“The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as ‘frequency illusion,’ occurs when something you’ve recently noticed or learned suddenly seems to appear more frequently, creating the illusion that its occurrence has increased.”
It’s unfortunate that the assumption that it’s merely an illusion is baked right into the name for it. The assumption is due to the deep-seated mechanicalism of our current culture which must deny synchronicity.
It’s merely an assumption, as there is no way to objectively quantify the likelihood of seeing something X number of times in Y timespan, nor the likelihood that the lack of memory of having seen it before is incorrect. (See https://myiachromat.wordpres.com/2020/10/30/how-many-coincidences-are-enough and https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/notes-on-science-scientism-mysticism-religion-logic-physicalism-skepticism-etc/#Bias.)
The assumption is incorrect and denies one of the more prevalent signs of the magic and amazingness of life.
And the fact that it’s included right in the name for the effect makes the take seem much more authoritative to the undiscerning mind. We’re linguistic creatures, and names mean everything to us. Consider, for example, the child who asks his mom, “mom, what’s that thing in the sky?”, to which his mom replies, “that’s a rainbow,” and suddenly the child’s curiosity is satiated, even though all she did was give him an arbitrary name!
Particularly in politics, names of things, especially policies, are heavily designed to sound either more innocuous or more sinister. I’ve seen some good examples of this but don’t remember them off-hand. We need to be both more vigilant in seeing past the names of things and also more responsible in how we use the power of words and maybe inject our own biases when we name things, such as the “frequency illusion.”
Calling it the “frequency illusion” has a much stronger influence on one’s thinking that it’s an illusion than would calling it something more neutral and then mentioning the popular theory (or rather, speculation—it’s not even a “theory”) that it’s merely an illusion…
