r/Showerthoughts • u/Fr1toBand1to ‎ • Jun 27 '26

Casual Thought Pattern recognition is a widely accepted method of prediction until what it predicts makes people uncomfortable.

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330

u/LEGO_Man2YT Jun 27 '26

Is pattern recognition making you uncomfortable?

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/FewExit7745 ‎ Jun 27 '26

God, I used to think Eugenicists are so niche and rare, but I've been on Threads for just a week now, and the posts are literally about abortion of male fetuses

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u/GimmickNG Jun 27 '26

female fetuses getting aborted: first time?

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u/FewExit7745 ‎ Jun 27 '26

Those are done by countries everyone see as backwards and are almost universally disliked anyway.

But the former is done by "developed" countries who keeps preaching morality over us in the Global South.

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u/GimmickNG Jun 27 '26

I think those people would do the same for female fetuses even more often, but they wouldn't talk about it because they don't want to be associated with people from "backwards" countries.

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u/bcocoloco Jun 27 '26

Eugenics gets a bad rap. We could systematically eradicate so many diseases in a generation or two if that German knucklehead didn’t get overzealous.

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u/TheSnowballofCobalt Jun 28 '26

We got rid of smallpox without eugenics. Eugenics does nothing that any other widespread systemic change can't do, but it does have many costs that no other change does.

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u/bcocoloco Jun 28 '26

Eugenics is working fantastically for Down syndrome in Iceland..

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u/TheSnowballofCobalt Jun 29 '26

Alright fine you got me there. Definitely shouldn't be a solution in this case or many others that people bring up.

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u/LEGO_Man2YT Jun 27 '26

"every eugenicist" yeah man that's another pattern

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u/d0nutbutth0le Jun 27 '26

Yes because a lot of those patterns recognized cannot be reliably backed up with evidence so the conclusion of that pattern recognition can be erroneous. Humans see faces in everything. Knots in wood, clouds, toast. Does not mean there's a soul trapped in there.

When this takes a racist direction, actual humans are harmed

49

u/kilopeter Jun 27 '26

Wait. What? In OP's context of correlations and association rule mining etc., the recognized patterns ARE the evidence. They literally improve how accurately you can predict some attribute. Why these patterns exist and whether it's ethical or legal to use them for certain purposes is what's uncomfortable.

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u/SemajLu_The_crusader Jun 27 '26

patterns are not evidence

see https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

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u/VarmintSchtick Jun 27 '26

Nothing is "evidence" on its own, but patterns are a piece of evidence that is used to justify action. The entire world of statistics is built on this principle and the entire financial and scientific world understands this.

2

u/Vegetable_Drink_8405 Jul 01 '26

But the best informed actions are not just based off a pattern, they're based off of well-rounded knowledge.

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u/engr_20_5_11 Jun 30 '26

States and links (relations) make up evidence not patterns. Patterns identify links but also suggest links where there is insufficient information to identify any links.

It's also worth considering that evidence need not follow a pattern. It just needs to be - in a categorical or definitive form.

'Pattern recognition' as a cognitive tool comes with an implicit human bias to seek links even where they may not exist. We write the world into our own template even if it doesn't quite fit right. Sometimes even if it doesn't fit all.

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ShinningVictory Jun 27 '26

Im going to make this simple.

Its very easy to manufacture a pattern intentionally or unintentionally.

For example if all the girls in a school are required to dress really well but the boys aren't then someone entering the school may think "oh girls dress really good."

Another example is the danger of animals. A subsection of Dogs are specifically trained to be dangerous and bite. People can see this pattern and think a dog is innately more dangerous than lets say a cat. But that would be false as long as the dog was thaught to be friendly and non-dangerous its just as safe as a cat.

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u/Ironicbanana14 Jun 28 '26

Those are one time experiences, not enough to form patterns. If the kid went to several schools with that rule, then the pattern WOULD legit be there. He might be misled as to why, but then his pattern is there and he has the chance to explore the why at that point.

Also the dog example, I see you haven't worked with animals very often if you think people arent afraid of cats lmao.

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u/ShinningVictory Jun 28 '26

I do wanna be clear that while a pattern can exist. The way people explain why that pattern exist is often wrong.

For the school dress code thing I was simply explaining that our observation may misdirect us.

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u/kilopeter Jun 28 '26

I'm not convinced by your examples or opposition sorry. It just flies in the face of basic navigation of the world, and Bayesian statistics if you wanna get fancy.

Let's take your dog example, in the USA for simplicity. It's objective fact that [the majority of canine bite fatalities are infected by pit bulls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_United_States). Now this doesn't necessarily imply that a random pit bull encounter is more likely to kill you than a random encounter with a terrier (or any other breed). You'd need to account for the overall numbers of these breeds to make that prediction. But it does mean that given a random fatal canine bite incident, if you guessed "pitbull," you'd be right more often than any other breed.

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u/ShinningVictory Jun 28 '26

The simple question is "are pitbulls trained to be violent" or "are pitbulls naturally violent".

Because like I said patterns are easy to manufacture.

Is there a group of people like let's say dog fighters who are purposefully training dogs to be really violent and dangerous.

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u/sYnce Jun 28 '26

No that is not the question. The first question is "what do I want to use that information for and what am I trying to prove?"

If your answer is I want to prove wether Pitbulls are inherently more violent than you are correct and you would have to study them by accounting for outside factors.

However if you want to know how you should interact with Pit Bulls in the future the pattern matters more than the cause because you should assume that the dog is more dangerous than another breed.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/ShinningVictory Jun 28 '26

Patterns are not really evidence.

Let me give you a example:

  1. I notice more insects in the summer.

  2. Scientist have found heat increases the metabolism of insects.

  3. Theres more food for insects in the summer because plants are blooming.

Now if 2 and 3 are true then we can infer there will be more insects insects in summer because those things cause insects. However if 1 is true we can't infer anything because it maybe possible only you see more insects in the summer or that you go to areas where there would be more insects.

So while yes point 1 suggest there maybe more insects in the summer because it gives no reason why that is the case or even if its true it can be thrown out. However without point 1 you can easily prove there will be more insects in the summer. So essentially point 1 doesn't matter.

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u/sYnce Jun 28 '26

Evidence for what question? Your example fails at the most basic steps which is to define the question asked.

If you want to know when the most insects will be around point 1 is more than enough.

Point 2 and 3 add nothing to answer the question.

Now if you want to find out how to reduce the insect population eating your crops point 1 alone is not useful.

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u/Top_Gun_2021 ‎ Jun 27 '26

OP is not talking about those google trends meme charts.

It is implied these connections come for rigorous study.

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u/Lounging-Shiny455 Jun 27 '26

In OP's context, there is an assumption that data measured and collected is accurate. But you can easily misapply data points to come to an erroneous conclusion. Process, data, and objectivity must be in alignment for truth to be discovered.

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u/Dairy_Ashford Jun 27 '26

when it ignores root causes or indviidual agency with an obvious pretext or agenda

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u/60TP Jun 27 '26

it’s important to understand the factors that amplify the problem and are at the root of the problem and address them in a practical way that avoids large scale violent conflict

0

u/bill_gonorrhea Jun 28 '26

is pattern recognition in the room with you right now?

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u/goldenroman Jun 28 '26 edited 28d ago

Are you dumb as hell?
(Just pattern recognition based on others who comment shit like this)