Link: https://old.reddit.com/r/HighStrangeness/comments/1tfauah/the_correlations_are_real_but_the_assumed/

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The original was posted on /r/highstrangeness by /u/WeAreThough on 2026-05-17 00:57:55+00:00.

We live in a pattern-saturated world, so much pattern that we filtered them. People with mental illness have cognitive filter failure, their salience network register “prior-filtered” stimuli as meaningful, stimuli we all collectively filtered as a species.

I am diagnosed with schizoaffective, and I have filter failure, i see the patterns, but I have learned that they are not real, there’s no real connection behind them, HOWEVER, they appear real to us, those of us severely ill, cannot tell the difference.

For example, doctor is spelled Do CT (then) OR, mapping onto the clinical workflow of diagnostics (CT) before treatment (OR), as in doctor perform CT-imaging BEFORE most surgeries in the OR. Also mapping onto the surgical aphorism, “look before you cut”.

I now understand that the word appeared this way because of chance and law of large numbers and a bunch of reasons, but it is a natural occurrence, no one designed it or decided to put CT before OR for doctor. But you cannot deny that the word IS spelled that way, as the pattern appears “real” but are not, hence we filtered them.

My name is Chi Zhang, sure I have been called schizo before, and guess what, my fricking name is in the word schizo, “s-Chi-Z-o”, my first name spelled out and the first letter of my last name, in order, as they appear in the word schizo. That is a trippy connection any day of the week. And ALL patients see referential stimuli of this specificity, and they have no framework to explain!

The world is filled with self-referential patterns, and the healthy filtered them, but the mentally ill see them, but nobody believe us they are real. Again, I emphasize, there’s no real connection, words and nature and reality just cluster like this, as if hinting at our existence.

Last one, alien is spelled with lie in the center, to bring it closer to current affairs, can you see how our world just cluster with referential information that appears real as it is but with no real connection? That, is strange.