"Science" of Hope

Giving hope is not an exact science. Neither is life or some science. Consider the following from the book, “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment”(1).

• Faced with the same patient, different doctors make different judgments about whether patients have skin cancer, breast cancer, heart disease, tuberculosis, pneumonia, depression, and a host of other conditions. Considerable differences of opinion can also be found in areas where it might not be expected, such as in the reading of X-rays.

• Forensic experts sometimes make inconsistent decisions when presented with the same information on different occasions.

• Fingerprint examiners sometimes differ in deciding whether a print found at a crime scene matches that of a suspect.

Giving hope is an art form at best. All you can do is your best, trying and keep getting better.

The “science” of hope is not to:

• think about it

• read about it

• even talk about it

The “science” of hope is to do it. Nothing beats practice, success, failure, learn, restart, retry. The best way to get better at giving hope is to give hope.

(1) Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Authors: Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein

Published by Little, Brown Spark © 2021