You may have heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon before. You may even have heard about it quite recently. If not, you will most likely hear again very soon. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon lies in the fact that having heard or learned once something unknown to you, you very soon come across the same information that was in the public domain before that, but did not reach you. And often more than once. The phrase, "so strange, I just heard about it", in fact, determines the presence of the phenomenon.
Most people experience this phenomenon at least a few times in their lives, while others experience it so regularly that they are already waiting for new information to come back. But what is the reason for the phenomenon? Is there any hidden meaning behind the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon?
The phenomenon bears some resemblance to synchronicity, which is the experience of many coincidences. Like when you think about where this or that person is, or what you should call him, how he rings. Both of these phenomena cause a feeling of mild surprise, and makes you wonder what the probability of such a coincidence is. In both cases, fate is often remembered, when it seems that there is a mechanism that determines what should happen. as if we are watching a domino bone destined to fall in a series of events beyond our control.
Despite the belief of science that we ourselves cause frequent coincidences, something suggests that such an explanation will not be sufficient. Our experience shows that frequent encounters with previously unknown information are too accurate and too frequent to be explained just like that. But observation in itself is extremely imperfect and cannot be completely trusted.
The reason is that our minds are captivated by ready-made attitudes regarding patterns (pattern here: trend; approx. Mixednews.ru). Our brains are an excellent pattern recognition tool, this feature is very useful for learning, but also leads to the brain attaching importance to unimportant events. Given the bombardment of names, words, and ideas that a person is exposed to on a daily basis, it's no surprise that sometimes we come across the same information again in a short time. When a coincidence occurs, the brain pays special attention to it, because two cases already form the beginning of a sequence. We do not notice hundreds of thousands of pieces of information that are no longer repeated because they do not line up in a certain sequence. The property to ignore "uninteresting" data is an example of selective attention.
In fact, coincidences are a property of perception. People tend to underestimate the likelihood of coincidence, so our expectations are at odds with reality. And mismatched events do not catch our attention, because coincidences are a trend, and the brain encourages us to select patterns more attentively … and therefore have a higher value for the brain than mismatched events. In short, patterns are kind of a habit of perception.
But when we hear a name or fact that we heard about just yesterday, it seems to us that this is something more than just a coincidence. This is because the phenomenon reinforces the effect of novelty, a cognitive bias that reinforces the importance of previous observation. This in turn increases future mindfulness about a particular fact when we encounter it again soon.
It is not known exactly why the phenomenon received such a name. Perhaps someone studied the German groups of urban partisans, in particular the "Red Brigades" of Baader-Meinhof, and then after a short time heard about them again.
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But whatever the name of the phenomenon, we can say with certainty that the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, with its magic and mystery, dilutes the inert and boring science, and its sinister cohort: facts. And if you've never heard of this phenomenon before, look forward to another mention of it in the next few days.