Apophenia

​

What is Apophenia?

Apophenia is a meaningful connection read into visual, auditory, or numerical noise.

Among the hills was one that, to the Viking investigators scrutinizing the images for likely landing sites, resembled a face.

That sentence is the Malin Space Science Systems page “The Face on Mars,” copyright 1995. The hill was there. The face was the resemblance. Apophenia, on this page, is that extra step: a connection the record has not yet earned, felt as if it had. The German name is older and narrower. Klaus Conrad coined Apophänie in Die beginnende Schizophrenie. Versuch einer Gestaltanalyse des Wahns (Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart, 1958). The book was not opened. No German sentence from it is on this page. English reference pages render his definition as the unmotivated seeing of connections, with a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness. Aaron L. Mishara, Schizophrenia Bulletin 36(1), 2010, pages 9–13, is one page those summaries cite. It was not re-read. The clinical stage is a self-referential over-reading of real perceptions in early schizophrenia. It is not this page’s title, and it is not a diagnosis a reader can make from a photograph. The later, wider habit is the one this page keeps. A coarse picture yields a face. A noisy sound yields a phrase. A short run of numbers yields a named shape. Michael Shermer, in his December 2008 Scientific American column, reprinted on his site, calls a close tendency patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. He lists faces in nature, window stains read as human figures, voices in random sounds from electronic devices, and a face on Mars among the examples. Patternicity is his word. It is not a second title here. Representativeness Heuristic is judging by resemblance to a picture already in mind. A hill that looks like a face is a resemblance. It is not a count of builders. Clustering Illusion is a clump in a small chance sample read as a cause. A face in one hill is not that clump.

​

Apophenia in 3 Depths

• Beginner: When a noisy picture, a reversed sound, or a short chart looks like a named thing, write what the record is before you keep the name. The name is the cue that you have already read something in.
• Practitioner: Fix the check before the looking. A sharper frame of the same place, the words as they run forward, or a rule written down before the chart. If the pattern appears only after someone tells you its name, mark it as prompted.
• Advanced: A real signal can sit in noise. A sharper frame can still show a ridge that once looked like an eye. The miss is treating the first name as the measurement. Conrad’s clinical stage is a third row, and this page does not diagnose it. One sentence that merges a hill, a chart, and a psychosis drops the distinction.

​

Origin

The name on this page is the English Apophenia. The German word is Apophänie. Conrad’s book, cited above, is the 1958 source named for that word. The book was not opened. English summaries, including the line about unmotivated seeing of connections, were not used as a transcription. Mishara 2010 was not re-read. Peter Brugger’s chapter in Hauntings and Poltergeists (McFarland, 2001) is often named next. That chapter was not opened. No sentence from it is on this page. What this page does use is the later habit, and one hill that can be checked. On 25 July 1976, Viking Orbiter 1 photographed the Cydonia region of Mars while searching for landing sites for Viking Lander 2. The MSSS page says the investigators, looking for those sites, found that one hill resembled a face. An image was released in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s public relations. The page says the text of that release notes the face-like hill. The release text was not opened. No caption from it is on this page. Shermer’s column is the popular neighbor, not the origin of Conrad’s word. In the December 2008 piece he calls the brain a belief engine, an evolved pattern-recognition machine that connects dots and makes meaning from patterns it thinks it sees. He distinguishes a false positive, believing a pattern is real when it is not, from a false negative, missing a pattern that is real. He points to a September 2008 paper by Kevin R. Foster and Hanna Kokko in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. That paper was not opened. No formula from it is on this page. The counted laboratory neighbor is an abstract only. Jennifer A. Whitson and Adam D. Galinsky, Science, 3 October 2008, volume 322, issue 5898, pages 115–117, DOI 10.1126/science.1159845. The abstract defines illusory pattern perception as the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli. It reports six experiments. Participants who lacked control were more likely to see images in noise, to form illusory correlations in stock market information, to perceive conspiracies, and to develop superstitions. The abstract also says the link is reduced by affirming the self, and that need for structure was measured. The PDF was not read. No sample size and no percent are on this page. A constellation drawn on a price chart is not a stimulus the abstract names.

​

Key Points

Four lines keep a clinical stage, a resemblance, a prompted hearing, and a chart from collapsing into one slogan about the brain as a pattern machine.

​

Applications

Use the name to separate the record, the name you are tempted to keep, and the check that was fixed first. The split is a habit for pictures, sounds, and short series. It is not a rate from the unread 2008 PDF.

