Patternicity: Finding Meaningful Patterns in Meaningless Noise: Scientific American - 7 views
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They begin with the formula pb > c, where a belief may be held when the cost (c) of doing so is less than the probability (p) of the benefit (b). For example, believing that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is only the wind does not cost much, but believing that a dangerous predator is the wind may cost an animal its life.
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Gaby Ramirez Castorena on 20 Oct 11The way the author explains this is very confusing. I feel like he could have, and should have, done a better job at making this more understandable.
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Joshua Gray on 20 Oct 11True, I believe the author could have done a better job and give greater evidence to prove the point. But I feel using any religion as an example works well for this. Believing in a supreme being and any religious rquirements there in are worth doing for a person because the negative effects of it are seemingly minimal while if the person is correct than they get to go to an afterlife that is percieved better than life on earth.
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Sarah McKee on 20 Oct 11I think the predator example is a good one but yes the religion example is good as well. It's all just that the cost is less than the chance of missing out on something. Because then the cost could be far greater. Such as getting eaten by a predator or missing out on Heaven. Hiding, or running away from good food or not indulging in lots of "sinful" activity seems a small price compared to getting eaten or spending eternity in hell.
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Tavish Dunn on 21 Oct 11I agree that the author's explanations could have been clearer, but the examples of religion and the predator still illustrate the point. No matter how difficult it seems to resist the temptation of things that are deemed sinful throughout life, life is still temporary and any hardships are insignificant compared to an eternal suffering in hell. Both examples have situations where the cost of not believing in something that is true are permanent while the cost of falsely believing something are temporary.
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Valencia Hamilto on 21 Oct 11The formula pb > c was a little confusing at first, but once the author gave the explanation through the example of the predator , it all fit into place. I agree with the author that the cost is less than the chance of missing out on something.
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Alexis Schomer on 26 Oct 12This idea is very interesting and after given the examples I agree. It is better to think something is real when it isn't that the opposite. This concept is not only applicable to nature, but to many issues in life and has the same meaning and lesson when applied to anything.
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Karina DaSilva on 26 Oct 12Exactly. I think the analogy of the predator/wind is a pretty good description of how a lot of belief systems work. It's not a scare tactic so much as it is, at least partly, a reassurance of the future of one's self.
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Carissa Faulk on 26 Oct 12This is of course very true, and also makes sense. Not only does our sense of self preservation tend to believe patterns are true if the cost is less than the potential benefits, but so should our rationality. Even though it might be wise to question whether or not the pattern is actually a pattern, it is equally wise to assume it to be one until proven otherwise.
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madison taylor on 26 Oct 12It was an interesting article, but i agree it was a little difficult to understand at times. the idea that we can see and believe things that aren't true is valid. it is also a good point that we should be more rational about things.
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Religionists see the Virgin Mary on the side of a building.
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This is true. We develop our own beliefs and justifications for why things happen or why they are the way they are. A person see Virgin Mary and another sees Micheal Jordan is just a connection to our inner beliefs. What makes it important to us? How do we put a face to something? It reminds me of precedents in court, because they are use to make future decisions. We make connections in our minds to explain certain things!
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Like Felicia, I agree with this concept. It is a little bit of a complicated explanation because when we think of priming, we think of being influences on purpose by outside sources. But, seeing the Virgin Mary on the side of a building is not a certain religion telling that person to see her everywhere they go, so it is not an intentional priming. However, I do agree that we make certain connections with certain things because of our background and how we live.
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I think it might go deeper than being religious when someone sees the Virgin Mary on the side of a building. It does scratch the surface in the article when trying to explain the Type I and Type II cognizance. It is something that might be more emotionally attached to their psyche than anything else. Or it could be just superficial belief in the paranormal or superstitions.
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and prior events
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If it's been a predator before you're more likely to think it's a predator. Whenever your right it provides a positive reinforcement.
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I feel like this is just a living being's natural tenancy to favor safety over harm. It comes down to being prepared for the worst, which is, as the author would say, a natural selective attribute. Error on the side of caution clearly is statistically more beneficial than the other option. An animals prime instinct is to survive in order to reproduce. Humans have a responsibility to reproduce as well as to be productive members of society. Being more "cautious" allows people to contribute more and have experiences to benefit society as well as the people around them. I am not saying everyone lives for their country/community, but people choose to live because of the personal connections we make with others, and THAT is the cost we way, the benefits of this is what is considered in the equation.
