March 21, 2005

• I notice this all the time. Mostly it's boring stuff like seeing red Jettas everywhere when you own a red Jetta or (in my current case) pregnant women all around you when you're pregnant. But once in a while you hear about something out of the blue, and then a week later it's on blogs, and then on the TV news, and it seems to escalate and then just vanish. And of course I can't think of a concrete example; I just know this has happened.
• Wouldn't 'coincidence' be a better and less loaded word ? I've got plenty. There is this time when I was in summer camp and suddenly thought about my goldfish left at home and wondered how I would feel(*) if it died. Later the same day I got my parents on the phone and they asked me whether I wanted a new goldfish because the old one had died and they got rid of it. (*) the conclusion was: not much.
• Yeah, the car example is a common one, I've had people use that as an example for this before. Skeptics can write that off as 'you're just noticing it now' but that doesn't cover all of it. I tell you the other thing, is that despite the weirdness and the commonality (I don't know anyone, irrespective of belief, who hasn't had this kind of experience) you tend to forget the particular examples. Now why is that? One I remember from college is learning a new word. I'd never run across the word 'kudos' before, despite having a huge addiction to reading. I am sure I would have noticed this word, because everytime I came across a new word, I'd look it up. I hear 'kudos' in this lecture, I think 'wtf is kudos' - look it up, go 'oh, cool' & within a week I'm seeing it in magazines, hearing people say it.. then nothing again. It's like you can summon information. Koant, to my way of thinking, a coincidence is a one-off, by definition. Synchronicity is something that happens in series. Perhaps you would prefer seriality? Anyway, the Jung thing is splitting hairs. I tend not to listen to professional skeptics cos they sound like they've already made up their minds, which isn't scientific, imho. "UFO's can't be real, because there are no UFO's"
• Yes, several of those; the classic moment an idea or concept or image or sound pops up, emerges from one's brain miasma and sometime later, this very same thing is there, on a just opened magazine page, or never-before read book. I've had a couple synchronistic events that really make me wonder at either the human mind's power, or the same mind's tendency to find causal explanations, to see patterns where there might be none. More common are the 'brain share' ocurrences; when you and someone think and/or say the same thing out of the blue, at the same moment, not as a reaction to some stimuli. This I've noticed happens to me with those people I have a great affection to; people I trust, love, and have a big affinity with. Those I'm more 'open' to.
• Just yesterday, my friend discovered two people who share his exact birthdate.
• In a world of 6 billion people in an infinite universe. it would be more exceptional if coincidences didn't happen. (Glibly paraphrases Richard Dawkins and runs away)
• Stray, talking about birthdays, I have a twin whose landlord has the same birthday as ours. My roommate was born on the same date (even the same year, just a few hours behind us), I have two close friends who have the same birthday and I have three acquaintances with the same birthday. My twin says that he knows some more people with the same birthday. All this freaks me out (in a pleasant way). Am I and my twin some kind of attractors for people with same birthday as ours? A typical conversation after I find someone shares my birthday : "Really. So is mine. This is weird. Are you joking? No? This is so cool". Talk about synchronicity. Kitfisto, I believe in coincidence only as much as you do, but I find this special case strange coincidence. Yet another coincidence - only last week my friend observed the same phenomenon : He saw some word on Millionaire show and he suddenly saw that word in many magazines, shops and so on. He swears to death that he has never seen that word before and he would have looked up if he had seen it somewhere else (like he did now).
• I love co-inkidinkies too, I just think we choose not to remember all the times when the phone doesn't ring when we think of someone, or we see a word that hasn't recently been forgrounded in our consciousness. It's the same kind of principle as to why some people think others are psychic - they only remember the bits they get right ("I see an older relative called Mary" etc) But like I say, I like it when things like that happen too. I went out with a girl who had exactly the same birthdate as me once, with barely an hour in between delivery times.
• My whole frigging life is full of these. It freaks me out but at the same time I love it. It helps me believe in some sort of higher power, which is an issue I've always struggled with. My ex and I* always used to think we were psychically linked or something, because we'd always be thinking about calling the other at the exact moment before the phone would ring. We'd also constantly be in the exact same mood - we'd have the same "bad days" and "good days" for ages, virtually without exception. *last time i mention him, i swear
• There are about 500,000 seconds in a waking week. Say you have about a single perception a second; then the chances of having a 1 in 500,000 miracle are quite good, every single week. Good lord! Think of the kind of miracles you could have in one year. The chances of that happening are 1 in a billion! And it happened! No, I kid. Who knows. Though if you're a twin, you might be talking about birthdays more than most.
