Good for Danah Boyd, the versatile and eloquent…
Glad to be told of her.
the word is much used in the impressive
Waking up in Toytown, a memoir
by John Burnside.
p.139
my natural tendency to apophenia
p.170
A lunatic night, sleepless and full of wild imaginings,the complete apophenic kitbag: noises, visions, and, as the dawn broke, those terrifying transformations in the body when it seems everything is about to be ripped apart.
p.215
Apophenia is usually talked about in a context of excess sensitivity, which would make the apophenic symptomatic of some wider malaise...
On 27/08/2012, at 1:07 PM, Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> Apophenia is also the name of Dr. Danah Boyd's brilliant research Weblog,
> which I've frequently been tempted to cite on this list:
>
> http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
>
> --Uche
>
> On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Apophenia
>> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
>> Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections
>> in random or meaningless data.
>> The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad,[1] who defined it as the
>> "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience
>> of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to represent the human
>> tendency to seek patterns in random information in general (such as with
>> gambling), paranormal phenomena, and religion.[2]
>> Meanings and forms
>>
>> Conrad originally described this phenomenon in relation to the distortion
>> of reality present in psychosis, but it has become more widely used to
>> describe this tendency without necessarily implying the presence of
>> neurological differences or mental illness.
>> In 2008, Michael Shermer coined the word 'patternicity', defining it as
>> "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise."[3][4] In
>> The Believing Brain (2011), Shermer defines patternicity as "the tendency
>> to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise." The
>> Believing Brain thesis also says that we have "the tendency to infuse
>> patterns with meaning, intention, and agency", which Shermer calls
>> 'agenticity'.[5]
>> [edit]Statistics
>> In statistics, apophenia is known as a Type I error - the identification
>> of false patterns in data.[6] It may be compared with a so called false
>> positive in other test situations.
>> [edit]Paranormal phenomena
>> A common example of perceived, but non-existent pattern are paranormal
>> sightings, including sightings of ghosts, Unidentified Flying Objects,
>> cryptozoology, etc., which may be due to apophenia.[citation needed]
>> [edit]Conspiracy theories
>> Main article: Conspiracy theory
>> Likewise conspiracy theorists are famously prone to identify a (perhaps
>> coincidental) pattern, and conclude that it must have great
>> significance,[7] although things that are important, life-changing, and
>> even catastrophic, can occur simply out of random chance.
>> [edit]Religion
>> The attempt to foretell the future, present, or past by finding patterns
>> in animal entrails, tossed sticks, or by picking random passages from a
>> holy text are often cited as examples of apophenia. A more extreme example
>> is the pareidolia associated with finding the faces of religious figures in
>> pieces of toast, the grain of cut wood, or other such patterns.[8]
>> Recent real-world examples include the finding of a cross inside a halved
>> potato;[9] the appearance of Jesus and Mary inside a halved orange;[10] and
>> the appearance of Jesus' face on a piece of toast,[11] in the frost on a
>> car window,[12] and inside the lid of a jar of Marmite.[13]
>
>
>
>
> --
> Uche Ogbuji http://uche.ogbuji.net
> Founding Partner, Zepheira http://zepheira.com
> http://wearekin.org
> http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/author/uogbuji/
> http://copia.ogbuji.net
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/ucheogbuji
> http://twitter.com/uogbuji
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