Human perception is a tricky thing. It's perception that allows us to see patterns, fill in gaps and interpret things. Yet, it's the same mechanism that sets our perception into a specific way of perceiving it. So, we can in a sense be tricked into believing something is X, when in reality, it's Y.
The same applies to a topic AskRedditors were recently discussing, and that is What is far more rare than people realize? Folks recall statistical, temporal and other convictions that aren't entirely or at all that true. And it's perception and assumption that has led us to believe otherwise.
Scroll down, take a gander at what folks had to say and why not join the conversation!
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Critical thinking skills.
I've been working with people who appear to shun critical thinking skills and have noticed there are at least two advantages to this practice: 1) It allows them to be nonaccountable when something turns sideways. Things don't improve, but that's not their problem either. 2) If things don't work out at all, they're the ones that point fingers, saying they knew it wasn't going to work out. If asked why they didn't say something, they say so-and-so was handling it. With good administrative leadership, this doesn't happen. When the supervisors do the same thing to avoid becoming accountable, the ones that exercise their critical thinking skills become targets.
Good, honest friends who don’t have ulterior motives. The ones that genuinely enjoy your company and friendship. Hold onto them!!!
We have a male tortoiseshell cat. Cat people tend to know they’re quite rare but others probably don’t.
Absolute silence and being in a place where no man made light exists.
Trees.
We're the only planet that we know that has them.
Thus making them rarer than diamonds in the universe.
This dawned on me recently. I never thought about how so many people take all the trees out of their living areas cuz they're messy or a pain to mow around. It is now my mission to start plating trees any and everywhere I can. Especially fruit and nut trees!!
Man to man compliments I remember about my 7th grade year. It was probably 1994. Me and my friends started telling each other we love you man. Being good friends with a other dude and telling them you love them. That is more rare then anything. We got obnoxious. We just kept telling each other bro I love you. No bro I love you more. No bro your the f*****g man more then me. It was so silly, but still today I think about it and smile. I still miss and love my boys. I try to compliment men and tell them they are killing it s much as I can. Any compliment is amazing. I usually do some dumb s**t like. Damn bro your killing it.
Clean water.
My son and I have been discussing this lately. He is a chemical engineer and works exclusively with water. Many of the studies he has been published on also have to do with clean water and forever chemicals. Water is a huge issue that is becoming bigger everyday and normal people are forgetting about it.
Flint Michigan is in year 9!
People who have the patience and desire to accommodate the needs of the disabled.
Ask me how I know. :(
Northern lights.
The amount of people I’ve heard say:
“We’ve come all this way, what time do they come on?” Is staggering.
"They start at 23:09 tonight, we just received a mail from the northern lights administrator in the Sun" 🥬♻️🐍🤑
"You need to buy a ticket on the NL Express bus and ride north about 90 miles...."
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If live where they are frequent, they are not rare. For everyone else, yes, rare. I lived in Alaska for a few years. Saw them all the time. One detail about them that a lot of people don't know is you can actually hear/feel them. They have an almost low-level electrical hum to them that you can feel.
Replying to myself here...one weird thing about them is when they came out and you were indoors, you didn't know they were out. But, you felt compelled to just go outside. Happened so many times. And when you went out on your front porch, you'd see many of your neighbors doing out there and you're all staring at the sky watching the show.
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We live at Loch Ness, and seen them 3 times this year, 2 evenings this week, and 1 evening in March. We are on the southern end of regularly being able to see them, and it is very weather dependent. 9n phone, so can't upload a picture, sorry.
This was Monday night at the back door, we are lucky. IMG_202309...5b18f1.jpg 
I live in the middle of the Canadian prairies that is supposed to be famous for the northern lights. I've seen them in real life, faintly, twice in my 39 years of life.
My camera actually picked up the aurora better than my eyes. It was faint. Thought they were clouds or just light reflecting on the sky. 376897226_...c04131.jpg 
I've seen them 3 times in my life. I live in upstate NY. The year that we had an ice storm that shut the power down for a week, my family and I stood in the snow of our freezing backyard and watched an amazing lightshow. Since there was no power, the lights showed clearly. I never knew that they could be different colors. It was beautiful and well worth the cold!
I don't feel so bad about not seeing them then. Mind you, I knew it would be harder in the southern Canadian provinces, but thought there was a chance we could while on the train for two nights in the middle of nowhere.
An Icelandic friend of mine says winter is the bst time to see them. But yeah, can you imagine? “Have you tried rebooting?”
Well in winter they have near 24 hours of darkness to see them.
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I've lived in Alaska since 1979 and I've never seen the fracking things. 😠
People tend to forget that the southern hemisphere also has lights called Southern Lights known as Aurora Australis. Northern Lights being theAurora Borealis.
