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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

My name is Robert Lamb.

And I'm Joe McCormick.

And in today's episode, we're going to begin a series in which we

look at a phenomenon studied in psychology, economics, and decision theory, which is called

ambiguity aversion. Ambiguity aversion is when we prefer risks with known probabilities over risks with unknown probabilities,

even if you have no reason for thinking that the unknown risks will be worse than the known

risks.

And we'll get to some concrete examples and foundational research on this in a bit, but to an approximation,

a good way to think about this is that ambiguity aversion is the sentiment expressed in the saying better the devil you know than the devil you don't. This is an aphorism. I feel like people often quote when they're about to justify making a really bad or indefensible decision.

And the whole point of this saying is that the devil you know is already bad. That's usually implied.

And there's no indication that the devil you don't know will be worse. It could well be a kinder, gentler devil with a less pointy pitchfork. But still, we often find

ourselves thinking, I'd just rather stick with the one where I know how pointy it is up front.

Yeah, it's often a form of indecision. Like, okay, I refuse to do anything about the current devil

...