We've got this pattern-matching firmware in our heads, you see.
It's very, very sophisticated stuff. Relatively speaking, anyhow -- most of us can recognize faces every time, even if we've forgotten the name. Or that feeling you get when a place you visited a couple of times as a child, and haven't been back to until just now feels subtly, hauntingly familiar. Vision's a big part of it, sure, but it applies to any complex phenomenon we can even wrap our minds around. Like seasons -- noting that the year is a cyclical thing, that sometimes it's dry and sometimes rainy, that the moon's mad shapeshifting might just follow a regular cycle, or that when your mate and your friend both look sort of nervous when they know you're both around, they're probably shagging on the side...
It's pretty versatile. But it works too well. Because of what we use it for, you follow? A pattern is either really there, or it isn't. If we see it, and it isn't there, we're wrong. If we don't see it, and it is there, we're wrong. Both are failures of the firmware...but one of them has worse consequences, as far as evolution's concerned.
Look into the long grass. See a tiger there? Of course not -- you're a modern urban human who probably never encounters a predator we haven't tamed, domesticated and turned into a household companion. The possibility doesn't cross your mind. But think about someone who does have to worry about predators every time they go out into the tall grass to hunt. There just might be a tiger there, coiled and waiting to spring -- and if you think you see one, you might have only seconds to react before it makes its move.
If there is a tiger, and you decide there isn't one, you'll be passing through its digestive system that evening. End of you, end of your gene line, and end of the trait you carried that predisposed you to dismiss the possible tiger on the grounds that there wasn't evidence. Catastrophic failure.
But if there's not a tiger, and you decide there is one, you run back to the village in a panic, shout excitedly to everyone about how you came this close to being cat food, the hunting parties get a little more zealous about spearing anything that moves for a while, and your panicky superstitious genes survive to reach the next generation.
We've been refining our particular oversensitive version of that software for at least three million years. We can see patterns in anything now -- even ones that demonstrably aren't there, couldn't possibly be there. Look for them in a complicated-enough data set, and they'll appear as if by magic.
Constellations in the night sky.
Images in television static.
Unseen patterns in the stock market that somehow elude all the experts.
Prophecies in ancient books.
Conspiracies within disconnected historical events.
I think that some people just have an emotional need to feel like they're in the know, that the chaotic scramble of modern life hasn't completely left them behind. These people are going to find conspiracy theories especially tempting. After all, the more you look for evidence, the more of it you find...
no subject
It's very, very sophisticated stuff. Relatively speaking, anyhow -- most of us can recognize faces every time, even if we've forgotten the name. Or that feeling you get when a place you visited a couple of times as a child, and haven't been back to until just now feels subtly, hauntingly familiar. Vision's a big part of it, sure, but it applies to any complex phenomenon we can even wrap our minds around. Like seasons -- noting that the year is a cyclical thing, that sometimes it's dry and sometimes rainy, that the moon's mad shapeshifting might just follow a regular cycle, or that when your mate and your friend both look sort of nervous when they know you're both around, they're probably shagging on the side...
It's pretty versatile. But it works too well. Because of what we use it for, you follow? A pattern is either really there, or it isn't. If we see it, and it isn't there, we're wrong. If we don't see it, and it is there, we're wrong. Both are failures of the firmware...but one of them has worse consequences, as far as evolution's concerned.
Look into the long grass. See a tiger there? Of course not -- you're a modern urban human who probably never encounters a predator we haven't tamed, domesticated and turned into a household companion. The possibility doesn't cross your mind. But think about someone who does have to worry about predators every time they go out into the tall grass to hunt. There just might be a tiger there, coiled and waiting to spring -- and if you think you see one, you might have only seconds to react before it makes its move.
If there is a tiger, and you decide there isn't one, you'll be passing through its digestive system that evening. End of you, end of your gene line, and end of the trait you carried that predisposed you to dismiss the possible tiger on the grounds that there wasn't evidence. Catastrophic failure.
But if there's not a tiger, and you decide there is one, you run back to the village in a panic, shout excitedly to everyone about how you came this close to being cat food, the hunting parties get a little more zealous about spearing anything that moves for a while, and your panicky superstitious genes survive to reach the next generation.
We've been refining our particular oversensitive version of that software for at least three million years. We can see patterns in anything now -- even ones that demonstrably aren't there, couldn't possibly be there. Look for them in a complicated-enough data set, and they'll appear as if by magic.
Constellations in the night sky.
Images in television static.
Unseen patterns in the stock market that somehow elude all the experts.
Prophecies in ancient books.
Conspiracies within disconnected historical events.
I think that some people just have an emotional need to feel like they're in the know, that the chaotic scramble of modern life hasn't completely left them behind. These people are going to find conspiracy theories especially tempting. After all, the more you look for evidence, the more of it you find...