Recognizing objects in difficult situations means generalizing

A massive amount of single source quoting about to begin. I have been reading Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise. A lot of good information brought together in a single place. Well written and sourced. New ideas and some with which I disagree but so well presented that it forces me to revisit my own position. I love this type of book.

Biologically, we are not very different from our ancestors. But some stone-age strengths have become information-age weaknesses.

Human beings do not have very many natural defenses. We are not all that fast, and we are not all that strong. We do not have claws or fangs or body armor. We cannot spit venom. We cannot camouflage ourselves. And we cannot fly. Instead, we have to survive by means of our wits. Our minds are quick. We are wired to detect patterns and respond to opportunities and threats without much hesitation.

"This need of finding patterns, humans have this more than any other animals," I was told by Tomas Poggio, an MIT neuroscientist who studies how our brains process information. "Recognizing objects in difficult situations means generalizing. A newborn baby can recognize the basic pattern of a face. It has been learned by evolution, not by the individual."

The problem, Poggio says, is that these evolutionary instincts sometimes lead us to see patterns when there are none there. "People have been doing that all the time," Poggio said. "Finding patterns in random noise."