³⁸For the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, recognition of the uncertainty and fuzziness of sensory evidence was the main method for reducing desires. After contemplating the conflicting evidence in different perceptions and inferences, as described 🡽 in Chapter 12, they eventually find an “irresolvable conflict because of which [they] are unable to choose or reject” (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1.165, as quoted by Long (2006, p. 48)). Thus desire and aversion are extinguished. But paradoxically, uncertainty can sometimes lead to more vigorous action. Uncertainty about the availability of food increases foraging behavior in mammals, perhaps because they decide to hoard food or fatten themselves to protect themselves against such unpredictability (Anselme and Güntürkün, 2019). Even in human subjects in one economic experiment, uncertainty increased motivation (Shen et al., 2015).