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The connection of this idea to the concept of inequality is that we use this concept to shape what policies we fight for and ones we don't care for. The policies that come at the greatest cost with a lesser benefit are the ones that people choose not to support. Policies with the greatest benefit with the least cost is more favorable. As far as believing false negatives/positives, these beliefs are based on hope (false positives) and lack of information/ignorance (false negatives).
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The things people watch and witness are going to be on their mind and more likely change the things he or she is watching for. For example, a person who has just watched a scary movie is more likely to hear footsteps or feel cool air against their neck even if there is nothing there.
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Exactly. The things that we experience cary through the day. We also like to come up with explinations to make things make more sense or even give them more value. Just as the Greek and Romans did when they told the tales of the Gods who did the things they could not other wise explain. An example being Helios who pulled the sun across the sky by charriot.
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natural selection will favour strategies that make many incorrect causal associations in order to establish those that are essential for survival and reproduction
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Why do people see faces in nature, interpret window stains as human figures, hear voices in random sounds generated by electronic devices or find conspiracies in the daily news?
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I usually find myself making weird figures from the clouds in the sky. Once you start thinking about something or noticing something in your everyday life, you start seeing these figures everywhere you go.
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ya i have noticed that too. we find familiar objects to us in other things when they are not even there. Our mind can see things that we are used to seeing in places where they arent
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There is. I call it “patternicity,” or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.
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I think that this is some sort of sense that is second nature to most people. We like to have order so sometimes someone might go to the extreme and try and find some sort of order in complete chaos.
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This is true and I like what mark said above...we are always trying to make order out of chaos...not sure why but that is what we always do,
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I agree. I guess that's why there is the saying, "Everything happens for a reason." We like to give reasons and meaning to life, to our everyday living. I think Mark was spot on in his comment. We like feeling in control of many situations in life, especially with the unexplainable.
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I agree with everyone this makes sense. We are always trying to find the meaning in life so we constintly make patterns. I think that this author is correct in asserting that making patterns is natural and important and consequently there may be some truth in conspiracys for certain people.
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When i hear random noises, ofter there are certain tones that can make me think of a certain song. I usually turn random sounds into a song. Certain pitches can remind of certain melodies that i know.
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We're all correct and I'm proud of everyone's findings. There's not really much more to be said on this besides that it's true.. How that affects political policy and using it to the advantage of bettering society is what we need to figure out
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I think that we like for things to be relatable, we prefer to have things in common than to label it as the complete polar opposite of us, hence we see faces in windows and figures in clouds, and even sounds that make no sense we try to label as intelligible, because we want to have an understanding for our environment. We like patterns, because things remain constant that way, adapting to change is not really our favorite thing to do.
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in my english class as well we discussed how humans naturally make patterns to make stuff more simple and nderstand it more even if there is no pattern or relation. its called paradolia and we do it to simplify everything then make and find meaning in it. its a natural response and is seen as beneficial sometimes in order to understand things but can distort reality to make it understandable
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Michael Shermer is awesome and you all should definitely check out his books. I just finished reading "Why people believe weird things" and it was quite good. Shermer came and spoke at CLU last year for the SoCal leadership conference for the SSA - the video of that is available here if you are interested http://www.youtube.com/user/SecularStudents?blend=1&ob=5#p/u/0/0kbHZ8sEwd0
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A type I error, or a false positive, is believing something is real when it is not (finding a nonexistent pattern). A type II error, or a false negative, is not believing something is real when it is (not recognizing a real pattern—call it “apatternicity”).
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. Thus, there would have been a beneficial selection for believing that most patterns are real.
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This is Shermer's main point. Because we have evolved to seek out patterns, and our survival rate tends to go up by accepting pattern outcomes as real, we are destined to believe things. This is why 'people believe weird things'. It is why we are susceptible to priming and why political story telling is so effective.
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I agree, I think that this is an interesting point. When we typically think of conspiracy theorist we tend to picture some crazy person when in reality picking up on patterns that go deeper than what we are shown in the media might be an important survival instinct that has been lost because of stigma.
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But such erroneous cognition is not likely to remove us from the gene pool and would therefore not have been selected against by evolution.
