(2016-06-14, 1:20 pm)gaiaslastlaugh Wrote: I swear to God that "word blindness" is a thing. I'll learn a word and be like, "Huh, I wonder why I've never seen that word before" - and then, suddenly, it's everywhere. I guess the brain's noise filter just tosses the word out as random nonsense until you actually commit it to memory.
This. But your brain is also throwing out all of the times you learned about something and never encountered it again. You only remember the times when the new thing is everywhere. It's a cognative bias referred to as frequency bias or the baader-meinhoff phenomenon.