apophenia

Hidden messages
Subliminal messages Audio Backmasking Reverse speech Numeric Numerology Theomatics Bible code Cryptography Visual Fnord Pareidolia Psychorama Sacred geometry Steganography See also Apophenia Clustering illusion Observer-expectancy effect Pattern recognition Unconscious mind

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Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness".

"While observations of relevant work environments and human behaviors in these environments is a very important first step in coming to understand any new domain, this activity is in and of its self not sufficient to constitute scientific research. It is fraught with problems of subjective bias in the observer. We (like the experts we study) often see what we expect to see, we interpret the world through our own personal lens. Thus we are extraordinarily open to the trap of apophenia."

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In statistics, apophenia would be classed as a Type I error (false positive, false alarm, caused by an excess in sensitivity). Apophenia is often used as an explanation of some paranormal and religious claims. It has been suggested that apophenia is a link between psychosis and creativity.

Origins

Conrad originally described this phenomenon in relation to the distortion of reality present in psychosis, but it has become more widely used to describe this tendency in healthy individuals without necessarily implying the presence of neurological or mental illness.

Examples

Pareidolia

Main article: Pareidolia

The identification of a face on the surface of Mars is an example of pareidoliac apophenia.

Pareidolia is a type of apophenia involving the finding of images or sounds in random stimuli.

Discordianism

The Principia Discordia refers to the act of seeing order which does not really exist as the Aneristic Illusion, and avoiding this illusion is a major tenet of the Discordian religion. The Principia illustrates this with a drawing of five pebbles, and gives several possibilities for the shape (a pentagon, or a star, or disorder). It goes on to state that "an Illuminated Mind can see all of these, yet he does not insist that any one is really true, or that none at all is true".

Fiction

Postmodern novelists and film-makers have reflected on apophenia-related phenomena, such as paranoid narrativization or fuzzy plotting (e.g., Vladimir Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols", Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and V., Alan Moore's Watchmen, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, Arturo Pérez-Reverte's The Club Dumas, The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, and the films Conspiracy Theory, Darren Aronofsky's π, A Beautiful Mind and The Number 23). As narrative is one of our major cognitive instruments for structuring reality, there is some common ground between apophenia and narrative fallacies such as hindsight bias. Since pattern recognition may be related to plans, goals, and ideology, and may be a matter of group ideology rather than a matter of solitary delusion, the interpreter attempting to diagnose or identify apophenia may have to face a conflict of interpretations.

The Question, who is portrayed as a conspiracy theorist in the animated television series Justice League Unlimited, was mentioned to have apophenia. He claimed to see connections between the Girls Scouts and the crop circle phenomenon as well as spy satellites and fluoridated toothpaste.

See also

• Clustering illusion
• 23 (numerology)
• Synchronicity
• Hindsight bias
• Interpretation
• Conspiracy theory
• Confirmation bias

Notes and references

• Endslay, Mica R. (2004). in Simon Banbury, Sébastien Tremblay: A Cognitive Approach To Situation Awareness:: Theory and Application, 1st, USA: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. ISBN 0754641988. 
• Klaus Conrad, 1958, Die beginnende Schizophrenie. Versuch einer Gestaltanalyse des Wahns. Stuttgart: Thieme.
• William Gibson, 2003, Pattern Recognition. New York: G. P. Putnam's, 2003.

1. ^ A Cognitive Approach to Situation Awareness:: Theory and Application

External links

• Skeptic's Dictionary: Robert Todd Carroll's article on apophenia

apophenia vs synchronicity, an acausal connecting principle. PEAR researchers at Princeton University reviewed details and their comments are included: http://www.webspawner.com/users/cosmic/

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