on pattern recognition.....
'Religion, superstition, and conspiracy
Pattern recognition combined with post hoc reasoning can lead to a strong form of magical thinking. Basically, people are prone to see patterns where there are none (such as in occurrences of "bad luck" and "good luck") and then attempt to attribute them to some sort of correlation (such as the clothes worn that day). This has been correlated to a feeling of loss or lack of control.'
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