[brains] Idle thought

[wispfox]

The problem with being good at pattern-matching is that it's entirely too easy to find patterns that don't actually exist.

Watching "A Beautiful Mind' last night reminded me of this.

Comments

[majes.livejournal.com]

I felt so much empathy for the main character in that movie. The way his life went, the way he was drawn up into the patterns that only he could see, man - it would be all too easy for me to take that path.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

*nod* I was far more affected by the idea of me being entirely too similar to the main character the first time I saw it than this second time.

Perhaps because I have been known to have problems with reality, and have gotten better at it. Perhaps because the second time through, I knew what was going on. :)

[majes.livejournal.com]

Perhaps because I have been known to have problems with reality, and have gotten better at it. Perhaps because the second time through, I knew what was going on. :)

It's too bad with how they have arranged time and life in this version of existence. You don't get to carry much with you from incarnation to incarnation, and you generally only get to live different versions of basically the same life, not the exact same life over again - well, except when time starts flowing backward. However, when that happens, your cause-effect relationships flip over, and you know everything that will cause everything that you are seeing before anything that you are seeing is actually caused. It's a fun ride, but you don't have a lot of say in it, alas.

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

But if one is finding many patterns that do not actually exist then one is not, after all, that good at pattern matching!

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I think it's less about being good or bad at it, and more about one's ability to check the patterns one is finding against reality.

So, one can be good at pattern-matching, but poor at reality-checks. Or, good at both. Or bad at both.

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

I tend to think the criteria for being a good pattern matcher are seeing patterns that are there and not seeing ones that aren't. If one or the other of these conditions are relaxed and false negatives or positives become acceptable then the problem becomes much easier. And indeed in many situations one or other of these types of error is much more acceptable than the other.