Why do we see things that don't exist?
In the realm of irrational psychology, Richard Wiseman's 'Paranormality' doesn't cover much new terrain.
By: Richard Wiseman
About: Why the paranormal doesn’t exist — but why we so often think it does
Rating: 3/5
Summary and review
Perhaps I read too much about human irrationality, but I was a little underwhelmed with Paranormality, an exploration into the psychology of paranormal beliefs.
He explores how our talent for pattern recognition primes us to see connections where they don’t really exist, but spends a lot of time on the more statistical side of things — the fact that these ‘unusual’ occurrences are in fact entirely possible.
What we perceive as too strange to be true is really just the law of large numbers at play — the fact that, in large populations, coincidences and strange occurrences are almost guaranteed to happen. There will always be unusual things that need explaining — but that doesn’t mean we must turn to unusual explanations to understand them.
Overall, this book was a nice refresher on a few key mental models, but covered no new terrain.
Mental models
Law of large numbers
Unusual events are actually likely to happen when there are lots of opportunities for that event. The larger a data set gets, the more likely we are to see outliers. With so many people and so many chances for strange thing to happen, we can actually expect to see coincidences, miracles, and surprises far more than we might think. In fact, what is most surprising is perhaps the fact that we don’t see these things even more than we do.
Pattern recognition
Pattern recognition helps humans quickly spot cause and effect. However, given that we’re so good at pattern recognition, this skill can easily go into overdrive, leading us to “see what isn’t there” or imply a causal relationship that doesn’t exist. Intelligent people recognize patterns easily; be careful that this doesn’t happen too easily.
Did you read Paranormality? Let me know what you thought.
Relevant reads:
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins, 2008)
Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (Steven Pinker, 2022)
The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (Michael Shermer, 2011)