Seeing Patterns Everywhere

You see a face in the clouds. You hear your name in white noise. You notice that bad things "always happen in threes." Your brain is a pattern recognition machine that runs constantly, finding connections even in random data.

The problem: the machine has no off switch and no accuracy filter. It finds patterns whether they exist or not. Seeing a face on the moon is the same cognitive process that lets you read emotions in real faces — one saves your life, the other sees conspiracy.