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LIT-1397: Fallibility, reflexivity, and the human uncertainty principle

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Properties5
StatusActive — read 2026-10-29 (NOTE-1362) in full, from the copy on the author's own site; worth reading as Soros's fullest short statement of reflexivity: a participant's view both tracks and changes its situation, so facts stop being an independent test of it, and the loop can run toward the view or away from it. Read it knowing that it is argued from experience and not tested; that it calls fallibility, not reflexivity, the key source of the uncertainty; that its postscript withdraws the sharp line between natural and social science that its middle section is built on; and that the figures are not in the web copy.
Version2
Tagsepistemology, social-science
SupportsCLAIM-426 — Where a judgement's circulation helps bring about what it says, its visibility, repetition and attributed plurality are evidence about what it will bring about, so the rule that a judgement's authority should come from its grounds and not its visibility holds for judgements of what already is, and not without qualification for judgements of what someone or something will become
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1362 — Soros — Fallibility, reflexivity, and the human uncertainty principle

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Soros, G. (2013). Fallibility, reflexivity, and the human uncertainty principle. Journal of Economic Methodology, 20(4), 309–329. doi:10.1080/1350178X.2013.859415.

Read in full on 2026-10-29 (NOTE-1362).

Why this is here

CLAIM-426 needs the general condition under which a judgement’s circulation bears on its own truth. Soros’s reflexivity is one statement of it: a view held by participants is both an attempt to know a situation and an intervention in it. His point that the two functions interfere is the reason CLAIM-426 keeps visibility as evidence about a future and not as a warrant: where circulation shapes the outcome, the outcome is open, and a forecast’s popularity can make it more likely or, through counter-moves, less.

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