Why We Cling to Certainty, Conspiracies, and Bad Predictions

Yeah, one of my favorite studies that I quote in the book, the researchers gave participants either a 50% chance of receiving a very painful electric shock or an 100% chance of receiving a painful electric shock. And what they found is those with a 50% chance were far more anxious and stressed than those with a 100% chance. We would somehow rather be certain that a bad thing is going to happen to us than have to grapple with the uncertainty of not knowing. What do you mean by uncertainty? The definition I like

best comes from these two psychologists who said, uncertainty is a sense of doubt that prevents you from making progress. And I don't think that's an exhaustive answer, but what I like about it is that sometimes when people are faced with uncertainty, it paralyzes them. And so my goal of the book is to sort of reframe uncertainty, not necessarily as a threat. or something that we should be fearful of, but actually as something that is the precursor to learning. Before you can know something, you have to not know that thing.

In order to be a human, in order to continue to live, you have to be able to make choices in spite of uncertainty. If you're very intolerant of uncertainty, there's two main tendencies that he observes. One is people become sort of obsessive information gatherers where they try and research every single plastic water bottle on Amazon to try and find the best pick, or they become extremely impulsive and they sort of buy the first thing that they see. And he sees them both as avoidance techniques.

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