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RTXEnabledViera t1_ja1wst3 wrote

The frequency illusion. Also known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

You learn a new word, and suddenly you start seeing that word everywhere. It's not that it's actually occuring more frequently, it's just that you're suddenly paying more attention to it.

Earthquakes happen all the time. It's just that they're rarely as devastating as what happened in Turkey.

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Scuka1 t1_ja1wrdw wrote

There hasn't been more earthquakes recently.

Just because there are more earthquakes being reported in the news doesn't mean there have been more earthquakes.

That's a good life lesson to learn. You shouldn't judge the world by the amount of attention certain events get in the news. News disproportionally report bad and shocking news, so you get the wrong idea that there's nothing but bad things happening in the world if you only go by the news headlines.

Earthquakes happen all the time in certain earthquake-prone areas of the world. There's nothing special about "recently", other than the fact that recently it happened to hit a highly populated area that was ill-prepared to handle that kind of an earthquake, so it became massive world news.

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tmrika t1_ja20cxu wrote

Yeah I remember people saying the exact same thing in 2011/2012, when people were somehow convinced the world was about to end. “But you have to admit, there have been more earthquakes and disasters lately” / “I have to admit no such thing, you’re just noticing more of them.”

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explainlikeimfive-ModTeam t1_ja23n7b wrote

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Flair_Helper t1_ja23nmx wrote

Please read this entire message

Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):

Loaded questions, or ones based on a false premise, are not allowed on ELI5. A loaded question is one that posits a specific view of reality and asks for explanations that confirm it. These usually include the poster's own opinion and bias, but do not always - there is overlap between this and parts of Rule 2. Note that this specifically includes false premises.

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