pareidolia
the illusory perception of meaningful patterns or images of familiar things in random or amorphous data, as a face seen on the moon.
******************************
Jack was looking forward to turning his brain off for a few hours. Work had worn him out, and he was going to be very happy once he was able to flop on the couch and not move until dinner. When he got to his apartment, he found his roommate was going to force him to change his plans slightly. Ryan was already there, sprawled out on the couch with his laptop.
“Hey man, hey. You gotta check this out.” Ryan said once he became aware of Jack’s presence. “I just found something that’ll blow your mind.”
“Can it wait? At least until I’ve changed?” Jack was already dreading what was going to happen.
“Uh, I guess? But this is huge. You’re definitely going to want to see this.
Jack gave a non-committal grunt and headed to shed his work clothes in favor of something designed not to leave the apartment. It did not take long, but he contemplated not leaving. Dealing with Ryan was not something he wanted to do. But he knew it would happen sooner or later, and it was probably best to just get it over with. He rejoined his roommate, making sure to move as slowly as he could.
“Okay, here, take a look at this.” Ryan said.
He showed Jack a picture of the Devil’s Tower mesa. Then another, similar rock formation. And finally, a random tree stump. Jack groaned.
“Ryan, don’t say it. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t say it.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.” Ryan insisted.
“Yes, I do. And you’re wrong. Mesas are not giant tree stumps.”
Ryan recoiled in shock. “Yes, they totally are. I mean, how else can you explain the similarities between them? It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“I will remind you that you are not a geologist, a paleontologist, a botanist, or anything else that would allow you to know that. And everyone that is one of those things says that no, these rock formations are not, and never were, trees. I could go into the reasons why they aren’t trees, but that would take too long.”
“Oh please. If so-called ‘experts’ are all you have, then you might as well have nothing.”
“Your evidence is saying they look kind of similar, and literally nothing else. I’m going with the people who’ve studied this kind of thing for decades.”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever you say.” Ryan said, rolling his eyes. “I know one thing that you can’t deny though.”
He called up several more pictures of rock formations, these roughly in the shapes of animals, or even people. He looked quite proud of himself.
“You can’t deny these. They’re obviously giant petrified animals, giants and all kinds of things the world government doesn’t want us to know about.”
Jack groaned. “Do you know what pareidolia is?”
“Uh…no? Why?”
“You should probably look it up sometime. It’ll really help you understand why you think these are anything other than pictures of rocks.”
Jack did not give any more time for Ryan to say anything. He knew that would just lead to a large headache. He just wanted to relax, and that was not going to happen if he got into a debate with a conspiracy theorist.
*****************************
Conspiracy theorists are fun to watch. They get so much stuff wrong in such obvious ways that it's hilarious. I can imagine they're frustrating to deal with directly though.
No comments:
Post a Comment