I had to really stop myself from facepalming and head desking after reading this.
l live where they are on quite frequently, and yes, tourons do ask that question. And when do the deer turn into moose?
This is a beautiful picture. Change of subject: too many people are now asking stupid questions like when do the northern lights turn on, are those bears real? Oh, you mean it's not scheduled to erupt while I'm here? Where are the whales? and so on. People seem to not have any sense of nature, or care about it. Hopefully, the pre-teens and teenagers coming up will be more responsible and smarter.
I got to see them in north western Washington when I was a kid. My parents left me and my sis in the camper to go get a drink and came and woke us up to look at them. They were amazing. As a photographer, my dream is to go to Tromso, Norway to go see them from there.
Growing up, I saw them fairly frequently, at least a couple of times a year. I learned recently that the 80s and 90s was a period of higher solar activity so they were more common. It wasn’t until I moved out of Canada that I realized how cool it was to see the Lights so much - don’t get me wrong, I always liked seeing them but it was also a normal part of my life as a kid and teen.
Went on two trips to Iceland, 11 years in between. Both at end of March/start of April. Got lucky on both occasions!
They have been seen as far as Pennsylvania in the past few months more and more often which is even more rare, just last week they were seen here in PA
Won't be that rare in 2025 and/or 2026, the end of the 11 year solar cycle when the sun's poles flip again.
The coming 18 months is expected to have a very high incidence of Northern Lights.
We used to have the "aurora watch" in Scotland. I have not yet seen the northern lights, but it is my dream to see them one day.
My daughter went to Iceland and took a night boat tour to see them. They didn't happen. Got a coupon for a free boat tour next time she is in Iceland. We live in the USA. Might not get to redeem that coupon anytime soon. 😂
We booked a Northern Lights tour in Iceland for June, 2022. It is cancelled as the Northern Lights usually start in October. So why let us book it for June in the foist place?
That time of year there are only a couple hours of darkness. In July when I was there it never got completely dark. Whoever offers that is scamming.
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Green eyes make up just two percent of the global population.
My husband and I have green eyes. So does my father. Statistically rare maybe, but in some places more common than others
Common sense.
Oh boy, is this a big one these days. Goes hand in hand with the other entry about critical thinking.
Deaths from nuclear power.
Pollution from coal power kills more people *every day* than nuclear power has in its entire history.
An honest politician.
That is almost an oxymoron. I think some go into politics to try and help make a difference. But the rest are only in it for themselves, for money, for power, to become famous—-or infamous—-but not at all for their constituents. They could care less if their constituents are starving, as long as they can order steak in DC.
Solid brown fur cats, apparently it’s some kind of recessive gene in them.
Humility and an understanding that we’re sometimes the victim and sometimes the perpetrator. No one is ever just one or the other.
Affordable housing.
This should be wayyyyyyyy higher than it is. Here in my town, they keep building all these new apartments talking about affordable housing. Affordable for who?! when their studios cost $1600 to start!! GTFOH
People who remain friends with you once you leave school.
Empathy. When people want to and are able to understand the experience of another human being, without projection of own ideas and experiences onto others.
Kids getting kidnapped by random strangers in public. My parents always acted like every adult on the street was a potential abductor and that child kidnapping was rampant, but I never knew anyone who actually got kidnapped and the statistics really don’t back up their level of anxiety. I’m in my mid-twenties now, and they still act like I’m gonna get attacked by some rando on the street at any moment. Based on personal experience and statistical evidence, I am much more afraid of violence from those I am close to than I am of strangers.
People giving out [illegal substances] with Halloween candy.
When I was a drug user in my 20s (45 now), I'd always laugh about this. I paid too good of money to be giving it out for free. Really though.
People in genuinely happy, healthy, well adjusted relationships.
I lost my partner in January, we were together for almost three years. It was the best relationship either of us had ever had. I have only good memories, except for when he suffered a cardiac arrest and died right in front of me. We had many lively discussions and debates; we enjoyed time together and apart; we shared everything, supported each other emotionally, were loving, affectionate and caring. It was the first healthy relationship we had. I miss him every second of every day, but I am so glad that I got to spend that time with him
The time that you have with your close ones before it passes away.
My bf passed away 6 weeks ago and I can't help going over our time together and wishing I could go back and do some things differently. I wish I'd told him I loved him more and prioritised our relationship more than I did. After 13yrs together I just took it for granted that he'd always be around and then he suddenly just dropped dead.
Helium.
Self-awareness.
