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How to ThinkIn the Age of AI
Anti-patternv1AP-006

Apophenia anti-pattern

seeing patterns that are not there because the brain's pattern-completion machinery generates false positives, especially when motivated reasoning provides emotional incentive to find connections

Why This Is an Anti-Pattern

Inverts success-pattern-replication (Success-pattern-replication pattern) by finding patterns in noise. Violates Cognitive Dissonance Drives Information Avoidance (calibration). Recurs in conspiracy thinking, superstition, data mining without hypotheses.