Apophenia is seeing patterns that don’t exist, often involving numbers or shapes. It’s not always a sign of mental illness and can be exhibited by creative people. Learning to recognize it is important to distinguish true patterns from coincidence, especially in science where it can distort results.
When someone sees patterns that don’t actually exist, this is known as an apophenia. Apophenia can take a wide variety of forms, from thinking the same number occurs too often to be a mere coincidence to seeing a man on the moon. In some cases, apophenia is used as a criterion for diagnosing mental illness, but having apophenia does not necessarily imply that someone is mentally ill; many extremely creative people, for example, have demonstrated apophenia.
One of the most common forms of apophenia involves numbers. Many people are under the impression that a certain number keeps appearing in their lives; 23 is a common choice. They can start seeing that particular number everywhere, both in pure form and in the form of numbers adding up to it. This type of apophenia has often been the subject of movies and books dealing with cursed numbers.
In another form of apophenia called pareidolia, people extract shapes or sounds from meaningless data. The best known example of pareidolia is probably cloud gazing, where people see shapes in the form of clouds in the sky. Many people also exhibit pareidolia when they extract meaningful sounds from the static in the radio, and it can sometimes be extremely frustrating, as other people will not recognize those sounds or patterns.
Apophenia is an example of what is known in statistics as a type I error or false positive. Most people do not experience apophenia by conscious choice; they simply draw connections where there are none out of a sense of false sensitivity. The behavior of someone with severe apophenia can veer towards the absurd, as someone may go to great lengths to support the connections he makes or to avoid particular circumstances.
Learning to recognize apophenia is important, as it’s a good idea to be able to distinguish between true patterns and mere coincidence. This distinction is especially crucial in the sciences, where Type I errors can radically distort the results of experiments, especially when people make subtle adjustments to strengthen their ideas. As a general rule, if you keep noticing the same number, symbol, pattern, sound, or event in your life, it’s probably a case of apophenia; you may want to look for evidence that contradicts your impression of a pattern or connection.
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