I maintain that it’s pretty simple, actually. Humans are animals, just like any other. That comes with irrationality baked in. We think we’re so much better than, say, orangutans, but are we really? I’m not impressed. I often think about how we would behave if we didn’t have language or opposable thumbs. I realized one day that all we have to do is observe traffic.

People don’t know what words mean anymore. Everything is hyperbole

I’ve heard two theories for this that I think are plausible:

• A feeling of familiarity even though this is a brand new situation. Your brain is always trying to determine the best course of action from experiences where you’ve encountered that problem before. Sometimes we have a false positive where the situation is so similar you “remember it”, but it’s obviously slightly different and new.

• Essentially a memory read/write error. Your brain is recollecting as it’s consolidating the memory causing wonkiness (technical term) in your experience. You think you remember, but what you’re remembering is actually the present experience.

I still say “bless you”