Why is this suddenly everywhere?

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0:00I first learned about buzkashi in a book about mountain climbing. Fast-forward a week or so,

0:09when I’m reading a totally unrelated magazine article about Afghanistan, and there it was again:

0:14"buzkashi." What are the odds that I would encounter another mention of this obscure thing

0:19so soon after learning about it? You’ve probably experienced this same thing – not with buzkashi,

0:24of course, but with some other obscure term or concept that you've never heard before and then

0:29suddenly you notice it popping up all over the place in a way that feels almost spooky.

0:33This feeling is common enough that it has a name: the Frequency Illusion. Think about all the noise

0:39you’re exposed to at any given time; your brain is constantly flagging important information out

0:44of that, and filtering out the rest. When it comes to new information, your brain basically

0:48has to guess whether something is potentially important or not, based on all sorts of clues;

0:52and stuff that it guesses might be worth holding onto, get filed into your memory.

0:56It’ll often take us a while to stumble back across that same information. But every so often,

1:01it pops up again in quick succession. And – since patterns can be important, I mean, heck,

1:06our brains probably evolved to notice patterns to help us avoid the poison berries or whatever – our

1:11pattern-seeking brains take notice; and think: this thing must be everywhere! But most of

1:15the time, especially in our modern, noise-packed lives, this second exposure is just a coincidence.

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