Untertitel (16)
0:00I first learned about buzkashi in a book about
mountain climbing. Fast-forward a week or so,
0:09when I’m reading a totally unrelated magazine
article about Afghanistan, and there it was again:
0:14"buzkashi." What are the odds that I would
encounter another mention of this obscure thing
0:19so soon after learning about it? You’ve probably
experienced this same thing – not with buzkashi,
0:24of course, but with some other obscure term or
concept that you've never heard before and then
0:29suddenly you notice it popping up all over
the place in a way that feels almost spooky.
0:33This feeling is common enough that it has a name:
the Frequency Illusion. Think about all the noise
0:39you’re exposed to at any given time; your brain
is constantly flagging important information out
0:44of that, and filtering out the rest. When it
comes to new information, your brain basically
0:48has to guess whether something is potentially
important or not, based on all sorts of clues;
0:52and stuff that it guesses might be worth
holding onto, get filed into your memory.
0:56It’ll often take us a while to stumble back
across that same information. But every so often,
1:01it pops up again in quick succession. And –
since patterns can be important, I mean, heck,
1:06our brains probably evolved to notice patterns to
help us avoid the poison berries or whatever – our
1:11pattern-seeking brains take notice; and think:
this thing must be everywhere! But most of
1:15the time, especially in our modern, noise-packed
lives, this second exposure is just a coincidence.