• God ... I haven't got time to record them all and Mofi would run out of server space! The most recent. It's my stag do this coming saturday (help) we're going sailing. The woman who's organising the sailing is called Lucy ... A few weeks ago she phoned me on my mobile and I had a chat with her (starting of course with the words 'Hi Lucy' and told her she needed to call my best man ... As I put the phone down my colleague said that reminds me ... I must call my friend Lucy ... 10 secs later she said ... ah her phone's engaged ... It was only a week later that we realised that the two Lucys were THE SAME PERSON ... Total coincidence ...
• A nick I have from #mofirc is Muffin/Muffins ("muffin" being a derivative of "muffpub", which is Mfpb sounded out). So just five minutes ago, I headed over to tracicle's LiveJournal, and what's the very first word my eyes hit on the page? peach and yoghurt muffins and zucchini slice
• "Say you have about a single perception a second; then the chances of having a 1 in 500,000..." I agree, but we're not talking about single occurences, but groups of occurences, which is what stands out about these events. Once you get beyond the first coincidence, to 2 or 3 in a row, that knocks down the mathematical probabilities considerably. I'm no mathematician, but I'm sure someone out there can figure that one out. I thought of another one. A few weeks back I was reading some website about the top 100 movie villains, and there was pennywise the clown. I thought, gee, haven't seen that movie in a while. Idly I GISed 'pennywise' & came up with a picture of the suicided musician from punk band Pennywise. Interesting, I thought, & read up on the story about that. Then I switch on my fileshare program to get a file I wanted, I think it was a star trek episode, & the only user on the network who had the file I wanted had the screenname 'pennywise'. Ok, that's not as weird cos I deliberately looked for images of Pennywise, but I'd never heard of that band before. Once you get beyond the one or two occurences, to these things happening in rows or groups, that goes beyond, imho, the 1 in 500,000 chances thing. But you can never prove this, because its experiential & can't be recreated in a lab. BTW, I'm not saying it's god or something, I'm more inclined to think it's something to do with consciousness influencing random events on some microscopic level, quantum thingamy groupings or whatnot.
• There's a book called "Innumeracy," which I recommend for you all. In it, he starts looking at coincidences and probability. He, also, says that it would be far less likely for things like this to never happen. And even in causal chains, the probability is still there that someone is experiencing something similar. It's kind of like dying. It is extremely unlikely that you will die of a car accident. It is unlikely that you will die of heart disease. It is unlikely that you will die of cancer. But it is pretty likely that you will die of a car accident, cancer or heart disease (and clearly, you can only die of one). It is unlikely that you will be thinking of something at the same time a friend is or a phone rings. But it is extremely likely that someone will be.
• Where does that 'coinkydinky' garbage come from? I had never encountered it until I found it on some web forum a few days back, and now it seems like it's everywhere. On topic, not every person on the same plane as you is a member of your karass. Beware of granfalloons — the false karasses — that seem to be tied with a common thread, but are meaningless in terms of the ways in which God gets things done.
• Last week, I heard Moira Kelly referenced three times in two days, despite having not even thought of her for years previous to that.
• To you it's garbage, to me it's side splittingly funny mispronounciation. I'm still laughing now.
• Then record the times you thought of something and it didn't show up. Come on, I'm sure you're smarter than this. The world is complex and fascinating by itself without imposing mumbo-jumbo bullshit on it. I found this book on the topic to be very interesting. (It also addresses selective memory, i.e. this, which is a more everyday thing.)
• "It is unlikely that you will be thinking of something at the same time a friend is or a phone rings. But it is extremely likely that someone will be." This is pure sophistry. Very amusing, but it doesn't actually mean anything. Basically, this is the equivalent of saying 'just ignore the man behind the curtain'. Again, it is not the probability that a coincidence will happen, it is the far less probable situation that it will happen in series. The only skeptical arguments about this I've ever read use this strawman. In other words, it's not seeing the red Jetta, it's noticing 5 red Jettas.
• Ever seen an ant? Then before you know it, it's 'Christ, look at all those ants'. I'm not saying these things don't happen, just that in the mind-bogglingly huge number of things that can happen, sometimes these things will. Doesnt mean we can't say 'Wow' when they do, same as we can say 'wow, what a lovely tree', or whatever.
