When people see a “pattern of universal common descent we can also chalk that up to patternicity.

Now if someone sees a pattern and comes to a design inference all that has to be done is demonstrate that nature, operating freely can account for it.

One finds a pattern based on a combination of external stimuli and stored templates. Whether the stimuli are actual components of what one perceives them to be or simply “meaningless noise” is rarely knowable at the point at which the perception occurs. This is exactly as nature “intended” since an individual inclined to wait for certainty would quickly fall prey to any even moderately camouflaged predator.

Perhaps patternicity would be better defined as “the tendency to find patterns in stimuli before it can be reliably determined whether they are in fact meaningful signal or meaningless noise.

Finding error in pattern recognition depends on how one measures. For example, when you walk down the street, see someone and think “That’s my brother; wait a minute, no it isn’t” is this an example of error or accurate perception? Depends on where in the process you take the measurement. Of course, the perception itself depends on the the viewer’s expectations. Hunters expect to see deer, so they see them in what turns out to be cows, dogs, or fellow hunters. Most of the time, they wait long enough to correct the misperception before they shoot, but those episodes don’t make the news.

Similarly, intelligence officers expect to find conspiracies and so they do. In many cases, these turn out, upon further examination to be false (ideally before ideologues use them as excuses to take the nation to war). On the other hand, conspiracy theorists, make many of the same kind of judgements. They may in fact be right, but whether they are or aren’t, they tend to stick obessively to their judgements, though part of the reason may be that they don’t have access to the data that might allow them to invalidate their initial judgements.

But back, for the moment to the question of “meaningless noise.” Let’s take two pieces of toast, one with a randomly formed pattern that a viewer perceives as Elvis. Now take an identical piece of toast with an identical pattern, this one formed by a carefully designed stencil. Same pattern, same perception. Would you call one a pattern found in “meaningless noise” and the other an accurate perception of a pattern that looks like Elvis? My point exactly!

Now, applying this same concept to the perceived patterns of conspiracy theories, you recognize the pattern, access the danger, and perform the nessecary defensive actions to protect yourself-expose the conspiracy or avoid locations of political/economic importance.

Lenny B,
Watched you debate Doug Gavin

It seems that the Andrew Kitt comment here, #2, is reflective of what I can’t quite put my finger on, but seems a rationalization of a sort, maybe under the category of the fact that looking to disprove something -akin to skepticism–is just as much a rationalization as looking to prove something–akin to determinism. One must have a cognitive check and balances of both to be more rational.

–”Eyesight (or any other sense) is also “find[ing] meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.” Your eyes don’t actually “see” an apple on a table; your brain constructs “apple” from billions of nerve impulses relaying cellular interpretations of light.”–

This is possibly even a tautology of a sort. There’s a reverse contradiction in the very premise of looking at it this way. What is “seeing” itself, if not the impulses of nerves relaying cellular data? What else could “seeing” possibly be, or ever have been?

Since the definition of seeing IS the relaying of cellular data itself from eye to the brain, to begin with, this makes Kitt’s statement literally into: ‘One does not “see”an apple, he merely sees an apple. Or ‘you cannot “see” a car, you can only view with your eyes that it has a car fuselage, windows, doors, with four wheels and runs up to 140km an hour.’

Existence is a precondition of the senses, not the other way around. Its proof is a self-evidency. One of the very few.

The reason I bring this up is not arbitrary, it seems similar to the reasoning Dr. Shermer uses in this essay, in that the ‘weird’ things he describes as being weird i.e. 9-11 conspiracy, are not linked with a how here.

That is, how do abstract concepts like political events compare epistemologically to the detection of whether concrete, visible phenomena of jungle predators are there or not? Going from the immediate senses to abstracts is quite a leap, and it could only compare analogously, at best, rather than completely on par, which is totally assumed here.

The similarity between Andrew, many others, and Shermer seems to be a ‘determinism of skepticism’ common to many ’skeptics’ today.

I have heard a common retort to this: “But, abstracts are far more complex than concretes to begin with, so wouldn’t it be harder, not easier to make images out of clouds?”–This comeback is a throwaway, abstracts are not necessarily more complex, they are of a different cognitive nature entirely.

( Do note: this is a joke.)