Regarding Pareidolia: Veil or Not

[Fly_Mulder]

I've always loved the phenomenon of Pareidolia. A subset of Apophenia, the human tendency to find patterns in random information, Pareidolia is said to be a result of our brain's ability to distinguish faces and other meaningful images from visual information. Seeing shapes in the clouds, a stick in a pond as an animal or fish, or tree branches outside your window as an unknown face. Could this be an evolutionary advantage, keeping our monkey brains alert for dangers? Possibly.

While thinking about Stooge's Cryptid post today, I had a chilling thought. What if it isn't Pareidolia that old? Not the result of a evolutionary advantage, but What if the concept of was inserted into our collective human zeitgeist as a protection? For us or them? Is it to protect them from the consumptive nature of man, or is it to shield us from the possibility that our world is far more dangerous than we can comprehend? Does it shield our fragile modern sensitivities, or spare us the madness of knowing the truth?

There seems to be a sort of cutoff when it comes to the stories or Folklore. Almost always old or even ancient lore. Be it the advances of technology, the migration from rural to urban population centers, or lack of imagination, There don't seem to be many modern updates to the old stories. You'd think with many people closer together, the sightings would become more frequent. Especially considering the predatory nature of some of them.

Even IF someone talks of the paranormal, we as an enlightened and modern people, can brush off these new stories as superstition. Pareidolia being a major dismissal of any quick glimpse of the unknown. The picture that when developed revealed what "could be" ghostly figure. The dark figure in the woods who's not there when you look again. The face in your windshield as you drive at night.

I'm not sure if any of that makes total sense. Could be just a weird tangent.. Is there anything here? What do you guys think?

[MajoNoTakkyubin]

Oh gosh, as someone who's totally plagued by apophenia, it's hard to say, haha! This is totally anecdotal information, so skip past the --- to get to the main part of my argument!

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My example of apophenia is something incredibly silly and made up when you hear it, which is why I've only ever told one other person about it, but it IS true at least.

For random periods since my late teens, I've had a weird, specific thing that gives me strong apophenia. Virtually every time something bad happens during these months-long periods, from things like friend drama, to something expensive starting to break, to getting saddled with something mentally exhausting, to realizing I'm up way too late due to insomnia, SOMETHING always ends up showing either the number 1234, or the number 666. It's incredibly stupid and incredibly cheesy, but I've had periods where EVERY time something bad happened, it would be 12:34pm, or I would be reading page 66 of chapter 6, or someone would be saying something and the only numbers they say are three sixes in a row. It always inevitably only happens during those periods where something bad is happening, even if the bad thing only lasts for a minute.

Now, especially because of how silly that sounds, I always kind of wrote that off as just apophenia. Something like my internal clock knows it's 12:34pm, so if something bad happens, I automatically glance over at 12:34pm and confirm it for myself. Or my brain hears the number "six" said (I even just did it by accidentally mistyping "six" twice) and anticipates it being said two more times, so I'm paying more attention to it. Or they're just simply two incredibly common combinations of numbers that you're likely to encounter all the time. It still massively weirds me out that it happens so constantly and so consistently for months at a time, but that's how apophenia gets you. It makes you make a bigger deal out of something relatively minor or potentially explainable.

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Pareidolia is very much in the same vein: A face is a form of pattern just the same as 1234 is, and the brain is built to piece together all of this information in order to create a whole that contains all of the important information we need. It's trained to look at those snapped twigs and dirt smudges, and their specific shape and size help us realize the difference between a deer strolling by or a cougar on the prowl. It's trained to gaze into the darkness of the forest and make out physical features amongst the foliage that makes you realize there's a predator watching and waiting to pounce. And it's trained to look at relatively innocuous places and see a face because of the ever-present risk of a lion hiding in the bushes and staring at you, or an enemy warrior peeking from around a corner.

Inevitably, a brain that's prepared to expect something like that will start to see things and interpret them as being that even if they're not! Seeing movement out of the corner of your eye when there's nothing there, seeing a face looking at you out of the darkness, seeing a humanoid white shape in a Polaroid, or whatever! I think there's a reason that the most common things we tend to create in our minds are faces, movement, and the shapes of creatures!

Everyone always sees Jesus on their toast, but nobody ever sees an airplane, or the theory of relativity, or the prophetic image of an impending disaster or something!

But then again, maybe it IS something supernatural and I've been ignoring really important warning signs of an approaching demon...that would totally be my luck! XD

[Fly_Mulder]

Oh weird, Talk about Baader-Meinhof phenomenon! My buddy was just talking about those yesterday. He said they're refereed to as "Angel Numbers" by Numerologists and Astrologers. Of course, popularized to be positive signs, you and I both know the real world isn't so sunshine and rainbows.

That's what I'm talking about, maybe its the shrugging off of the natural instinct/sense as just "Pareidolia" that is the effect. As if a veil of "common sensibility" has been drawn over our perceptions to filter out the existing subjects that where once much more common place in our written/spoken histories. Also, is it just us we'd get attention from. P3nr0s3's grandfather's advise:

After all, he's the one who always told me not to talk too much/loud about supernatural stuff, because it could "invite unwanted attention." (Which I thought was always referring to people in college making fun of me, but now I wonder if he was even talking about humans.)

[I need to tell you guys about my grandpa.]- p3nr0s3 Oct 20, '95

[PenOfDamocles]

In a similar vein yet also somewhat the converse of this, I recently learnt of the ‘uncanny valley’, in which something reaches such a close proximity to a human appearance without fully achieving it that it provokes feelings of disgust and mistrust in humans. I’ve seen it largely used within the field of robotics which makes me wonder why it exists at all in humans with the field being so new. Could this have been an evolutionary adaptation to distinguish ‘us’ from those that would seek to imitate us and walk among us unseen? Wolves in sheep’s clothing if you will.

[Fly_Mulder]

Oh, thats an excellent point! It could be explained away as an "Instinct to distance ourselves from the dead or diseased". Another subtle nudge away from fully interacting with the supernatural.