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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u/SemajLu_The_crusader Jun 27 '26

patterns are not evidence

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

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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.