Little Thing 318: The Algorithm of Your Fear

 

It is my favorite season of the year, the sweater season. 

Sweater washed, hot cocoa restocked, books ready. Let's begin another nerdy talk. 

This morning I finished Gabriel García Márquez’s Of Love and Other Demons. And behind the turbulent love between Delaura and Sierva María (please read the summary if you are curious), I found myself thinking about something else, but still a smaller theme of the story: how quickly people collapse into fear when they meet something unfamiliar. 

This is the scene when Kiki arrives at the new city

We are terrified of what we cannot name, so we start filling the empty space with imagination, with stories, assumptions, and invented meanings. Most of the time we’re not afraid because something is dangerous; we’re afraid because uncertainty exposes how little control we actually have. And control or the illusion of it is a comfort we refuse to surrender.

History repeats this pattern with embarrassing consistency. Pitchforks and fire for women who brewed herbs (we called them witches). Suspicion and violence against Muslims after 9/11 (we were all painted as terrorists). Fear is always quicker to feed than truth.

I even see it in Sofi, in the most innocent way. The first time she had to visit the dentist, honestly, it was dramatic. She’d never been in that chair before, but her imagination built the monster long before she met the room. For a week, I had to mentally prepare her, because what she feared wasn’t the dentist, it was the idea of what could happen. A year later, she walks in without flinching. Same dentist, same chair. The only thing that changed was her knowledge.

The modern version is right in our hands. We don’t burn witches anymore, but we do repost headlines. Algorithms reward outrage, fear, and moral hysteria, not truth. Misinformation travels faster than facts ever will. And now with AI, the internet is a wild field where anyone can plant anything. We are still the same frightened creatures, only with better devices and faster Wi-Fi.

Humans can’t tolerate uncertainty. So we choose imagination over investigation. Instant judgment is easy; curiosity is labour. Saying “I don’t know yet, I need to understand first” is harder than picking a side in five seconds. But that small sentence, that pause, is the difference between fear and clarity. True intelligence shows when you have the ability to update/change your mind. When you admit ‘I was wrong.’ When you replace certainty with curiosity. The opposite isn’t just closed-mindedness, it’s the fear of being wrong, the fear of the unknown. And ironically, that fear is what makes us do the very thing we dread: we assume without knowing. Don't deny it, we all did this.

I see it even at home; our parents, glued to their phones, reposting every frightening headline they see. They think it’s their duty to warn us (whether it is the right news or not is not the issue for them). But a diet of fear is still a diet, and it shapes the mind. I don’t want to live that way. I don’t want Sofi to inherit a world where panic spreads faster than thought (because I can't deny that I am an anxious person, and I know where that comes from). We can choose a different default: pause, verify, think, and stay curious. Fear is much easier, kan. 

So here’s my simple take: pause. Give yourself the chance to learn, explore, research, and ask before deciding. Whether it’s a scandal, an AI scare story, gossip, or forwarded outrage; don’t let your first instinct be the final verdict. Don't bring your torch when you see everyone is holding one. 

Curiosity may not protect us from everything, but at least it protects us from being controlled by fear.