psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia. The brain had a natural inclination to conjure meaningful shapes out of nebulous contours, and humans saw faces in everything—from clouds to fabric patterns to bowls of soup to shadows on a lake. All it took was two dots and a line, and most human brains made the same connection. From her work at the CIA, Nagel was convinced that conspiracy theorists suffered a kind of cognitive pareidolia, seeing suspicious patterns where no patterns existed…hallucinating order out of chaos.
