Self Improvement

Why Do We Load Meaning to Random Shapes? What is Apophenia?

 

We see certain shapes (animals, faces and other patterns) in the clouds. Most of the time we can look at a rock and say it looks like a human face. We can see shapes on a randomly scribbled paper. Mostly we see the shapes on the coffee grounds. So what drives us to see shapes on coffee grounds and makes them think that it is possible to interpret and see the future. Firstly;

What is Apophenia? Let’s see

You watch your team’s match and they win the match. You noticed you wore back one of the socks to the front. If you think, they won because you wore back the socks to the front. This is an example of apophenia. To connect random events, that is to say, to experience a delusion is an experience of apophenia.

Every year, thousands of people in the world see the figure of the Prophet Jesus above many things. For example, the color of tomato in an unseated section or on a piece of bread. So why does our mind do that?

“What psychologists call apophenia (tendency to see connections and patterns that are not actually there) leads to conspiracy theories. —George Johnson”

Why do we see meaningful shapes in random things?

Scientists cannot give an exact answer to this right now. This event of people seems to be inherited from our ancestors of hunter-gatherers. A hunter would combine many facts and clues to reach his prey. This was an instinctive approach along with the prey. In short, one may have developed an act of combining random events into one pattern to survive.

 Ancient societies seem to believe that by combining shapes and random events, they have a clue to the future. The best examples of these are shamans. If we add to what Carl Jung calls a meaningful coincidence, we need to think about it in depth.

Coincidence can have much deeper meanings, of course, we don’t know. But whoever says it will seem to continue to find shapes in the clouds 🙂

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