Pareidolia, your word of the day

Did you know the proper name for seeing faces in objects is called pareidolia? I didn't. I just knew that some of the driftwood had faces. Some human, but mostly animals, and some mythic beings. But the other day at Mallard Point, I something more.

Did you see it? I saw a human taking shelter in the lee of a log, lying on their left side, right arm out to hug or cuddle.

People see faces in everything, patterns of wood, clouds, cat fur, beach sand, rocks on Mars, you get the idea. This is where doing science is important. We know these are not actually faces. Well, most of us know. We wouldn't try to build facial recognition software using a piece of driftwood. Nobody rational thinks aliens on Mars are trying to tell us something.

For most of us it's whimsy. Seeing a pattern in driftwood does not engage, or shouldn't engage, our threat recognition brain activity. (Well, unless the pattern moves and you realize it's a snake.) Nor, when we see a real face, do we mistake it for a piece of driftwood or a mask. (Well, unless you are in a Mission Impossible movie.)

But some people think these patterns are important. From seeing a random pattern, and thinking it's some god in your pantheon, it's only a small step to thinking that god is talking to you. There is no limit to how whack-a-doodle that "message" might be. Or you think that something is like something else based on some spurious pattern, and that's how you get the homeopathy quackery or the anti-vax idiocy. Once such people have been identified, they need to be marked so they aren't place in any position of importance. A less forgiving society than ours wouldn't permit them to breed, if they haven't already done so.

Here's some more faces that might amuse you, and you may have noticed some in the blog along the way. These all qualify as Driftwood of the Day.