Learn English – Can we say that X is “indifferent between” two possible courses of action

grammaticalityphrase-requestsword-choice

It strikes me as odd to use "indifferent between" rather than "indifferent to", but am having a hard time rephrasing the sentence so that it includes both options.

The structure of the sentence I'm looking at is:

"X is indifferent between doing Y and doing Z"

Now of course the fact that X is indifferent could allow me to write something like, "X is indifferent as to the future course of action", but I want to include the two options (not least since there may be more options to which X is not indifferent).

I suppose there are two questions here:

  1. Is "indifferent between" truly ungrammatical?

  2. How can I more elegantly phrase such a sentence?

Edit: Since I now see that my simplified example doesn't quite explain what I'm asking, the actual sentence I'm looking at is:

The risk adjustment should reflect the compensation that an insurer
requires for bearing this uncertainty and reflects the point at which
the insurance company is indifferent between fulfilling an
insurance contract with a range of possible outcomes and fulfilling a
liability with fixed cash flows.

Best Answer

A regular Google search gives about 350,000 hits for ‘indifferent between’, while a Google books search gives about 120,000 hits.

I cannot find any dictionary entries that include examples or citations with this usage, but it does appear to be in actual use, if not all that common.

As such, I wouldn’t classify it as ‘truly ungrammatical’, but rather perhaps as ‘best avoided in contexts where you wish to steer clear of potentially controversial grammar’.

In your particular phrase, I would suggest:

X is indifferent to whether (we do/he does/etc.) Y or Z

Or, even more plainly spoken:

X does not care whether (we do/he does/etc.) Y or Z


Edit to reflect edited question:

With the context now known, I would suggest recasting the sentence as follows (vel sim):

The risk adjustment should reflect the compensation that an insurer requires for bearing this uncertainty and reflects the point at which the insurance company considers fulfilling an insurance contract with a range of possible outcomes and fulfilling a liability with fixed cash flows (to be) equal options.

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