• In other words, it's not seeing the red Jetta, it's noticing 5 red Jettas What about the five white Cadillacs and six blue Honda Civics you saw that day, but don't remember because they didn't mean anything to you at the time? It's called selective memory. But if you have an alternate theory as to what's causing the string of coincidences, I'd honestly like to hear it.
• This guy I met the other night at a party is a Cancer with Taurus rising & a Virgo moon; I am a Taurus with Cancer rising & a Virgo moon. This seemed deeply meaningful at the time . . *sobs* but he hasn't called me, the rat fink. Not however to belittle it, because I do believe in synchronicities & find them fascinating. That and the way things generally fit together sometimes, as in the very odd way, laced with coincidence and timing magic that my son ended up going to the school he now attends and loves, or the way I got this job, including the fact that it happened about a month after they actually got a new computer network (I would have quickly gone crazy on the old one) and stuff like that. I also love Richard Brautigan, one of the most influential writers in my life. I remember the day he died; it was awful.
• I have a theory that there are, in fact, only about 10,000 people in the world ... the rest are just padding the picture out ...
• You do a lot of acid, Miller? Back in the hippy days? I first heard 'coinkydink' in an Augy Doggy and Doggy Daddy cartoon when I was a kid. NOT new.
• Skeptics can write that off as 'you're just noticing it now' but that doesn't cover all of it. Yeah, actually it does. Koant: Thanks for that link; it led me to this, which gives me an excellent new word. Apophenia -- suddenly you see it everywhere!
• You want to talk about internet coincidence and synchronicity? I've spent the last two weeks trying to compose a post about this very topic to my blog. Still haven't figured out how I want to tackle it. That's meta-synchronicity, baby. I do have one: by unbelievably huge coincidence, I "met" (so far only online) a new friend from my hometown, where I haven't lived in years, when he accidentally stumbled across my site just by hitting Blogger's "next blog" link. Turns out he's close friends with an old college instructor (and favorite mandolin picker) of mine. Then I found out about a month later that the best man at my wedding knew him quite well through debate in high school. Odds against our meeting in such a way have to be astronomical.
• "Skeptics can write that off as 'you're just noticing it now' but that doesn't cover all of it. Yeah, actually it does." No, actually, it doesn't. Would you like to dance? Rocks don't fall from the sky, the Royal Society patiently told the farmer who brought them chunks of 'thunder stone'. They knew this, they told him, because "there are no rocks in the sky". Please see the post about 13 unexplainable scientific facts. No one is saying the pixies did it, so please don't worry that your universe is falling apart. some just wonder that maybe there's a natural mechanism at work here that has yet to be explored. Quantum theorists postulate a link between the observer & observed phenomenon - & quantum mechanics has been startlingly good at producing observable, repeatable, accurate results - like the speed of electrons coursing thru the alloy in your CPU for instance. Or the atom bomb. The theory behind it is not magic, just very very weird. Twin slit experiment, languagehat. The problem here is that the skeptics think those who are noticing seriality are trying to conjure some hidden variable (let's forget the fact that Einstein was a hidden variable man) - they're not, they're pointing out that perhaps there is something at work that creates patterns in what seemingly is chaos. The error is attributing a personal link to the event, imho, which is where some people find a problem with the thing. "..five white Cadillacs and six blue Honda Civics.." Were they one after the other? What *mechanism* creates a series, where I pick up a random book, think about the author, then randomly see reference to the very data I was thinking about, scant hours after this, when for years I never encountered that data, despite having a personal interest in it? Probability does not predict this. Neurology does not predict this. Jung didn't suggest this, he was on about some group-mind archetypal symbol pool, or something. Probability suggests random groupings, random patterns. Not groupings related to the current focus of the observer; that is by definition not random, because of the involvement of the human consciousness - the interested observer. The best that apologists can offer is blather about "well if you stood on the corner long enough..." hey, calculate it for me. Bring me a mathematician.
• "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time" Time for some of you to read Michael Shermer-- very readable book, and will answer the squid/Jetta/Moira Kelly 'winkidinks in plain English.
• yow... sorry to echo Wurwilf. In all fairness, I didn't click his link... ahem, what a coincidence! (and snaps to Rocket88-- )
• I've read Shermer. Typical of what I call the 'religious skeptic'. He's the arch advocate of skeptisism when it comes to claims of the "paranormal". Let me make it clear *once again* to the dense, we are not talking about the paranormal. Twits. Shermer is not a true skeptic. He's dedicated to debunking alternative views and is not objective. Shermer has no credentials. He's an armchair researcher and more than once has been caught twisting the conclusions of real specialists to his own benefit, for example Pim van Lommel. In 2003 SciAm, Shermer took the data from van Lommel's research and twisted the conclusions to fit his own foregone conclusions. For instance, his debunking of NDE's has recently been shown, by an independant scientific study, to be completely wrong! So please, let's stop quoting skeptics and talk about *our own experiences* which was rather the point of this thread.
