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- Basic Beliefs
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Just thought I'd throw in some random thoughts.
I’ve posted before on different threads that there seems to be an evolutionary drive for people to find patterns in the environment – to figure out cause and effect and be able to predict effects when necessary. This skill has an obvious survival advantage. However this same drive can provide false returns, when patterns are only imagined. It turns out there is a name for this phenomenon: apophenia.
Maybe this is old news to many, but the word is new to me and I’m glad to know it. I discovered it while reading The Art of Statistics by David Spiegelhalter.
He says: “There is even a word for this tendency to construct reasons for a connection between what are actually unrelated events – apophenia – with the most extreme case being when simple misfortune or bad luck is blamed on others’ ill-will or even witchcraft.”
He elaborates:
It is not just scientists who value discoveries – the delight in finding something new is universal. In fact it is so desirable that there is an innate tendency to feel we have found something when we have not. We have previously used the term apophenia to describe the capacity to see patterns where they do not exist, and it has been suggested that this tendency might even confer an evolutionary advantage – those ancestors who ran away from rustling in the bushes without waiting to find out if it was definitely a tiger may have been more likely to survive.
But while this attitude may be fine for hunter-gatherers, it cannot work in science…
I believe this phenomenon, this tendency to see patterns of causality where there are non, has a major significance with relation to the origins of religion, from animism to intelligent design.
Incidentally, and in the context of apophenia, Spiegelhalter throws out this gem: “Causation is a deeply contested subject, which is perhaps surprising as it seems rather simple in real life…” (my emphasis). He elaborates on that, of course.
Seems like these observations have application to a number of discussions on this board.
We can see patterns.
More importantly we can see the absence of patterns - thus verifying and confirming the evidence of our senses that patterns actually DO exist.
If www.seti.org discovered a pattern they wouldnt dismiss it as apophenia.
The pattern of a genome DNA structure isnt apophenia.
Of course there are patterns. I don't see what your point is.
You wrote about "seeing patterns where they do not exist"..."false returns"..."when patterns are only imagined..."
Surely the difference between a sand dune and a sand sculpture is not imaginary.