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David McRaney - You Are Not So Smart

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Dave says You Are Not So Smart.

Today is a palindrome and an ambigram, a coalescence that won't come back around in most our lifetimes.

Today's date is the same forwards as it is backwards and the same right side up as it is upside down. People love finding meaning in their lives where there isn't any, because the human mind being built on pattern recognition is the only way to make our slow cognitive processing function in a world that comes at us fast.

That's why today will be the sum of Apophenia, the Barnum effect and Tetris effect.

Apophenia is the universal cognitive bias that makes us think that some coincidences are so miraculous they must be true. It's the numerology fetish peppering today's collective thoughts.

The Barnum effect is our tendency to accept vague information as true, usually via character assessment (Energetic and spontaneous, I knew you were an Ares! Outgoing and Charismatic? I know an ENTJ when I see one!)

The Tetris effect is the Frequency Illusion with intent. It occurs when we devote so much attention to something it begins to color thoughts, visualizations and dreams. You see something "for the first time" and then think it pops up everywhere. It's this illusion multiplied by obsession.

Apophenia starts with 'A', Barnum with 'B', and Tetris with 'T'. A is the 1st letter of the alphabet, B is the 2nd, and T's the 20th. 1+2+20=23. The 23rd letter of the alphabet is 'W', which stands for win, or wonder, or whatever can happen will.

Today we'll all be on the lookout for signs, and so we'll find them. Something so simple as how the numbers of a date line up is enough to give people hope, because people need hope and that's just fine, because placebos really do make the world go 'round. It's all misattributive bullshit from brains we mostly don't control, but when my day started with my shower rod breaking, I couldn't help but think: Today's going to be special.

Check out David McRaney's foundational book exposing several dozen other biases, heuristics and cognitive quirks to more comprehensively jade youself to the meaninglessness of the world. If you're seeing this, you kind of have to. After all, it's a sign.

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