distaste for uncertainty — Tarik Yildirim

Since the elevator was broken, we had no choice but to use the stairs to go to the roof. The theme of the party was "Michael Jackson" and each of us was looking forward to this retro night. At some point while we were still climbing the stairs, a friend paused and asked "How many more floors to go?" I said "Three!" Then I thought whether knowing the answer made her any better off. Our pace was slow and there was no need to take a break. So what compelled her to ask that question?

Uncertainty can get irritating sometimes and its resolution can cause great relief. I think this is what happened in the above story.

Here are some quite unrelated examples that demonstrate the universality of this distaste for uncertainty:

The whole insurance industry is based on the desire to eliminate risk.
Uncertainty prolongs economic crises. Companies hate it when the future becomes blurry.
Terminal cancer patients feel better-off when they know how much time they have left.
Countdown traffic lights relieves the stress caused by the uncertainty of go-time.
"The Discovery Channel series MythBusters investigated Chinese water torture in the season 3 episode Brown Note, Water Torture, and found that dripping water on the forehead, by itself, was not particularly stressful. Immobilizing the subject along with a variable water drop schedule proved the most stressful of the methods they tried, and cold water intensified the effect. The key part of this is that the water drop was made to be randomly timed. Thus, the victim would not know when the next drop would come. This was meant, in turn, to drive the victim insane." (Source)
Job insecurity causes greater stress than unemployment.
"Religious believers have less anxiety because religion reduces uncertainty-related distress." (Source)
For a long time physicists resisted the idea of absolute uncertainty. Einstein claimed "God does not play dice." Eventually the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics caused a paradigm shift in the understanding of nature.
We have a tendency to see patterns, even in complete randomness. (e.g. clustering illusion) Such cognitive biases help us create order and meaning out of uncertainty.
We like confident people who speak as if everything is certain and under their total control. "Financial advisors who insist they know whether stocks will go up or down in the future are seen as more credible and trustworthy than advisors who express modest confidence, even when both predict which way the stock’s price goes with equal accuracy (Price & Stone, 2004). Political experts who claim more certainty and make more extreme predictions are in more demand by the media (Tetlock, 2005). Sniezek and Van Swol (2001) found that advisors who expressed more confidence earned greater trust, were more likely to have their advice followed, and engendered more confidence in those receiving their advice." (Source)

Of course the perceived uncertainty may not be in line with actual uncertainty. In other words our distaste may be misguided:

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones. Six Muslims traveling from a religious conference were thrown off a plane last week in Minneapolis, Minn., even as unscreened cargo continues to stream into ports on both coasts. Shoppers still look askance at a bag of spinach for fear of E. coli bacteria while filling their carts with fat-sodden French fries and salt-crusted nachos. We put filters on faucets, install air ionizers in our homes and lather ourselves with antibacterial soap. "We used to measure contaminants down to the parts per million," says Dan McGinn, a former Capitol Hill staff member and now a private risk consultant. "Now it's parts per billion."

At the same time, 20% of all adults still smoke; nearly 20% of drivers and more than 30% of backseat passengers don't use seat belts; two-thirds of us are overweight or obese. We dash across the street against the light and build our homes in hurricane prone areas--and when they're demolished by a storm, we rebuild in the same spot. Sensible calculation of real-world risks is a multidimensional math problem that sometimes seems entirely beyond us. And while it may be true that it's something we'll never do exceptionally well, it's almost certainly something we can learn to do better. (Source)

If we hate uncertainty so much, why do some people enjoy gambling? Here are possible reasons:

Such people are more delusional and overconfident than the rest. They may also have a greater capacity to bear risk.
In a casino the source of uncertainty is under your control. In principle you can always "leave the table". This makes you feel more secure.
People prefer structured uncertainties over unstructured ones. Gambling games have a structured quantitative character. (See Ambiguity Aversion)
The time of resolution of uncertainty in a gambling game is often known in advance. This is not the case for most real-life uncertainties.