Mind · Reasoning

Uncertain

Epistemic status: genuinely don't know

Definition

Mechanism

Epistemic Status Flag. Explicitly marks a Claim, Variable, or Edge as 'Unknown'. Unlike 'Speculation' (which posits a direction), 'Uncertain' asserts a void of evidence. This prevents the system from treating absence of evidence as evidence of absence. Tagged nodes become high-priority targets for information retrieval. Tracked via UncertaintyMap.

Preconditions

Knowledge gap identified

Postconditions

Confidence score set to 0.0
Target marked as requiring investigation

Invariants

Actionable Void: A node marked 'Uncertain' is a high-priority target for Information Retrieval.
Specificity: Must target a specific scope (e.g., 'Uncertain about X', not just 'Uncertain').

Risks

Failure modes

False Certainty
Agent feels pressure to answer and fabricates a 'likely' answer instead of using this flag.
Lazy Agnosticism
Agent uses 'Uncertain' to avoid the work of reasoning (Tier 2 failure).

Relationships

Builds on

References

Agent

Autonomous Goal-Directed Entity

UncertaintyMap

Systematic categorization of ignorance

Infrastructure

Variable

Mutable value

Used by

References

Society

Doubtshelter

Make voicing uncertainty or asking for evidence cost no standing in a group

Reference

Identity

Ref

Uncertain#91b5

Sema ID

sema:Uncertain#mh:SHA-256:91b56e39fe4ccec7c6c80c865e8f679178293e85ec208eaceb9c814a9ca4bd53

Ring

Tier

Updated

2026-11-11

Supersedes

sema:Uncertain#mh:SHA-256:b1596d0176ec07983b13fe811026335849400cab1b8dc090e3aeec726d5e0a54
sema:Uncertain#mh:SHA-256:d530cb44023db8c31fcf38084d2880df7e6a9d0c51f3785cb7a42d75bd504bf8
sema:Uncertain#mh:SHA-256:a1a2b3d5eecedee633489c6494795af592bf5b995f591a0b7b7b7d29909603ba
sema:Uncertain#mh:SHA-256:cada8020f2a01658580acca056a60a28e11a52f182565c25e7369fb82b17e1bc
sema:Uncertain#mh:SHA-256:8e7410a4c3ad67d8ff7bfe5626fbf8dba2e5bb8df048a163b4ebb8e8af059760

Markdown JSON This version (Uncertain@91b5)Index of all patterns