Enjoying the Frequency Illusion

You notice something a lot once you become aware of it.

The frequency illusion (AKA “Baader-Meinhof phenomenon”) is a funny name for this. It feels almost right, but maybe not quite. At least from skimming Wikipedia, it seems to mainly describe the cognitive bias aspect of this (subheadings: selective attention, confirmation bias, recency illusion, etc.). In other words, it seems to imply that you believe it actually starts occurring more once you learn about it.

But I’m not assuming that the thing has become more common. I’m just reflecting on the flurry of connections you make when you get to start seeing it in the wild.

Here are some things I started noticing more recently:

• the word “tchotchke” — somehow I’d never learned it, but once I did, I noticed it several times that week
• people describing the difference between inspiration and participation
• a longer, slower one has been noticing when people seem to be tracking the general idea of awareness / openness of perception

A new idea can become personally sticky for a period of time. Usually a few days or a few weeks. You start seeing examples of it all over the place. You make connections you might not otherwise have realized. Then, you move on to other ideas.

It’s fun that, at all times, other people will be going through the same process for completely different ideas.⁰¹

On a meta note, this process of “what’s that thing?” has happened to me several times recently:

• noticing a perceptual phenomenon
• trying to figure out what it’s called⁰²
• finding an established concept that is close to—but not exactly—what you’re thinking of.

This just happened for both this post, as well as inspiration and participation.