Ryan Reid Illustration + Design

Maybe it’s somebody else’s frequency illusion

June 18, 2024 | Miscellany

The frequency illusion (also known as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon) is a cognitive bias in which a person notices a specific concept, word, or product more frequently after recently becoming aware of it.

Wikipedia

We aren’t looking for a new car right now, but this always happens when we are looking for a new car. Also, I had a weird dream years ago that I don’t recall now at all, but the entire following morning my brain was picking out the number 2 everywhere. I think the brain is a computer looking for programming.

And somehow my brain thinks this is related, but like opposite maybe:

The Somebody Else’s Problem field… relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.

Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe, and Everything

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