​

Case Study

On 25 July 1976, Viking Orbiter 1 was imaging the Cydonia region of Mars as part of the search for landing sites for Viking Lander 2. The MSSS page “The Face on Mars,” copyright 1995, says it photographed buttes and mesas along the escarpment that separates cratered highlands to the south from lowland plains to the north. Among the hills was one that, to the investigators scrutinizing the images for likely landing sites, resembled a face. An image including that hill was released in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s public relations, because the search mattered and because the project wanted the public to have at least one familiar-looking landform. The page says the release text notes the face-like hill. That text was not opened. The same page says that afterward some people argued, mostly in the lay literature, that the face-like hill was artificially shaped, and that the argument spread to nearby features. None of those features, it says, commands public interest like the Face. The page does not print a name for the advocates, and it does not print a vote. This page does not add either. Its table of Viking frames lists 070A13 at 43 m and 035A72 at 47 m as the two sharpest, in that order. Each raw Viking Orbiter image, it says, is 1204 samples wide by 1056 lines high. Those two frames are not one frame. Later public talk often shows 035A72. The 1998 comparison below uses 070A13. On 5 April 1998, just after midnight Pacific time, the Mars Orbiter Camera on Mars Global Surveyor took a high-resolution image of the feature. The MSSS release says the picture was acquired 375 seconds after the spacecraft’s 220th close approach. The Face, at approximately 40.8° N, 9.6° W, was 275 miles (444 km) from the spacecraft. The morning sun was 25° above the horizon. The resolution was 14.1 feet (4.3 meters) per pixel, which the release calls ten times higher than the best previous image of the feature, from the Viking mission in the mid-1970s. Ten times 4.3 meters is 43 meters. That product is arithmetic. It matches the table’s figure for 070A13, not the 47 m of 035A72. The release says ten times, and it does not print the multiplication. The release says the full image covers an area 2.7 miles (4.4 km) wide and 25.7 miles (41.5 km) long. Winter clouds covered much of the northern hemisphere above 40° N. A Viking Lander 2 site at 44° N, imaged a little more than a day earlier, was completely obscured. The Face area was relatively clear, and the release still says haze or fog is suggested by the low contrast. The NSSDC Cydonia page repeats the 5 April 1998 pass: a swath it describes as 4.4 km by 41.5 km, distance 444 km, oblique, 4.3 meters per pixel, sun 25 degrees above the horizon. It compares Viking 1 frame 70A13, late afternoon, at about 43 meters per pixel. The same page’s image table for that pass prints different edges. Orbit 220, range 444.21 km, resolution 4.32 m per pixel, 1024 by 19200 pixels, 4.42 km by 82.94 km, emission angle 44.66 degrees, acquired 5 April 1998 at 08:39:37 UT, which is 00:39:37 PST. The clock matches the release’s 12:39 AM PST. The width is close. The length is not. Pixel count times 4.32 m gives the table’s 4.42 km by 82.94 km. The press line says 4.4 km by 41.5 km. This page does not average them and does not decide which length is the swath. The question people bring is whether the face was a made thing. The pages used here do not print that verdict as a measured count. They print a resemblance in coarse frames, a public argument that the hill was artificial, and later frames at a few meters per pixel rather than about 43. The lesson is the split. The face was the reading of the coarse record. The sharper record is a check that was not available in 1976. It does not, by itself, become a rate of how often a person still sees a face. A further NSSDC line is easy to mix in. On 8 April 2001, under cloudless conditions, a Mars Global Surveyor image of the Face is given as 1.56 m per pixel, release MOC2-283, dated 24 May 2001. The MSSS page for that release was not opened. The 1.56 m figure stays on that NSSDC sentence. Nine days after the 1998 Face pass, orbit 239 on 14 April 1998 aimed at a nearby feature the page calls the City, centered at 40.86 N, 9.91 W. The imaged center was 40.84 N, 9.98 W, an offset of about 3.13 km, larger than half of a 2.6 km field of view, with little or no overlap. That frame is 2.5 m per pixel from 331.07 km. It is not the Face. Do not export 43 m, 47 m, 4.3 meters, 4.32 m, 1.56 m, 2.5 m, 275 miles, 444 km, 41.5 km, 82.94 km, 14.1 feet, or 25° onto another photograph, a cloud, a chart, or a song. Do not treat ten times as a multiplier you can reuse. Do not subtract 82.94 from 41.5.

​

Boundaries and Failure Modes

The name does not travel as a proof that every pattern is false, and it does not travel as a diagnosis. Three limits hold it. The book limit is the unread 1958 volume and the unread Mishara paper. Apophänie, in the clinical account this page did not re-read, is a stage, not a caption for a hobby photograph. Using the page’s title for every ordinary recognition, including a face in a sharp portrait, empties the name. Using it to label a person from one odd remark is the other error. This page does not make that label. The frame limit is the disagreement the sources already print. The 1998 release and the NSSDC table do not share one swath length. The 2.5 m frame is a missed pass at the City. The 1.56 m figure is a 2001 sentence whose release page was not opened. A real ridge can survive all of those frames. Confirmation Bias would be keeping only the frame that still looks like a face. The opposite mistake is announcing that a sharper frame has settled a question the caption does not ask. The common misuse runs in two directions. One direction treats the 1976 resemblance as proof of a carved face, and sets the resolution table aside. The other treats “the brain invents every pattern” as a complete method. Shermer’s column keeps the false negative: a real pattern can be missed. Foster and Kokko’s paper, which he cites for an evolutionary model, was not opened. No cost and no probability from it is on this page. Whitson and Galinsky’s PDF was not read. Later attempts to repeat the lack-of-control result were not opened. No cell from them is on this page. Do not export “more likely” as a trading error rate.

​

Common Misconceptions

Three swaps turn one hill, one unread clinical book, and one unread stock-market abstract into a rule for every picture and every chart.

​

Related Concepts

These pages sit next to Apophenia. None of them is a second name for a connection read into noise.

​

One-Line Takeaway