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monolith

climber

Berkeley, CA

Nov 18, 2010 - 10:44am PT

The checks have been puny lately.

Not enough threats.

I've been trying to milk this gig as long as I can, but the boss says you are just too weak.

I might have to move to another section of the NWO.

GC says there's an opening in S.P.E.C.T.R.E. so there's hope.

graniteclimber

Trad climber

The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division

Nov 18, 2010 - 11:42am PT

Patternicity: Finding Meaningful Patterns in Meaningless Noise

Why the brain believes something is real when it is not

By Michael Shermer November 25, 2008 7

Why do people see faces in nature, interpret window stains as human figures, hear voices in random sounds generated by electronic devices or find conspiracies in the daily news? A proximate cause is the priming effect, in which our brain and senses are prepared to interpret stimuli according to an expected model. UFOlogists see a face on Mars. Religionists see the Virgin Mary on the side of a building. Paranormalists hear dead people speaking to them through a radio receiver. Conspiracy theorists think 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration. Is there a deeper ultimate cause for why people believe such weird things? There is. I call it “patternicity,” or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.

Traditionally, scientists have treated patternicity as an error in cognition. A type I error, or a false positive, is believing something is real when it is not (finding a nonexistent pattern). A type II error, or a false negative, is not believing something is real when it is (not recognizing a real pattern—call it “apatternicity”). In my 2000 book How We Believe (Times Books), I argue that our brains are belief engines: evolved pattern-recognition machines that connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature. Sometimes A really is connected to B; sometimes it is not. When it is, we have learned something valuable about the environment from which we can make predictions that aid in survival and reproduction. We are the ancestors of those most successful at finding patterns. This process is called association learning, and it is fundamental to all animal behavior, from the humble worm C. elegans to H. sapiens.

Unfortunately, we did not evolve a Baloney Detection Network in the brain to distinguish between true and false patterns. We have no error-detection governor to modulate the pattern-recognition engine. (Thus the need for science with its self-correcting mechanisms of replication and peer review.) But such erroneous cognition is not likely to remove us from the gene pool and would therefore not have been selected against by evolution.

In a September paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, “The Evolution of Superstitious and Superstition-like Behaviour,” Harvard University biologist Kevin R. Foster and University of Helsinki biologist Hanna Kokko test my theory through evolutionary modeling and demonstrate that whenever the cost of believing a false pattern is real is less than the cost of not believing a real pattern, natural selection will favor patternicity. They begin with the formula pb > c, where a belief may be held when the cost (c) of doing so is less than the probability (p) of the benefit (b). For example, believing that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is only the wind does not cost much, but believing that a dangerous predator is the wind may cost an animal its life.

The problem is that we are very poor at estimating such probabilities, so the cost of believing that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is just the wind is relatively low compared with the opposite. Thus, there would have been a beneficial selection for believing that most patterns are real.

Through a series of complex formulas that include additional stimuli (wind in the trees) and prior events (past experience with predators and wind), the authors conclude that “the inability of individuals—human or otherwise—to assign causal probabilities to all sets of events that occur around them will often force them to lump causal associations with non-causal ones. From here, the evolutionary rationale for superstition is clear: natural selection will favour strategies that make many incorrect causal associations in order to establish those that are essential for survival and reproduction.”

In support of a genetic selection model, Foster and Kokko note that “predators only avoid nonpoisonous snakes that mimic a poisonous species in areas where the poisonous species is common” and that even such simple organisms as “Escherichia coli cells will swim towards physiologically inert methylated aspartate presumably owing to an adaptation to favour true aspartate.”

Such patternicities, then, mean that people believe weird things because of our evolved need to believe nonweird things.

WBraun

climber

Nov 18, 2010 - 11:44am PT

And Granitclimber believes he will "save" klimmer from himself .... LOL

graniteclimber

Trad climber

The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division

Nov 18, 2010 - 11:44am PT

Everyone does it, but some more than others.

Klimmer must be an extreme outlier.

graniteclimber

Trad climber

The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division

Nov 18, 2010 - 11:45am PT

No Werner, I can't even save myself, let alone you or Klimmer.

Paul Martzen

Trad climber

Fresno

Nov 18, 2010 - 12:49pm PT

The Shermer article is interesting but I do not think quite correct.

I think the cost of "patternicity" seeing patterns in random noise and responding to them as if they were real can be very high. To use the wind and predator analogy. If I think a predator is just the wind, I get eaten. If I always think the wind is a predator, I run away, burning extra energy and don't eat. I starve. If I am a soldier and I think I see the enemy in every shadow, I use up all of my bullets on shadows. Then the real enemy finishes me off.