• I forgot to add, my opinion of Shermer is based on his quotes to USA Today when critiquing Rupert Sheldrake's book 'Sense of Being Stared At'. Shermer said "the events Sheldrake describes don't require a theory and are perfectly explicable by normal means". When pushed on the details of his rebuttal, Shermer admitted he hadn't even seen the book.
• My favorite recent one: I had to take my senile grandma Galena to get her hair done. A few days later, I get some random-word spam. First two words of the subject line: haircut galena. [cue twilight zone music] My pet peeve, though, is people citing quantum mechanics as "since no one really understands it, it can mean whatever I want it to mean". QM is very specific. A lot of people think it's a "hole" in science where they can slide in souls or free-will or ESP or what-have-you and this is just the result of people not understanding it very well. Random means random, not "controlled by mystical powers." There's a big difference.
• Link here on how Jung's synchronicity ties in with other aspects of his work. As SW2B says, this word applies to subjective experience of an individual, and so objective/scientific scrutiny is difficult if not impossible. Which doesn't mean that it lacks significance/validity for a person, or for processes occurring within that person's awareness.
• Linky no worky, dear bees. And to echo what AS2B said, no one here is invoking Jesus or Krishna or magical ass-gnomes. My understanding of non-linear dynamics, for instance, tells me that patterns damn near inevitably emerge in seemingly "random" systems. My experience sometimes bears that out. Now, granted that the human mind tries to impose order on the universe, sometimes these patterns are objectively demonstrable, and just plain fascinating. That's what's at the core here, not some pro-theistic argument. There's no need for a scientific smackdown of our sense of wonder. We could stick with the spirit of the original post and post stories of weird intarweb-related coincidences, and just have some fun. Just sayin'. Sheesh.
• Well, here we go. . . last night a friend & I had a kind of strange encounter with an acquaintance which left us both with that weird "ulterior motive" feeling - she talked a lot about the Legacy Center, which, it turns out, is related to the Landmark people, which is one of the first things I saw online this morning. While over at the blue (ahem) I also saw this thread about Freebird and Lynyrd Skynyrd; what should then come through my fax machine but a talent agent looking for gigs for the Jimmie Van Zant band? So it's probably all because of this thread. . .
• ASTB: you have an axe to grind. Do you, perchance, have a blog? (Kinda funny that you take the guy to task for having an opinion on a book he hasn't read, when you haven't read his books yourself. Funny, that.) Look, if you want to believe in faeries, believe in faeries. But don't get shirty, insist everyone believe in faeries, and cloak your faery-magic in "science" and "mathematics." It's pixie dust. Which is all right, if that's your thing; I'm not going to tell you what to believe. Just don't tell me what to believe. Again: blog? Might want to consider it.

• exp(πi) : Random means random, not "controlled by mystical powers."

  If by "random" you mean the measurable states together with their associated probabilities, then it is not that a given system is randomly in some state but that our measurements of it place it in a given state with some probability. Quantum mechanics prescribes an upper bound on the precision of 'measurements'. It certainly leaves room for speculation about the exact state of a quantum system, or whether such a concept is sensible. In other words, QM says "If it ain't exactly measurable, it don't matter", rather than "If it ain't exactly measurable, it don't exist" (i.e., the claim that "nature is fundamentally non-deterministic", a.k.a. the Copenhagen interpretation). Of course this "incompleteness" in QM is no reason to believe any old crackpot theory about souls or whatever.
• The last line of the original post is: I know there's something going on with this shit, but I don't know what. To me, that invites discussion of what is going on with this shit, including the opinion that nothing is going on, except randomness (and randomness *does* include patterns). If this is just a chatfilter post (or a GYOBFW post), then I'll tell you all about the time I flopped a royal flush in a hold 'em game (a 650,000 to 1 shot).
