"the perception of patterns in randomness where none exist" "Notably it was an election year, and associations between Islam and terrorism were widespread, sug

"the perception of patterns in randomness where none exist" "Notably it was an election year, and associations between Islam and terrorism were widespread, suggesting that such interpretations were not entirely random" "The “reality” our minds impose on random noise, influenced by our idiosyncratic beliefs and predispositions, can also be harmful" " all experiences of auditory pareidolia are a form of hallucination" Ive had a hypothesis for a while that prejudice/isms work the same way. The brain is just trying to make sense of vast amounts of noise. So many sounds, coming from so many directions, so many colors forming so many different shapes, which could be other living things, which could have various agendas(helpful or otherwise), so many memories... Our egos can't handle the idea that we dont know, so we assume. Its a defense mechanism I think. After all, history repeats itself, so the most likely outcome is the one we have seen. Of course, we havent seen very much at all, and we might have misinterpreted what we did see. And this leads to thinking we know all about people. We know all about people we've never met, we know what people are thinking when they do something... All because we are trying to make sense of the world using a microscopic amount of information. Basically I think prejudice, projection, psychological biases, etc are all 'hallucinations' when we try to make sense of a world we cannot possibly completely understand. edit can -> can't