Today's link, complete with image of Virgin Mary on Toast and Jesus in Clouds, is Pareidolia. Which, for those of you too lazy or disinterested to follow the link, is the process by which people see images of the Beloved Virgin Mary in pieces of toast, Jesus in clouds, and the faces of devils in smoke. Or, less simply, Anthropomorphic Patterns. A noteworthy psychological quirk that we've evolved to read into abstractions and randomness patterns that may not be really there - often these things are considered newsworthy if they involve a prominent religious icon such as Jesus, Mary or Allah (verses from the Koran are forever being found in the seed patterns of eggplant, for example) - their purpose on the news is a sort of "feel-good" quirky, as inpiration to the faithful, and a nudge-nudge-wink-wink between a more skeptical anchor and audience.
It's postulated that there is some survival value in this, we are better off to see snakes in and jaguars in tree branches than not to see them, if wrong we lose nothing, if we are right we survive another day. Hence we are in some sense "hardwired" to see these images and project patterns onto randomness.
Nonetheless it does have some application - the images we see being somehow part of us, our larger "world view". Seeing snakes and faces have arisen from evolution, but think of the Rorschach Inkblot Test, whereby diagnosis is rendered based upon subjective descriptions of random patterns in ink. Here we see patterns that are determined by our personalities and life experience, as in the religious images hidden in everyday objects.
Pareidolia is a subset of an idea - Apophenia - the process by which our minds create meaning for otherwise random events - Seeing images in toast is one such process, but there are others - think coincidences, and the subsequent attributions of meaning, or the voices of departed spirits emerging from the hiss of blank audio cassettes. From here we can look at these things can be manipulated - intentionally or otherwise - to shape and control our thoughts. Think subliminal - wherin images and ideas are deliberately hidden within media to not be consciously seen, but to unconciously direct and manipulate our thoughts. But that is another post. . .
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Today an apocryphal quote, which I'll attribute to my father (who in turn attributes it to Piaget)
The circumstances, always relevant, are thus: Piaget, one of the founders & pioneers of the modern IQ test, on his deathbed said:
"I have gotten it wrong. It is not the answers man has that determines his intelligence, but rather the questions that he asks."
Perhaps it's true, perhaps it's not. I like it, and that's enough. The attribution to Piaget simply lends it authority.
On that note, a few links related to intelligence today (note the juxtaposition of opposite ideas: Politics:Intelligence)
First: www.queendom.com, which offers a variety of brain teasers & IQ tests. As well try: www.mindhacks.com/ for an interesting blog on various aspects of mind. Then, if you're feeling bad following your test(s), let this article console you: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/oct/01-20-things-you-didnt-know-about-genius. And if you want to work on developing your mind, you may find this curious: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123484.php- the article links savant behaviours to an inhibition center in the left brain, I think. . .I forget. I wouldn't have if I were a savant. . .time to reread the article. . .
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We're all familiar with "Optical Illusions", in which we're tricked by clever images into seeing things that aren't really there, or static images which appear to waver, and a host of other tricks played upon our notably visual sense. But fewer of us are familiar with "Auditory Illusions", (by which I don't mean the 1st date post-mortem in which one partner tries to recall if he/she heard "I love you". . .). For a quick introduction try this link:
http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/deutsch_research1.php#Introduction.php
Note: Laptop speakers won't suffice. Use proper speakers or headphones.
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It doesn't end at Wikipedia, but too often I find I'm in the habit of finding one source for the information I want and not digging further.
The Internet Archive is a site "with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.". It kind of recalls the ideals of the internet, doesn't it? Link here: http://www.archive.org/index.php
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