Spook by Mary Roach

More interesting human behavior from this book. Apparently in an experiment people have interpreted white noise as being entire dialogues (which they in turn say is the undead speaking to them through telephones).

First of all, this reminds me of one day in physics class last year when we were listening to sounds of higher and higher frequencies. Eventually, it went so high that it was a faint buzzing in the back of our heads and the teacher asked if we could hear anything still and a couple kids said yes. It turns out it was off and she was just playing a joke on us. People seem to always be eager to hear or to see something because they think they should be able to. Strange...

People are so willing to believe things. What could cause that desire in us to take meaning out of everything we hear or see? I mean, think about it. White noise is interpreted into entire sentences and phrases! Is that too much curiosity or too much imagination inside us? I think it's the former because if we were all incredably imaginative there would be a lot more good books out there... So, is this curiosity a product of our basic animal instincts or a habit that has developed as we've grown into a distinct and strange race of animals?

I personally think a desire to take something meaningless and interpret as something incredibly important must have developed as we've become independant thinkers with a solid base of knowledge to work from. It's a new thing, and it's stupid. It's basically an illustration of how often people start running their mouths on whatever they believe to be true because they want to believe it. It's an annoying and egregious display of ignorance.

Maybe there are new and interesting sounds on tapes left in empty rooms because you aren't there filling the vacuum with your useless chatter? People who think something but aren't sure about it should probably stay quiet until they are sure.