Editing 2462: NASA Award
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This comic jabs at poorly-supported claims of discovering alien life, particularly when instances of pareidolia are used as "evidence" of such life. {{w|Pareidolia}} is the tendency for perception to spuriously impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous visual stimulus, for example a rock that is interpreted as a face. A famous example is the {{w|Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars%22|Face on Mars}}, a 2km long hill that can be said to resemble the face of a human when viewed on low resolution images, at a specific angle and lighting conditions. At the time some people claimed this was proof of an ancient Martian civilization. Later higher resolution images showed that the face was an optical illusion. | This comic jabs at poorly-supported claims of discovering alien life, particularly when instances of pareidolia are used as "evidence" of such life. {{w|Pareidolia}} is the tendency for perception to spuriously impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous visual stimulus, for example a rock that is interpreted as a face. A famous example is the {{w|Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars%22|Face on Mars}}, a 2km long hill that can be said to resemble the face of a human when viewed on low resolution images, at a specific angle and lighting conditions. At the time some people claimed this was proof of an ancient Martian civilization. Later higher resolution images showed that the face was an optical illusion. | ||
| β | Rocks make for poor prizes as they make for poor evidence | + | Rocks make for poor prizes as they make for poor evidence {{Citation needed}}, and looking from different angles is of no use for either. |
If you're actively looking for patterns in large amounts of data (especially if it's any pattern, largely undefined until it is 'found') then you are likely to dismiss all the data that does not support your preconceived ideas and seize upon the small randomnesses that you have managed to trawl though and classify as 'interesting'. This is an example of {{w|Confirmation_bias|Confirmation Bias}}. It's possible that the featured NASA personnel specifically sifted rocks looking for one that looked like an award. | If you're actively looking for patterns in large amounts of data (especially if it's any pattern, largely undefined until it is 'found') then you are likely to dismiss all the data that does not support your preconceived ideas and seize upon the small randomnesses that you have managed to trawl though and classify as 'interesting'. This is an example of {{w|Confirmation_bias|Confirmation Bias}}. It's possible that the featured NASA personnel specifically sifted rocks looking for one that looked like an award. | ||
