Why We See Faces In The Static

Pattern detection is a reflex, not a decision, and it does not switch off in the absence of a pattern.

Human perception is relentlessly generous. Show us clouds and we find animals. Show us wood grain and we find faces. Show us a column of unrelated events and we find a trend, complete with a beginning, a turning point and an explanation. This is not stupidity, it is an inbuilt setting, and for most of our history it was the right setting. Mistaking a shadow for a predator costs a moment of fear. Mistaking a predator for a shadow costs everything. A brain tuned that way will find patterns in noise, and it will do so before you have consciously decided to look.

The problem in modern life is that we are surrounded by far more noise than our ancestors ever encountered, and it arrives already sorted into lists and feeds and charts. Each of those formats invites a story. Three bad weeks in a row at work becomes a decline. Two chance meetings with the same person becomes a sign. A run of grey mornings becomes a changed climate for the whole season. In each case the pattern was supplied by us, not by the events, and the events would have looked equally meaningful in almost any arrangement.

The corrective is not cynicism but sequence. Notice the pattern, and then ask what you would expect the noise to look like if there were no pattern. Usually the honest answer is: quite a lot like this. Ask also whether you would have found the shape as striking had it fallen the other way. If any arrangement would have produced a story, the story is coming from the storyteller.