Apophenia: /æpoʊˈfiːniə/ is the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data. I've been searching for this word for a while. It seems like everyone on this forum has this problem. People look at immigrant statistics and they think they now have a justified reason to hate people they have never met. They look at a sunset and think god must have made it. They think that black people are more dangerous because they go to prison more. It's just apophenia. I like it because it doesn't place the blame on the individual making the claim, such as "racist" does. It places blame jointly on our own genetic flaws of falsely reading patterns and the individuals insight into the problem and knowledge of science. A person who therefore changes their mind in the argument can simply say, "I had apophenia," rather than "I used to be a racist."
Correlation does not equal causation. Data is only statistically significant if the p value is less than .05. People on the right and left in the news and politicians twist statistics to show whatever fits their agenda. Most studies have a large margin of error and a low sample size. Their sample group is usually flawed and bad questionnaires are used. People make their own judgements and have cognitive bias without realizing it. People try to make sense of the world and make assumptions and heuristics. Racism is also an evolutionary tribal mechanism that we are just trying to overcome after millenia of fighting. Kumbaya!
Apophenia... never heard of it... but seen it plenty love these bizarre correlations Ice cream cause people to commit murder More Mexican lemon imports prevent highway fatalities Pirate shortage responsible for Global warming
