Risk or Uncertainty? Does the difference make any difference in our behavior?
Risk involve known probabilities of what we decide to do or gamble on. For example playing in casinos, tossing a coin and studying probability in textbook.
Uncertainty is total ignorance of the outcome, and thus, people prefer to work within known probability.
Consider this experiment known as the Ellsberg Paradox:
We have tow boxes A and B.
Box A contains 50 red balls and 50 black balls. Box B contains 100 balls but the number of exact color-type is unknown.
Given the choice, people will select a red ball from box A. After this first selection, the subject will also prefer box A to select a black ball in the second trial.
Logically, if you opted to select a red ball from box A in the first trial, this should mean that you assumed black balls to be more numerous in box B. However, box A is still the preferred box to select a black ball. Why?
Are the subject not assuming anything? Did they not understand what to do?
Most probably, people have aversion for uncertainty. This is called “Ambiguity Aversion”
Mostly, we lead our life navigating oceans of uncertainties, even though we have strong aversion for uncertainty.
Statistics and probability are hard to comprehend and master or even to recall their tenants after a short while.
Consequently, even incases of known probabilities (risky events), we tend to treat cases as “under uncertainty”
In any case, statistics don’t stir us: people do.
A thousand of people died of famine? That’s terrible, but famine tragedy are getting pretty common.
Show the face of hungry kid dying of famine and donations pour in.
“Give the story a face”
Estimation is another part of risk, and we tend to systematically over estimate our chances of success.
If we think that we have talents, we start believing we are going to become a star musician, actor, painter, photographer, design model, sports…
After all, the media consistently display only stars and you think that the stars are the vast majority and pretty common to become a star with the adequate skills and talents: “I have enough talents, and with a little luck, I’ll be a star very shortly…”
What you missed in that reasoning is that for every star, maybe 10,000 failed in their attempts. So much luck needs to be distributed for the few lucky ones, and mostly for those in developed nations and a variety of opportunities.
We don’t try to take a good look at the graveyards of all these once-promising talented hopefuls. This is called the” Survivorship Bias”
Note: Daniel Ellsberg is mostly known as the one who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers to the press, leading to the downfall of President Nixon.
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Adonis Diaries 
Here’s what I think:
We became Homo Sapiens a little more than 60,000 yrs ago because the Savannah Grassland Areas we hunted in as Homo Erectus dried up and became Desert due to a real quick climate change because of Indonesia’s Toba super volcano eruption.
When this volcano erupted about 74,000 years ago, it triggered a 1,000-year episode of ice sheet advance, which cooled temps worldwide, but also caused a severe drought that lasted for thousands of years.
The Sahara Desert expanded and swallowed up our Savanah habitat and there was less and less food/water and the entire population bottle necked, simply because there wasn’t shit to eat or drink.
The female and child population suffered the worst, but the New Developing Breed of Male became more k-selective :we didn’t have as much sex because we simply didn’t have the energy to mate and if we did then the child and mother would go through hell trying to survive. So testosterone lowered. (The less we practice intercourse, the less our biology learn to produce what it lost?)
Males developed an innate need to protect Children and Females, at all costs.
The males would die trying to protect the females and the young because Males are expendable & we fucking know it, but you cannot repopulate if you don’t protect the young and females.
Only the most intelligent resourceful hominid could survive in this environment, but we almost went extinct.
The survivors got the hell out of Dodge and had to migrate away from the Desert to somewhere along the Ethiopian or Somalian Coast where we learned to fish and became semi-aquatic.
The general trend over the millennial was for less and less testosterone to become better Parents and protectors of females.(Wishful thinking?)
When testosterone is low, so estrogen molecules that control the nurturing instinct go uninhibited and the males become better fathers and will devote more time to protecting, nurturing, and teaching children.
However, we do have enough testosterone and brain power to whip out a big spear or rock and gang up on both predator and prey in the fight for survival.
If you can throw stones and hold a really big spear or make a sling shot, and always attack the rear of the animal when you surround it, not the front, so you really don’t need a whole lot of testosterone.
I’m sure it was like a pre-historic rodeo…some clown pokes the bull in the butt and it turns away from the guy it was about to attack then the other guy pokes it in the butt or genitals, until the bull (or even more dangerous animals like Lions that are eating easier prey like women & children) doesn’t know which way to turn and then a brave warrior stabs the beast in the neck then his comrades attack from all sides and it’s a frenzy of stabbing until you kill the beast.
But it’s always that coward that always attacks from the rear that sets up an opening, God you gotta love flanking. So are we really Demonic Males, guys?
What do you think Ladies are we really the embodiment of Evil?
What about Chimps? Are Male Chimps Evil?
Am I evil for killing a snake that crawled into my Son’s room when we moved into our new home years ago?
Yeah, I wish I was braver and caught the poor thing by the neck and let him live (I didn’t have a bag or blanket to capture him alive & he was getting away and turning and biting every time I tried to grab him), so I took the coward’s way out and just picked up a child’s toy to crush it’s head in, so it wouldn’t suffer.
Am I evil for that?
Or should I have let him get away and let my spouse go Ape Shit on me?