> The key psychological insight here is that people have no trouble turning any information into a coherent narrative. This is true when, as in the case of my f

> The key psychological insight here is that people have no trouble turning any information into a coherent narrative. This is true when, as in the case of my friend, the information (i.e., her tardiness) is incorrect. And this is true, as in our experiments, when the information is random. People can’t help seeing signals, even in noise. People see patterns where there are none. I think this is fundamentally why humans fail at statistics. If every fiber of your being wants to see patterns then you will see patterns. Probably why people hallucinate when in sensory deprivation tanks as well. The brain will make up patterns just so it can continue to see them. The paragraph right after follows up with the statistical failure that pattern seeking leads to > They most often ranked no interview last. In other words, a majority felt they would rather base their predictions on an interview they knew to be random than to have to base their predictions on background information alone. So people would rather do busy work in order to continue to satisfy established pattern seeking habits than figure out a better way.