Black birds exist. This is not about them. This is about the other black birds, the ones that are 2’s. You’ve certainly had this experience. Peacefully existing in an outdoor space and there they are, black birds dancing and fluttering their blurry wings right on the edge of your vision. Ignore it, chalk it up to needing new glasses or mistaking a leaf on the breeze.

This is harder to do when the birds are inside a building, a room, and one where the birds are at a distance that is greater than the four walls of the room would allow. Don’t worry. This short text will explain what they are and why there’s no need for alarm.

First, we need to make an apple pie from scratch.

The world is not a 1, it’s a 3. That’s an important fact to remember. Just because I look to the right and see the rough trunk of a shagbark hickory doesn’t mean there’s a tree at all. It means my eyes are focusing rays of light on a set of receptor and processing organs that come back from the brain as “tree”. If I was blind, the tree wouldn’t exist in the same way. Reality is a product of senses receiving stimulus and cognitive functions interpreting it.

Baysiean statistics is a dangerous field for a non-expert. I’m almost without a doubt conceiving of it wrongly, but nevermind. The fundamental rule of Baysiean statistics is that the prior predicts the posterior. What you, or I, or anyone, comes into a situation with affects the outcome of that situation. If the last time I pushed a button I got a reward, I’m primed by my prior to expect a reward in the (situational) posterior. There are arguments regarding if a prior affects the actual posterior, or just the expected posterior.

Again, nevermind. I have seen a blackbird in the past. My prior has primed reality to present to me a blackbird. This is true even in situations where that wouldn’t make sense, such as if I’m seated in a bathroom. Why though?

Psychological states and impairments can mess with  expectations in a particular situation. People who have seen a mylar balloon flying overhead, who are primed by science fiction and conspiracy theories, will see Venus brightly glowing in the sky and think “alien”. The religious will see miracles in the mundane. There aren’t any teenagers in the Midwestern USA who see the outline of Vishnu in the bark of a tree.

Under standard conditions, where brain chemistry, anatomy, and nature is operating at the mean, no one is seeing black feathers and darting shapes. If stress, anxiety, trauma, or even just a deranged prior exist, the posterior is primed to color outside the lines.

This simple little thing has done more for the terror than I think even the major tranquilizers and sedatives have. To be sure it does not replace those important chemicals. I do find that I’m less likely to flee a situation at a sprint and hide in the wood until the Minotaur is passed. There’s value in that.