* Randomness as Meaning Introduction This article describes how, in our search for order and purpose in life, people sometimes assign meaning to events that are objectively random and devoid of meaning. Consider these two images — one dot pattern is random, the other isn't: One of the two images above shows a random pattern of dots, the other has been manipulated to resemble a random pattern but isn't really random. In perception studies, most people choose Sample A because Sample B shows tight clusters of dots that don't really seem random. The meaning of this experiment is that, when people see tight clusters of dots (or of events), they conclude it isn't a chance grouping but has special significance. The following sections show examples where, for psychological reasons, people assign meaning to meaningless groupings, significance to insignificant coincidences, even invest in outright frauds based on mistaken perceptions of reality. The Gambler's Fallacy Friday the 13th The Birthday Problem Amazing Rock
15 styles of Distorted Thinking 15 styles of Distorted Thinking Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. Polarized Thinking: Things are black or white, good or bad. You have to be perfect or you're a failure. Checklist for Hidden Anger Procrastination in the completion of imposed tasks. 10 Ways Our Minds Warp Time How time perception is warped by life-threatening situations, eye movements, tiredness, hypnosis, age, the emotions and more… The mind does funny things to our experience of time. Just ask French cave expert Michel Siffre. In 1962 Siffre went to live in a cave that was completely isolated from mechanical clocks and natural light. When he tried to measure out two minutes by counting up to 120 at one-second intervals, it took him 5 minutes. But you don’t have to hide out in a cave for a couple of months to warp time, it happens to us all the time. 1. People often report that time seems to slow down in life-threatening situations, like skydiving. But are we really processing more information in these seconds when time seems to stretch? To test this, Stetson et al. (2007) had people staring at a special chronometer while free-falling 50 metres into a net. 2. We’ve all experienced the fact that time seems to fly when we’re having fun. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Time is relative
Stuff no one told you: Simple truths of life At some point in 2010, Alex Noriega, illustrator from Barcelana, was going through a crisis due to some isues at work. He decided to start a blog as a way of trying to find what he was doing wrong. He wanted to put on paper all that he had learned in life as simple as possible and try to see if what was happening around him made any sense. Still, his work is great and we are happy to present it to you!