And situational awareness. I went grocery shopping yesterday. Twice I had to say "excuse me" to someone blocking the entire aisle with their cart and body...both times AFTER they had looked directly at me, then continued browsing. As always, the store's exit was partially blocked by a herd of half-sized carts left there by selfish shoppers too lazy and entitled to walk a few meters.
Blimps. I live in northeast Ohio near the Goodyear hangar. We see them all the time. I had to pull up a list, that northeast Ohio has 3 out of 4 operating Goodyear blimps named Wingfoot 1 2 and 3; Only maybe 12 are operating anywhere in the world, with a total of 25 existing at all. But we see them all the time at Wingfoot lake disc golf course. Edit: Helium filled semi-rigid airships.
Having loving and supportive parents and a good home life growing up.
I think this Stereotype is pushed a lot by Hollywood and TV, because writers tend to be people who's creativity was nurtured by their supportive parents and they write what they know.
It's why almost every family on TV lives in a picturesque suburbia, maybe with a pool, two loving parents and a comfortable life.
Yes and no. Some people who write for a living came from s****y and totally unsupportive families, but rose above it. So maybe their portrayal of the stereotypical happy family is the family they always wished they’d had themselves. Their fantasy dream family who they turned to in their sleep to help them get through the s**t from their real families. They’re also the writers who are able to accurately portray s****y families and s****y people if those types of characters are necessary for the storyline. The best writers write about what they know. If you’ve been coddled and had the perfect dream life as a child, then you’ve never been exposed to s****y people, so couldn’t write about them very accurately.
The percentage of people with eating disorders that are underweight (5% of suffers).
Note: this post originally had 36 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Ya know whats NOT rare- dog farts! I have 5 dogs and one is trying to end me with them right now! Well now I know who got in the trash earlier!
My puppers are older (just turned 11, and nearly 10), and there are times when I really wished I had a gas mask. I swear some of them have a texture as well as an odor.
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Rarer than people think. Deaths from poisonous animals and plants in Australia.
Heard the great Forrest Galante talk about this. He as a Zimbabwean laughs at Australias dangerous critters. He says something in line of - in Australia you have a few snakes and insects that can be dangerous, try and go out for a night stroll in the african savanna and see what happens😅
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My, how many of these posts were about people losing their husband/ wife/ SO. I watched the pain my mom went through. She did keep it quiet, but I could still see it. I heard it every time she played Unchained Melody on the piano. She was playing it for dad. There just aren’t words to convey the feelings in my heart for these folks.
Depends on where you are. In africa? Super rare I suppose . Here in sweden, not so much
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I can't handle it when people complain about how this or that is different "these days", especially when YOUR parents said the same thing about YOUR generation.
Red-heads. No, it's not going extinct, but it's very rare. And as populations blend, it will get extremely rare. Let's say 1.3% of the world is red-headed, and 3% carry the redhead gene. You need both parents to carry the gene to be red-headed. So if everybody's mixing genes with everybody, you get 0.1% red heads. Of course, Chinese are still more likely to mix with Chinese than Irish, so that's not happening really soon.
Well it is extremely rare!! Outside of usa… so that would make it extremely rare in general. Usa is just one nation of 185 or whatever
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Ya know whats NOT rare- dog farts! I have 5 dogs and one is trying to end me with them right now! Well now I know who got in the trash earlier!
My puppers are older (just turned 11, and nearly 10), and there are times when I really wished I had a gas mask. I swear some of them have a texture as well as an odor.
Load More Replies... Rarer than people think. Deaths from poisonous animals and plants in Australia.
Heard the great Forrest Galante talk about this. He as a Zimbabwean laughs at Australias dangerous critters. He says something in line of - in Australia you have a few snakes and insects that can be dangerous, try and go out for a night stroll in the african savanna and see what happens😅
Load More Replies... My, how many of these posts were about people losing their husband/ wife/ SO. I watched the pain my mom went through. She did keep it quiet, but I could still see it. I heard it every time she played Unchained Melody on the piano. She was playing it for dad. There just aren’t words to convey the feelings in my heart for these folks.
Depends on where you are. In africa? Super rare I suppose . Here in sweden, not so much
Load More Replies... I can't handle it when people complain about how this or that is different "these days", especially when YOUR parents said the same thing about YOUR generation.
Red-heads. No, it's not going extinct, but it's very rare. And as populations blend, it will get extremely rare. Let's say 1.3% of the world is red-headed, and 3% carry the redhead gene. You need both parents to carry the gene to be red-headed. So if everybody's mixing genes with everybody, you get 0.1% red heads. Of course, Chinese are still more likely to mix with Chinese than Irish, so that's not happening really soon.
Well it is extremely rare!! Outside of usa… so that would make it extremely rare in general. Usa is just one nation of 185 or whatever
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