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Actually it does in that it explains the brain is wired as well as trained to detect certain patterns, and even in the absence of a true signal it will try and

by fallous 10y ago

Actually it does in that it explains the brain is wired as well as trained to detect certain patterns, and even in the absence of a true signal it will try and detect the signals it expects and produce spurious results.

phs318u 10y ago
I tried to explain just this to a friend who is a chronic conspiracy theorist. My suggestion to him was that his brain was detecting signal even where there was none, and seeing patterns in random events - which everyone is prone to do from time to time - though in his case the sensitivity is dialled way, way up.
- extra88 10y ago
  You might call it "paranoidolia."
- VLM 10y ago
  Religious experiences work the same way. For the sake of politeness we'll assume I'm referring to dead historical religions.
- fallous 10y ago
  Yeah, this is the impetus for things like sympathetic magic and other misapplications of correlation (or causation).
  - fallous 10y ago
    I'm inclined, via intuition rather than data, to think that things like paranoia, conspiracy thinking, etc are akin to auto-immune responses like asthma where the absence of real threats causes the system to become hyper-sensitive and attack itself or things that aren't truly threatening.
blipmusic 10y ago
#showerthoughts: Isn't everything our senses can use as input technically noise with a probability factor attached to it as far as our brains are concerned, though? As to whether there is 1) intent behind/within the noise, making it a signal, and whether 2) we can identify, parse and interpret the meaning of said signal. Isn't even the most explicit message even in our first language/s (be it auditorial, visual, a smell, touch... taste?) noise until our brain decides it is not? I'm just not that surprised to hear that the brain is constantly trying to interpret the inputs it gets, what else is there? Is it then that some simply have a lower threshold as to what their brains determine to be signal? (I really don't know these things, I'm just curious)
- fallous 10y ago
  Yes, from a sheer mechanical perspective, but there's a reason the brain is predisposed to detect certain forms of signals within the noise of our sensory inputs. If you're wired to be more inclined to detect things like movements-as-threat then if you're in a high threat environment it is actually beneficial. Unfortunately that same wiring in a low threat environment presents as paranoia and will probably be detrimental to survival. Now there is a difference between "detect movement," which the brain is wired to do no matter what and the next step of correlating it to "threat!", which could be the result of either biological, environmental, or both.

by fallous 10y ago

phs318u 10y ago

I tried to explain just this to a friend who is a chronic conspiracy theorist. My suggestion to him was that his brain was detecting signal even where there was none, and seeing patterns in random events - which everyone is prone to do from time to time - though in his case the sensitivity is dialled way, way up.

extra88 10y ago
You might call it "paranoidolia."
VLM 10y ago
Religious experiences work the same way. For the sake of politeness we'll assume I'm referring to dead historical religions.
fallous 10y ago
Yeah, this is the impetus for things like sympathetic magic and other misapplications of correlation (or causation).
- fallous 10y ago
  I'm inclined, via intuition rather than data, to think that things like paranoia, conspiracy thinking, etc are akin to auto-immune responses like asthma where the absence of real threats causes the system to become hyper-sensitive and attack itself or things that aren't truly threatening.

blipmusic 10y ago

#showerthoughts: Isn't everything our senses can use as input technically noise with a probability factor attached to it as far as our brains are concerned, though? As to whether there is 1) intent behind/within the noise, making it a signal, and whether 2) we can identify, parse and interpret the meaning of said signal. Isn't even the most explicit message even in our first language/s (be it auditorial, visual, a smell, touch... taste?) noise until our brain decides it is not? I'm just not that surprised to hear that the brain is constantly trying to interpret the inputs it gets, what else is there? Is it then that some simply have a lower threshold as to what their brains determine to be signal? (I really don't know these things, I'm just curious)

fallous 10y ago
Yes, from a sheer mechanical perspective, but there's a reason the brain is predisposed to detect certain forms of signals within the noise of our sensory inputs. If you're wired to be more inclined to detect things like movements-as-threat then if you're in a high threat environment it is actually beneficial. Unfortunately that same wiring in a low threat environment presents as paranoia and will probably be detrimental to survival. Now there is a difference between "detect movement," which the brain is wired to do no matter what and the next step of correlating it to "threat!", which could be the result of either biological, environmental, or both.