I encountered two words today that I might have seen before, but I had to figure out how to spell them and their precise meanings. In case anyone else likes obscure words (or maybe they're just obscure to me), here they are: Apophenia: It means perceiving meaningful patterns or connections in random or unrelated things—for example, believing that several unrelated coincidences must be connected. And the other is pareidolia. Pareidolia is the tendency to perceive a familiar image or sound in something vague or random—for example:

Seeing a face in the clouds
Seeing a human figure in a shadow
Hearing words in meaningless noise
It is related to apophenia, but pareidolia specifically involves recognizing familiar images, sounds, or forms. Apophenia is the broader tendency to find