My pareidolia knows no bounds.

Hi Larry Burford, see what I posted here on Nov 20 2013 : 19:38:18

- rderosa please read the original source - for a cited definition of pareidolia in the 1868 issue of The Journal of Mental Science (Volume 13).

Link: books.google.com/books?id=66g8AAAAYAAJ&p...areidolia%22&f=false

Note: Pareidolia isn't a common phenomenon, it's a rare mental disorder. The over used word paraboloid is actually associated with Hallucinations not image projection.

As an example - the facial aspects observed on the Face on Mars are confirmed features that have been photographed over and over, not delusional hallucinations that "appear" as defined by pareidolia. Therefore when skeptics label every observation of face-like formations on Mars as pareidolia, they are totally distorting the word with their own mental disorders.

Zip Monster

Please follow the rules, or ask questions about them, as instructed.

<ul><li>On this message board, all previously mentioned definitions of the word 'pareidolia' are declared null and void.</li><li>Anyone who wants to can now post a definition AS LONG AS you <ul><li>reference your source ("made it up" is acceptable but won't get you very far)</li><li>post the definition here</li><li>and give it a name</li></ul></li><li>Every time anyone uses the word 'pareidolia', even if you misspell it or refer to it indirectly, you must say (parenthetically, using the 'official' name I mentioned in #2) which definition you are using.</li></ul>
I'll give you an hour or so before I remove your last non-complying post.

Larry, from Page 1 of this thread (ya think!)

Pareidolia:

"psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, seeing the man in the moon, and hearing messages on records played in reverse. The word from Greek para- amiss, faulty, wrong + eidolon, diminutive of eidos appearance, form.
Human beings are apparently "hard-wired" to identify the human face. One possible explanation for this is that unresponsive infants tended to be ignored or abandoned, as Carl Sagan speculated in The Demon-Haunted World.{copied from Wilkepedia}"

I would add:

The feature in question should not be man-made in any way shape or form.

Carl Sagan said this:

"Pareidolia was once thought of as a symptom of psychosis, but is now recognized as a normal, human tendency. Carl Sagan theorized that hyper facial perception stems from an evolutionary need to recognize -- often quickly -- faces. He wrote in his 1995 book, The Demon-Haunted World, "As soon as the infant can see, it recognizes faces, and we now know that this skill is hardwired in our brains. Those infants who a million years ago were unable to recognize a face smiled back less, were less likely to win the hearts of their parents, and less likely to prosper.""

Pareidolia is related to (subset of?):

Apophenia: is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

Me thinks the AOH advocates have taken a beating over the years, and have resorted to Alinksy Tactics.

rd

Larry,

In all fairness, this is a 26 page discussion on a complex subject, some of which we attempted to simplify over time.

In a number of posts, I gave some perceived characteristics of pareidolia, such as:

1. The paredolic image tends to go away at close inspection or higher resolution.
2. Pareidolic images are personal in nature, "you see what you know" as the Superstitious S study showed.
3. Not everyone sees each other's pareidolic images.
4. It can be a learned by some, others are resistant to it.
5. In many cases another person will see the image but then when you discuss it, you find you're describing two different things.

And so on.

rd

Carl Sagan should have stuck to the Cosmos and not Psychology and child behavior. Sorry Carl but a new study says humans may be Hard Wired to See Snakes Not Faces. In fact, we may have snakes to thank for our high-quality vision, according to new research.

Link www.voanews.com/content/humans-may-be-ha...-snakes/1779293.html

Zip Monster

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rderosa</i>
<br />The feature in question should not be man-made in any way shape or form. rd
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Let me give you one example of why I say it's "complicated" by giving you an example of what I mean by this statement above.

Suppose Martians built an elaborate building on Mars, that collapsed and eroded over the years into a swirling mass of molten metal, and one of us spotted a really good face in that mass. In this case it is something that's man-made, but not man-made in terms of the face. In my opinion that would be a bonafied pareidolic image even though it's in the ruins of a man-made object.

So the bottom line is that the face (or whatever) is what can't be man-made, or maybe purposely made by an intelligent being as that feature that we see.


rd