Patterns, Patterns Everywhere!

A friend recently mentioned his brother, who falls into the "conspiracies under every rock" taxonomical classification, asking "questions" regarding recent attacks on power plants in four states.

I scare-quote "questions" because these sorts of questions are a cop-out way of asserting secret knowledge without actually having any. Of suggesting conspiracy and evil-mastermind intent based on nothing more than "I see a pattern, there must be intent."

Humans are pattern-seekers by nature. In fact, there’s even a word for it. Across most of human history, we have struggled against nature for our very survival. Fifty or a hundred thousand years ago, a proto-human surveying the savannah might see a blade of grass twitch. Rationally considered, that twitch is most likely a vagary of the wind or some other benign occurrence. But, one time in a hundred or a thousand, it'll be a telltale of a predator. The proto-human with the inclination to suspect the predator will be wrong most of the time, but that wrongness won't have any adverse impact on his life. The one more inclined to dismiss it as "probably nothing" will be eaten one time in a hundred or thousand, and over time, those of his inclination will become scarcer. The genetic tendencies that prompted the pattern-seeker to say "there's a proto-lion there" will be reinforced. We are thus wired to attribute agency to events, even when there almost certainly is none.

Modern humans are far more insulated from the dangers of natural predators nowadays, to the point where such natural selection doesn't happen any more. But, the wiring is still there, and it manifests itself in countless ways, including many that run contrary to reality. Astrology, for example, is utter nonsense, yet more than a quarter of Americans believe that patterns assigned to the visible stars by the Babylonians 2500 years ago affect their lives.

The Internet, and social media in particular, creates a mass multiplier effect for the propagation of bullshit "patterns," including this absurdity that crossed my feed the other day.

Just like those who believe in Nostradamus's prognosticative power (and, for that matter, degenerate gamblers), pattern-seekers (of whom conspiracy theorists are a subset) remember their "wins" and conveniently forget all the patterns they saw that were nothing more than the product of their imaginations. Throw a hundred "questions" at the wall, and if one proves out six months down the road, they go "AHA!" "I TOLD YOU SO!!"

No.

Absent actual evidence at the time of your assertion, you simply got lucky. People win lotteries from time to time, but that doesn't mean they had some secret magic in picking the numbers.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't take look-sees at patterns we might put together. After all, there are bad actors out there (see: proto-lions). But, it behooves us to have actual evidence before we assert connection or causation. It also behooves us not to confuse correlation with causation. As I discussed a few months ago, correlations can be found all over the place. For fun, click through to this page, and observe how buying less oil from Norway correlates with a reduction in death-by-train-collision, or how a society that eats more mozzarella also produces more civil engineering doctorates.

Pattern recognition can lead us to previously hidden information, and uncover all sorts of things, good and bad. In fact, much of human knowledge begins with “I see a pattern.” A noticed pattern is a starting point for analysis, assessment, exploration, and discovery. But, and I cannot stress this enough, no positive purpose is served by scattershot allegations absent evidence. Think signal-to-noise, Chicken Little, and the like.

As for the power plant attacks, remember, the world is full of idiots. Thanks to the power of the modern age, one jackass doing something stupid for whatever stupid 'logic' percolated up from his lizard brain can not only propagate around the globe in moments, it can spawn copycats just as quickly. Go with the simplest answer until you’ve just cause to conclude more complexity.

The old saw, "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on," has been turbocharged by technology, and the social media feedback loop reinforces even the most baseless ‘secret knowledge’ assertions. An alarming number of people either believe the earth is flat or are not fully convinced it’s spherical. I assure you, the forces I describe here are to blame.

Does that mean that there isn't some connection between the four power plant attacks beyond "one jackass heard about it, so another aped him,” or “there’s a guy getting his rocks off this way?” Does that mean that there’s no chance of a more elaborate plot at work?

Of course not. It's certainly possible that they’re connected and part of some nefarious grand design. But, "possible" is a relative term. Absent evidence, we cannot assign probability, either in the numeric or colloquial senses. And, absent evidence, voicing such possibilities in a fashion intended to focus undeserved attention on them is a waste of everyone's time (and can distract from more important or probable things).

There are other bits of hardwired human behavior driving this:

• The impetus to be first, to be the one who points out the Emperor has no clothes, as if there are karmic or cosmic brownie points in play.

• The satisfaction of 'secret knowledge,' as proof that one is smarter than the masses.

• The ability to convince ourselves against plain evidence. See: addictive behavior, academic intellectuals, and cognitive dissonance.

Note, by the way, that this applies to more than what we dub conspiracy theorizing. "Systemic racism" is based in this sort of connect-some-dots, find-a-villain mindset, as in 'if Grouping_01 does not have a proportion of minorities that at least equals that of the overall populace, then there must be racist forces at play.' The shorthand for this is "disparate impact," and once someone concludes it's there, good luck dislodging that viewpoint. A truckful of evidence often (dare I say routinely) fails to dislodge a bad opinion or conclusion, especially if it has been vocalized, and double-especially if it's rooted in preferences or prejudices.

I'm a firm believer in Occam's Razor, Hanlon's Razor, Hitchens' Razor, and other aphorisms that speak against making baseless or convoluted or conspiratorial assertions absent supporting evidence. So much so that I cobbled these and several others together into a little cheat-sheet, which regular readers may recall.

The Razors of Scrutiny

Patterns can mean something, and sometimes they can open our eyes to new truths… but they often don’t. The harm in a false-positive is usually trivial. But, conceding our logical forebrains’ dominance to the lizard-brain that sees them everywhere is both bad for us and bad for society. I don’t suggest we ignore them, but I do urge that we refrain from voicing them until there’s something more than the pattern itself to go on. Take a beat, pause a breath, and put some logic (as well as the batch of razors) ahead of the blurt.

There are people with a lot more access to information than you or I have looking into the power plant attacks. They are, after all, criminal acts of major consequence. Whether they are something more than yahooism? Let’s wait and see what those looking into them come up with before voicing or even drawing conclusions.

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Peter.