In our bodies, if our immune system decides that some mild substance is a dangerous enemy, then we have an allergic reaction, which if severe enough kills us. Many people suffer from severe auto-immune responses which endanger their survival. The immune system sees danger where there is non and attacks whatever is handy - our own bodies.

In Klimmer's case, if we believe him we would go on full alert and send up responses every time we see a suspicious vapor trail in the sky. Maybe we will feel better if we shoot down whatever is causing those trails in the sky. I know I would. I felt really good after looking at all the photos of military power and destruction on another topic thread. We should our power closer to home, shooting down chemtrails! Or is it the military power causing the chemtrails?? Too confusing. Too much noise.

We get away with errors in pattern recognition when the cost is not very high. So in that respect, I will agree with Shermer. But I don't see it as an evolutionary thing. Or rather, I suspect that we have very powerful tools for dealing with false positive errors in pattern recognition. Boredom maybe?

Klimmer

Mountain climber

San Diego

Nov 18, 2010 - 12:56pm PT

Mono and GC,

You guys crack me up. Lol.

You know, I never knew what S.P.E.C.T.R.E was all about. Mystery to me. Then I looked it up just now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECTRE

Too funny.

I can now fix any misstakes in my original study and get even better results. I know where exactly the smoking gun is now and it is exactly where I thought it would be. I just didn't know that the smoking trail was sooooo long.

Very cool. I know now. I can fix my results. I'm satisfied. Just wish the "gubment" would tell the truth.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Nov 18, 2010 - 03:29pm PT

how would you know the government was telling the truth?

cintune

climber

the Moon and Antarctica

Nov 18, 2010 - 04:09pm PT

graniteclimber

Trad climber

The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division

Nov 18, 2010 - 04:12pm PT

Hey, that's my symbol!

cintune

climber

the Moon and Antarctica

Nov 18, 2010 - 04:20pm PT

graniteclimber

Trad climber

The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division

Nov 18, 2010 - 04:45pm PT

Quiz time.

Spot the delusions/fallacies below which have NOT appeared in this thread.

* 23 enigma

* Clustering illusion

* Confirmation bias

* Conspiracy theory

* Delusions of reference

* Forer effect

* Hindsight bias

* Paranoiac-critical method

* Pareidolia

* Reality tunnel

* Synchronicity

* Texas sharpshooter fallacy

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Nov 18, 2010 - 04:49pm PT

Klimmer, plot the sunset azimuth on that sat pic yet?

graniteclimber

Trad climber

The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division

Nov 18, 2010 - 05:00pm PT

There has been what most would characterize as bad news with AEGIS
and it really happened

SEA OF LIES
The inside story of how an America naval vessel blundered into an attack on Iran Air 655 at the height of tensions during the Iran-Iraq War, and how the Pentagon tried to cover its tracks after 290 innocent civilians died. Newsweek, July 13, 1992http://alt-f4.org/img/seaoflies.html

In 1990, George H. W. Bush awarded Rogers the Legion of Merit "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989." The award was given for his tenure as Commanding officer of "Vincennes" and made no mention of the downing of Iran Air 655

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Nov 18, 2010 - 05:15pm PT

Missile Defense Agency Space Tracking and Surveillance System Advanced
Technology Risk Reduction Satellite transfers to Air Force Space Command.

Typical post-launch / shakedown / on-station transfer of control of a sat in orbit - no biggy, what is normally called a 'coincidence'.

I would guess a AEGIS test if their were launches, but no news.

There's no need to fire an SLBM to test the Aegis system or the current SM-3 missile and such testing typically happens in Hawaii. The last done by a Japanese Aegis at the end of last month and was more about sales than operational testing. The next generation of SM-3 - the SM-3 Block 1B - is in development and won't be tested next summer.

Shack

Big Wall climber

Reno NV

Nov 18, 2010 - 05:48pm PT

Those SM-2 or SM-3 missiles are tiny and no way could have made an exhaust trail that big.

healyje

Trad climber

Portland, Oregon

Nov 18, 2010 - 06:41pm PT

BES1'st, the THAAD system is also tested at the Hawaiian PMRF. The SM-3 out performs the THAAD in a number of roles, however, and so there is talk of extending the SM-3 (particularly the block II configuration once in production) to land-based configurations and some test facilities development in the PMRF. I believe the Israelis are the ones pushing for this behind the scenes, though no doubt hawks still selling EU theater defense would fall in line with the option as well. Otherwise, we do have a couple of AEGIS boats in Alaska.

Shack, the 'purported' Nov. 8th 'launch' wouldn't have been an SM-3 launch, it would have been an SLBM target vehicle for a distant SM-3 test launch.