Curiosidade do dia

"Pattern perception is central to our lives, and skill in many professions is based almost entirely on the ability to rapidly recognize a large variety of important patterns.
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We can’t help but see patterns in the world and make predictions based on those patterns.
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These extraordinary pattern detection abilities often serve us well, enabling us to draw conclusions in seconds (or milliseconds) that would take minutes or hours if we had to rely on laborious logical calculations.
Unfortunately, they can also lead us astray, contributing to the illusion of cause. At times, we perceive patterns where none exist, and we misperceive them where they do exist. Regardless of whether a repeating pattern actually exists, when we perceive that it does, we readily infer that it results from a causal relationship. Much as our memory for the world can be distorted to match our conceptions of what we should remember, and just as we can fail to see the gorillas around us because they do not fit with our preexisting expectations, our understanding of our world is systematically biased to perceive meaning rather than randomness and to infer cause rather than coincidence. And we are usually completely unaware of these biases."

Mais uma leitura que recomendo vivamente "The Invisible Gorilla - And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us" de Christopher Chabris e Daniel Simons.