Mimetoliths: No, This Isn't a Dinosaur Egg
One of the most common experiences when geologists or archaeologists take new students out in the field is having one of them return with a rock and ask if it is a dinosaur egg, meteor, or arrowhead. There are countless random rocks lying around that resemble one of the above, so it's not unreasonable to make that sort of assumption. On top of that, everyone wants to find something cool like a meteorite or arrowhead.
The Old Man in the Mountain, one of the most famous mimetoliths. [Image source]
Those rocks are known as mimetoliths. Mimetos is Greek for imitator, and lithos is Greek for stone. They're a specific example of the phenomenon known as pareidolia, which occurs when the human brain seeks out patterns that don't exist in random data. One of the most common forms is seeing shapes in clouds.
The Rorsach inkblot test is one of the most practical uses we put this to. It's also used heavily in art- pareidolia is one of the main reasons our brains interpret optical illusions the way we do. Pareidolia is part of why we can assign so many emotions to simple line drawings in comics.
People aren't the only ones who experience pareidolia. Animals and computers do as well. Google Deep Dream is computer pareidolia in action. Cats thinking cucumbers are snakes is animal pareidolia in action. It seems to be an inherent quality to pattern recognition systems. When a pattern recognition system assigns either negative or positive value to a pattern, the system is more highly focused on finding that pattern in the world around them based on the absolute value assigned to said pattern.
Bibliography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia#Art
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Amazing read! Never heard the word 'pareidolia', but I am aware of the phenomenon. Can probably some of the ghosts and UFO-sightings as well:)
Oh, definitely, yeah!
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STOPThank you for the great article!
Please check my new post, I think you will like it!
@paps
No, in fact, I don't like it at all. It has nothing to do with my post. It's clearly spam, since you've posted nigh identical comments on other people's posts that have just as little to do with theirs as mine. Plus, you're advocating NLP, which has been repeatedly and soundly repudiated by the scientific community as both poor science and a money making scheme, and even a cursory examination of my profile or any of my blog posts would show that I care a lot about quality science and scientific research. It's not the first time you've posted the same thing on one of my posts, either.
"The written things have not been proven scientifically or claimed to be absolute truth. Those set of ideas and methods a person can try and see if it has an effect. This is a personal empirical prof and not scientific (yet). Would recommend simply trying those ideas and feel the positive effects it has on your life! you can base your decision on that."
BTW the last article is not much about NLP and being used in education and researched by science.
Thank you anyway :D
Please don't fill your heart with hate, my brother.
You're still a spammer, so I can't say I feel any sense of brotherhood towards you. Your brothers are telemarketers and those coupons you get in the mail.