Notice, however, that you can be wrong sometimes without any ill effect. An example might be seeing animals in clouds. If it doesn’t actually make any difference to your survival, then this predilection won’t get weeded out. It may even be attached to a useful tendency to seek animals hidden in underbrush. So we should expect human brains to have evolved into effective pattern-seeking devices–but we should also expect them to jump at some patterns where there aren’t any. And that is indeed what we find! We are amazingly good at spotting patterns in our environment, from the cycle of the seasons to the orbits of planets. But we also think we see Elvis from time to time… when all that’s in front of us is a burrito.