#apophenia

[surrah698]

[doctorwhoisadhd]

god the fact that that specific post was soulscreamed right after i became so so so fucking sad about blaseball all over again. the apophenia....... getting the briefest taste of what blaseball was like all over again. im going to fucking throw up forever

[psilocyberious]

Goo Can’t Escape (Part 2)

[x-h3kk3ning-x]

October 1st, you know what that means...

📼Black Tapes Time📼

[jareckiworld]

Youri Messen-Jaschin — Apophenia  (oil on linen canvas, 2019)

[swordandstars]

Dear Fellow Black Tapes Fans,

Some things never really leave you.

I drive 2-3 hours every day, so I go through a lot of audio media. I started listening to a new book one night, and as I'm driving home though the late fall darkness I hear:

Apophenia

My eye twitches.

Apophenic

Twitch.

And then a few minutes later

Apophenia

To which I yell:

Shut up, Richard!

In my empty car.

*sigh*

The old Black Tapes scars are never really gone, I suppose.

But if you want a book that will let you imagine a better ending than the one we got, one where Alex and Strand live a happy life gently debunking the hell out of things while holding up a mirror in which humanity can examine their own bullshit, boy oh boy do I have a recommendation for you!

And he only uses

Apophenia

One more time in the book.

I checked.

The Unidentified by Colin Dickey, available at your favorite big or small retailer:

Love,

SwordAndStars

(formerly BarefootWithNeonHands)

PS: #MeetMeInThePitTerryMiles

[disease]

LUMISOKEA // FLARES [APOPHENIA, 2014]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

What do you think about the catholic 'miracles' of fatima, the prophecies, the apparitions of the virgin Mary, miracle of the sun and whatnot, do you think that there's any authenticity to it?

No.

And we know that they're not.

Take note here that they wanted to punish someone for finding truth. They wanted to worship a lie without the intrusion of the truth. They weren't disappointed that it wasn't true, they were angry at the person who figured out that it wasn't. They didn't want to know, they wanted to believe. This is what "faith" means.

If the sun had "danced" in the sky at Fátima, it would have been visible at more than one specific location to only a minority of people of Earth, who were true believers and told contradictory stories anyway.

Prophecies are fantastically easy to fulfil. Particularly when they're vague, unverifiable, or the events predicted are inevitable, such as wars, diseases or the political rise of good and bad leaders. Here's an example all three:

If you make enough predictions, some are statistically going to land, or may even be self-fulfilling (the act of predicting it encourages people to make it happen).

It's Nostradamus' entire schtick. If we're keeping score Nostradamus is ahead of Xianity. Especially since Xianity's most important prophecy - the return of Jesus - has already been falsified.

Mark 9:1

And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

Matthew 16:28

Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

They never account for their history of "misses," yet still expect to be treated as reliable.

Importantly, and hopefully obviously, we don't have to be able to explain these events otherwise in order to reject them as "miracles." It's not up to us to disprove what has not been proven. "You can't explain it, therefore god" is not just an argument from ignorance, it's a contradiction: "you can't explain it, therefore it's explained" is self-refuting. The only thing you can say about an unexplained thing is that it's unexplained. And it's useless to claim that people who weren't there and had no access to the events can't explain a thing.

We can insert anything into that gap. For example, it's no less justified to assert that the Miracle of the Sun was the evil lord Xenu deploying mind-control programming to those at Fátima to be his guards in the afterlife. Prove that this isn't true.

They must be able to make the case that the only, or most likely, explanation is the the laws of the physical universe were violated, specifically by their preferred god. And to do that, they must be able to justify why other more mundane explanations - or simply "we don't know" - are either false or less likely. And most of the faithful couldn't even name a single other explanation - and won't accept the intellectually honest "we don't know."

One of the biggest reasons of all to remain skeptical of human claims of miracles and prophecies isn't what we don't know about those miracles, gods and virgin mothers, but what we do know about humans themselves.

We're pattern-seeking creatures, and meaning-making organisms. It's been an advantage in our evolution, but it also makes us unreliable, as we're prone to finding meaning or making connections that aren't there.

This is not an elephant. This is not Mother Teresa.

So the question becomes, what's more likely: an unverified woman who supposedly became divinely pregnant without having sex, giving birth to a man who was killed, came back to life and flew up into the sky is communicating through a vague outline of herself on a wall under a freeway, or humans see what they're motivated to see among millions of stains of various types and causes?

Isn't it odd that we never hear about the millions of stains that aren't in the shape of the Virgin Mary if you squint and know what to look for? If this stain had appeared on a wall in South America or Japan 1000 years ago, who would they have interpreted it as? Would they have even given it a second glance? If you have to already know about Mary to see Mary in it, how is it a "miracle"?

