Illustration: Kieran Blakey

The Nuance

Science Explains Why Uncertainty Is So Hard on Our Brain

And how to knock out its effects

Markham Heid
Elemental
Published in
6 min readMar 19, 2020

InIn a 1927 essay, the legendary horror author H.P. Lovecraft wrote that “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

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Markham Heid
Elemental

I’m a long-time contributor at TIME and other media orgs. I write mostly about health. I grew up in Michigan, but these days I live in southwest Germany.