesized by AI, but gone are the days when Walter Cronkite tells us a definitive story about an event. Now we’re charged with developing the ability to integrate information from multiple sources. I choose to believe we are capable of learning this skill, and perhaps if we all believe it’s possible, it can be.
How to Grow the Garden of the Future
Things once thought impossible are happening every day, as we watch uncertainty and progress grow in the dual pillars of biotech and tech. Science is bringing us new innovations daily, but to paraphrase the great Dr. Ian Malcolm [ [link removed] ] from “Jurassic Park,” scientists have been so concerned with whether they could, but it might be time to stop and think about if we should.
Novel gene therapies hitting the U.S. market this year come with hefty price tags [ [link removed] ] that require lengthy approval processes for distribution to patients. It’s no wonder a mere 29% of respondents in the Edelman study embrace Gattaca [ [link removed] ]-esque gene therapy innovations, and only 14% embrace genetically modified organisms. It looks like people don’t want a determinist dystopia. Neither did Daniel Dennett, a giant in philosophy [ [link removed] ] who died in April. He might agree that it’s time to start thinking about more than just science and technology and consider the ethics of these innovations. Historically speaking, we eventually adopt technology (evident with cars, phones and the internet), but perhaps it’s time to take philosophical questions as seriously as we take science.
I don’t know if we’re standing on the edge of a philosophical era where we begin to accept Heraclitus’ flowing river or one where we can genetically reprogram our changing nature, but one thing is certain: I’m going to grow in this uncertainty, and I think you can too. Despite the chaos of elections, white-collar jobs [ [link removed] ] in decline, the threat of machine takeover [ [link removed] ], stunning innovations in medicine [ [link removed] ], and the cost to feed a family rising to a small fortune [ [link removed] ], I still believe that we have some agency over our attitudes and actions.
I’ll be in my garden, keeping an eye out for the newest science and its philosophical implications, and staying positive in this “maximalist fever dream” [ [link removed] ] of a year. If you can choose to accept that change is constant, you too might be able to have some fun while we all grow in uncertainty.
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