It's really unfortunate that the lord of all creation, who made everything, who got the physics of the universe, the functioning of human bodies, the position of the Earth in the solar system just so, who spoke directly to people and made bargains, covenants and plans directly with humans - yet somehow thought the Earth was flat, stars are tiny lights, didn't know about the Americas or Australia, or how rain works - is now relegated to faint whispering through vague smears on walls, dripping toilet water through human statues, appearing on toast and dog's butt's, and giving out predictions through crazy people and liars.

How the mighty have fallen.

[thtflns]

J.M. Hurowitz - Untitled - 2024 - pencil on paper - 30 x 22.5 inches

Finally completed this piece after a lengthy hiatus. It's full of "Easter eggs" and various references to current events. The QR code is drawn and works. Have fun exploring.

[medicatedmaniac]

I can't believe I've written almost 20k - that said I'm not entirely sure I should be sharing this fic it really is a hot mess of a brain worm I had. I've never written more than 5k when I was like 13 and it for was Star Trek. So. Yeh. I'm sharing it anyway.

[voice-of-illogical-sense]

[kollector-of-stims]

If you reblog this after voting, say whether you use ear plugs or not

For me, I use two things, some mismatch of fans and noise makers, with earplugs, and I have all of the mental things listed

I still hear phantom sounds

[sspacegodd]

1) We have 23 chromosomes in our DNA .

2) Shakespeare's birthday is April 23.

3) In the movie, Airport '77, the Mad Bomber sat in seat #23.

4) 23 skidoo is an American slang phrase popularized during the early 20th century.

5) It's also an avant-funk, industrial, post-punk, experimental electronic band whose first album from the early 80s -- it was a musical rendering of some of Aleister Crowley's invocations.

6) Aleister Crowley in The Book of Lies (ca. 1912–13) titled Chapter 23 "Skidoo." "23" and "Skidoo" are American words meaning "Get out".

7) The youngest golfer to win the Masters, Jack Nicklaus, did so at the age of 23.

8) The most well-known Christian psalm is Psalm 23.

9) It takes around 23 seconds for blood to circulate the body on average.

10) On May 23rd 1785, Benjamin Franklin announced his invention of the Bifocals. On March 23rd 1836, the coin press was created, and on September 23rd 1879 the Audiophone, an early hearing aid, was invented.

11) When he was assassinated, Caesar was stabbed a staggering 23 times.

12) Pliny the Elder, the “scientist” and author of numerous scientific literature, was born in 23 A.D.

13) The 23rd element, Vanadium, has an insane melting point of 3470 °F (1910 °C).

14) The 23 Enigma is what they call obsessing about 23's.

I first heard of it from Robert Anton Wilson, who says he first heard it from William S. Burroughs.

Of course, it could just be an example of apophenia --- selection bias.

I choose to believe.

[scarywaves]

𝕋𝕣𝕦𝕖 𝔸𝕘𝕠𝕟𝕪

[dreams-of-mutiny]

The T.V. is not home. La T.V no en está casa.

Have you ever found yourself uttering a seemingly meaningless sentence upon waking up? In other words, it made sense in the dream but when reality comes you no longer know what it means.

What are those words or sentences without apparent meaning that suddenly hit us called?

Somehow similar to pareidolia but of the language, or perhaps it’s just apophenia.

[ripely-pines]

“How have you survived for so long?” / @ robin fr. victor ! — @apophenia. re : random questions , accepting.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐓 𝐈𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄, razor sharp, not learned but coded within her dna: to bite back, put a distance in between them ‘cause people like him are trained weapons, and she never liked the feeling of a shotgun aimed at her back. still, she knows victor is not the enemy — not the shotgun nor the knife, and anyway she should know better than see the world in black and white. he, for sure, belongs to the lingering shadows that are neither one nor the other. so she relaxes. takes a deep breath, forgets about the target on her back, and continues medicating the thick gash below her knee. ❝ mostly out of spite ❞, she retorts, playful grin punctuating her words before disinfectant gets in her wound and turns it to a pained grimace. this’ll scar pretty nicely, she thinks, and even her thoughts come laced with poisonous sarcasm — she never had much of a patience for sutures, at best this will look like a jagged, uneven line of gross surgical negligence. he is gonna have a comment for that too, surely. robin sighs. raises her gaze towards him, and almost looks apologetic for a second. ❝ i know that was stupid — you don’t have to say it. ❞ eyes return to the wound, as she mutters: ❝ quit judging me so loud, you’re gonna give me a headache. ❞