Comments on: Illusory Pattern Perception http://steelcityskeptics.net/2008/10/12/illusory-pattern-perception/ Drinking Skeptically in Pittsburgh. For Pittsburgh atheists, agnostics, secular freethinkers and all unbelievers. Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:06:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: mikhailovich http://steelcityskeptics.net/2008/10/12/illusory-pattern-perception/#comment-224 Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:09:43 +0000 http://www.steelcityskeptics.net/?p=278#comment-224 BigFrank,

Thanks for your comment.

The colored shirt analogy might have been too superficial to be helpful; I was searching for an example of popular superstition that would be too obviously untrue for anyone to take seriously, therefore illustrating the point without someone thinking, “Wait–the light really DOES turn green for me when I wear my blue shirt!”

Also, it isn’t my idea or inference that people who lead less predictable lives will latch on to a higher percentage of random connections that aren’t there; that was the primary finding of this study: people with decreased life control experience higher instances of Illusory Pattern Perception. The results interest me, but I wasn’t trying to make an assertion like that without support.

]]> By: BigFrank http://steelcityskeptics.net/2008/10/12/illusory-pattern-perception/#comment-223 Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:03:39 +0000 http://www.steelcityskeptics.net/?p=278#comment-223 Interesting stuff here, Mikhailovitch.
The human mind is a complicated system – it is always looking for patterns, but it is also quite sensitive to patterns that aren’t patterns and thus don’t work. Very soon after wearing the blue shirt, the wearer finds it doesn’t make the lights green, and so the theory is abandoned. True some people hold on to patterns which aren’t there but that’s pathological and not general. So I’m more optimistic about the capacity of human beings to do good science every day -continually testing stuff that comes at them and trashing falsehoods and recognizing, and building on consistencies when they are really there. I don’t think people need to be trained to do this. It is part of the complex mental capacities we all have. Surely this must be part of humanism. Otherwise you’re saying that you and other trained people can do it but us Joes can’t. Also I don’t think the capacity to believe garbage is in any way better exhibited by people who “have a lower standard of living”. As reasonable as your general line of argument is, it tends to under-estimate human beings.

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