Adventures in Pareidolia

Pareidolia (parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer, such as interpreting marks on Mars as canals, seeing shapes in clouds, or hearing hidden messages in reversed music.

It is a subset of apophenia (app-ə-FEE-nee-ə), the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena — such as finding significance in such random things as automobile license plate numbers, birthdates, and arrangements of fallen twigs — perhaps best exemplified by the film A Beautiful Mind.

Pareidolia is actually a side effect of an extremely valuable human trait: pattern recognition. Here’s why it’s built right into our DNA. Three million years ago, the australopithecines Lug and Wug are walking across the African veldt when there’s a rustling in the tall grass. Lug thinks “it’s a lion” and runs off screaming. Wug thinks “it’s the wind” and laffs at Lug. Same thing happens another 98 times. Then, on the 100th occasion, it really is a lion. Wug (whose skepticism has been absolutely justified so far) becomes lunch, but Lug gets to pass his pattern-recognition gene on to the next generation, along with a dread-inspiring cautionary tale.

Thus our predisposition to see things, patterns, and especially living beings that aren’t really there, a tendency you might call the “secret-agent theory”. In more dangerous ancient times it was better to be safe than sorry, and that’s the biology we organic humans have inherited.

So what sorts of things do we think we see that aren’t really there? We’ll (literally) look at some of them in our May Atheist Lounge. We'll of course mention how fertile a field religion has been for seeing mystic imagery all over the place. And we’ll also touch on how pareidolia and apophenia have an unfortunate influence on our justice system.

This will be a virtual meeting conducted via Zoom. A link will be sent out at 6 PM on the day of the event to people who’ve RSVPed.