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Scientifically, this is really interesting. Although misconstruing the world around us can sometimes be seen as being a negative personality trait, evolution has determined that it is not one that is a "fatal" error or one that would inhibit growth. What we perceive in our own mind, in a way, can be negative or positive. Seeing things like the face of Jesus in a slice of toast may seem odd or crazy, but in a way it is refreshing to see different people interpreting the natural world in different ways. If we all saw the world the same, creativity would die. Think about it: People thought Galileo was odd at first for looking at the universe differently, and now his ideas are accepted by almost all.
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Sometimes A really is connected to B; sometimes it is not
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I know I have seen this countless times before, with people making connections between things that are completely unrelated. It seems that there is trouble with believing the simple answer, and feel that there needs to be a deeper meaning.
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Or perhaps you connect point A with point B because point B holds specific significance to you. Like when people so 9/11 was a conspiracy. Maybe that person was dissatisfied with Bush and in order to justify his dislike for him needs to come up with a patternicity that supports his feeling.
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I agree with Edmund. I think much that we decide with our brains has to do with importance/ significance to us. This might explain why people think that certain things are real when they aren't such as a type I error or vice versa with a type II error that believes something is false when it is really real. Humans emotions and feelings I feel make their argument make sense in their heads.
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i beleive that type II error, or a false negative would only make sense if the person had a mental disability. A lot of people who believe in things like UFOs known deep down that they are false. These people choose to not recognize real patterns, and by doing this in turn they are recognizing them.
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I argue that our brains are belief engines: evolved pattern-recognition machines that connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature.
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Ever since I was in pre-school I remember connecting the dots, it's something children have been taught and doing their whole life.
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I agree with Shermer's argument. We humans do see things out of certain patterns. Such as finding shapes in the clouds or a monster from your window at night, when it really was a branch in the wind. I find it entertaining when people sell the image of the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast. These patterns fascinate our brains and link to creativity.
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Paranormalists hear dead people speaking to them through a radio receiver.
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I believe that the reason we see faces and other things in inanimate and amorphous objects is because either we are either searching way too hard (over analyzing) or just to accustomed to the object we are seeing. Many of us see faces in random things and I believe that it is due to the fact that we deal with many faces each and every day. And since we are not all clones, there is room for slight differences and changes so when we come across two spots and a sideways parentheses we associate it with a face.
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I think this is a very interesting article. This article reminds me of the story about a biologist and a businessman. They are walking together. Suddenly, the biologist hears the sound of an extremely rare insect that he hes been looking for a long time. The businessman does not hear anything. Later, the businessman hears a sound of a quarter just hits the ground. And of course, the biologist does not hear it. So i think it is very similar to this article because people can find things that they are interested in easier than things that they never want. By getting interested in something, the brain or our mind will create like a pattern inside, and it keeps telling and seeking from everything around us that might be related of what we are looking for or what we are interested in.
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What it really comes down to is how the brain wants to interpret in coming information. For example, if you are a businessman you'll hear quarters or as in the article if you are a paranormalist you will hear dead people talking to you through the radio. How you interpret information is based according to your personality.
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belief may be held when the cost (c) of doing so is less than the probability (p) of the benefit (b)
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I couldn't comment on the highlight under this, but that's exactly what I thought of when I read this, Pascal's wager. It is true, if the cost of believing something is comparably better than not believing it and risking the consequences that you may be wrong, regardless of whether it is true or not, it may be advantageous to us that we've evolved this way.
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I really like this point. We are socialized at a young age to see things certain ways. Like a kid born and raised in feudal Japan would be a lot different that a kid born today in Britain. Seeing these patterns we are also trained at a primordial level to interpret them independent from what we are taught. Being educated by nature and society are two different things that come together to make our reality.
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"pattern-recognition machines": I'm pretty sure we can all think of times when we've heard our named called out somewhere, but really someone just said something that sounded similar to our names. Our brains are constantly on alert, trying to make sense of the world around us. We feel comfortable with things we know, and so we try to fit new experiences into what we already know. This works like schemas.
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I agree with Sarah because yes it was already a predator you are more inclined to think its a predator because thats all you've known it as.
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I like the predator example and feel it helped my understand the article better. How we see something and how we relate it to ourselves such as the Virgin Mary is very important. I also feel the cost is less than the chance of missing out in the long run.
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I find this information very interesting: Patternicity," or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. It is also an error in cognition. Natural selection will favor patternicity. There are two types, or a false or a positive, believing something is real when it is not and believing something is real when it is. Our brains are belief engines: evolved pattern-recognition machines that connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature.