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| Wednesday, May 20, 2009 12:39 PM |
| (Last updated on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 12:57 PM) | | Pattern Matching |
 by Fëanor |
Stories like this one, about a couple who found a miraculous Cheeto that looked like Jesus, really drive me crazy. The human brain is wired to find patterns in things. It's one of the things we're really good at. So it is neither surprising nor miraculous that you found a pattern in something. You're a human being; that's what we do. To see a pattern and then immediately leap to the conclusion that some higher power must have put it there is ridiculous. We see patterns everywhere: a face on Mars, cities underwater. You're going to need a little more evidence.
UPDATE: Another thing that drives me crazy, and that I think is very much related to this, is Nostradamus and other prophets of his ilk. Their predictions are pored over and constantly talked about (in endless vapid History Channel TV specials) as if they've come true. But the trick here is that prophecies by Nostradamus and others are always really vague and generalized and metaphorical, leaving the human brain plenty of room to pattern match. It's easy to look at them after the fact and decide they must be referring to this event or that event, because you can read in whatever you like. But it's a pretty crappy prophecy if you can only decide what it was about after the fact. |
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| Tagged (?): News (Not), Science (Not), TV (Not) | |
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