13. Agency Detection

So there you are, walking alone at night, wind whistling, leaves rustling, and suddenly—snap! A twig breaks in the distance.

Do you:

a) Assume it’s the wind and keep walking like a rational adult?

b) Start internally drafting your will because clearly there’s a demon in the bushes?

If you picked (b), congratulations—you’ve just experienced Agency Detection, humanity’s built-in, overly paranoid smoke alarm for invisible people.

Your Brain: Now Featuring Paranoia 2.0

Agency detection is your brain’s automatic tendency to assume that things that move, make noise, or exist might be agents—that is, beings with intentions, desires, and plans. And not just any plans, no. Plans to rob you, eat you, break your heart, or at the very least, ruin your afternoon.

Why? Because a long time ago, it paid to be suspicious.

If you heard rustling in the grass and assumed it was just the wind, but it was actually a lion—congrats, you’re lunch.

But if you assumed it was a lion and it was just the wind? No harm done. You wasted a few calories running, but at least you still had a pulse.

Evolution said, “Better safe than savaged,” and passed on that hyper-vigilant brain to you.

Faces in the Clouds, Gods in the Sky

This system worked great for surviving the savannah. But now? It’s… glitchy.

We still spot faces where there are none—Jesus on toast, a ghost in the curtain, a side-eye from your cat—and we attribute agency to non-agents all the time.

1. The universe is punishing me
2. My laptop knows when I’m in a rush
3. God gave me this parking spot
   

That’s your brain’s ancient lion detector going off… in a shopping mall.

Enter: Religion, Superstition, and Bad Exes

Agency detection didn’t stop with lions. It grew up with us. Got a glow-up. Put on robes. Now we see agency behind everything. Earthquakes, diseases, breakups, power cuts. If it sucks, someone must be behind it. A god, a devil, an ex, maybe even Mercury in retrograde.

Religion thrives on this wiring. Think about it: floods aren’t just bad luck, they’re judgment. A miraculous escape? Clearly divine intervention. Coincidence is a luxury we can’t afford—someone has to be pulling the strings.

Even love gets no peace. If someone ghosts you, agency detection doesn’t just shrug. Oh no. It runs full CSI mode:

1. “They must hate me.”
2. “They planned this.”
3. “It’s because I said pineapple belongs on pizza.”

You can’t not assign motive. Your brain needs closure that's just how we are wired.

Great for Survival, Terrible for Inner Peace

Agency detection is not rational. It’s emotional, messy, and often wrong. But it’s fast. Lightning fast. It gives you answers before you even know you have a question.

And those answers? They’re sticky. They shape how we see people, how we interpret silence, how we judge intentions. They also explain why we think everything happens for a reason, even when the reason is “physics” or “bad luck” or “you didn’t study.”

So… Now What?

Well, we can’t uninstall this feature. It’s baked into the firmware. But we can notice when it’s acting up.

Next time your brain screams “this was personal!” about something dumb—pause. Ask:

“Was that really an agent… or just the wind?”

Because not everything that moves is watching you.

Not every silence is judgment.

And not every bad thing is punishment from a sky ghost with control issues.

Sometimes… it’s just life.