• My first response "This is so fucking Oprah." My second response "It's happened to me too many times to count." My third response "How can we make money from it (ala Robert Tilton)"
• At Swim: Do you not understand conditional probability at all? Five red Jettas in a row out of how many cars seen by people that day? Flip a coin. Does there have to be "universal synchronicity" in order for you to get heads two times in a row? Five times? One thousand times? Each event is unlikely (and with coins, or cards, we have a handy limiter on the math), but there is no required mechanism to get one million heads flips in a row, aside from increasing the total number of flips high enough that a streak like that is likely. (If you want, I can do the math for you.) You may be amazed by parlor games (in a group of 100 people, it's very likely that two of them will share birthdays, though the specific birthday cannot be predicted) but please, don't get all pissy when someone notes that it's just a parlor game. (Maybe I'm just a little tired of you inventing a man behind the curtain to explain coincidences.)
• I find the ammount of synchronicity we find in the world astoundingly high. This could be the result of clustering forces, that connect different seemingly unrelated things in astounding ways. A primitive example would be that you really see astoundingly many red Jettas, because the people that have red Jettas like you prefer the same coffeeshops, boutiques, yoga centers. Those are subtle matters of taste around which people may cluster, that are somewhat more differentiated than marketings "30-40 year old male yuppies" differentiation scheme.
• MonkeyFilter: I know there's something going on with this shit, but I don't know what. MonkeyFilter: In a world of 6 billion people in an infinite universe. MonkeyFilter: Talk about synchronicity. MonkeyFilter: The chances of that happening are 1 in a billion! MonkeyFilter: To you it's garbage, to me it's side splittingly funny MonkeyFilter: This is pure sophistry. Very amusing, but it doesn't actually mean anything. MonkeyFilter: Bring me a mathematician. MonkeyFilter: Twits. MonkeyFilter: [cue twilight zone music] MonkeyFilter: It's pixie dust. MonkeyFilter: No one here is invoking Jesus or Krishna or magical ass-gnomes. MonkeyFilter: This is so fucking Oprah. MonkeyFilter: How can we make money from it? I don't understand it. MonkeyFilter tags--I see them everywhere.
• ASTB, I again have to second Wurwilf... discount the majority of Shermer's book, but the chapter that deals with recognition of coincidence and pattern is not his-- he's simply putting the well-regarded aggregate theory in layman's terms. And while it's fun to revel in our own perception-- and again, I happen to own a Red Jetta (oooh!), but don't expect the entire population of Monkeys to let the "I know there's something going on with this shit" slide.
• *reads BlueHorse's post and does a spit take* EXACTLY!
• I can help you. I care about you. Synchronicities are REAL. Do you want to feel that feeling every day? If you send me forty dollars, I can make it happen EVEN MORE. Your life will change. You remember that first time it happened to you? Do you remember how that felt? How would you like that feeling EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE! Your forty dollars will be THE BEST INVESTMENT OF YOUR LIFE!
• I just couldn't help myself, and Googled a bit. I found: www.crystalinks.com/synchronicity.html A quote: "There are no accidents - just synchroncity wheels - the gears of time - the wheels of time - the wheel of karma - wheels within wheels - the alchemy of creation - the Philosopher's Stone - Sacred Geometry=SG=StarGate - evolution of consciousness." (don't forget the wheels of the Red Jettas....) and yes, the site includes examples of synchronicities, including: "Everyone's favorite.....You drive to a place where parking is "next to impossible" and someone pulls out of a parking spot or it is just waiting for you."
• Wow! I thought I was going to be the only one posting to this thread. How about that??
• Always record your synchronicities: I suppose this is a Curious George. Synchronicity. You know it. Suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone will say 'plate', or 'shrimp', or 'plate o' shrimp' out of the blue. No explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. Ok, so yesterday I'm looking thru' my bookshelf for a decent book to read & I see Richard Brautigan's 'The Hawkline Monster' which is one of my favorites. This is a book that makes end-runs around technical convention, just like Burroughs' Naked Lunch, just like Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition, just like RAW's Schroedinger's Cat trilogy. All of a sudden I think 'I've had this book for 10 years & I know nothing about Brautigan'. So I look him up on the internets. I learn a) he shot himself in '84, and b) he's got a daughter named Ianthe. So I file it in the brainbox & forget about it. 10 minutes ago, I read the update on Robot Wisdom blog, & there's a link to Susie Bright's Hunter Thompson tribute. Within a few paragraphs it mentions Ianthe Brautigan & her father's suicide. I have been online since '97 & never come across a direct reference to Brautigan, so far as I am aware. One time, when I had a blog, I posted about giant squid. I was then on the phone to a friend in California, he says 'I'm just readin your blog post about squid,' then he chokes and says 'you gotta be kidding! I just looked at your squid post, turned around to flip on the tv, and there's a squid on screen, it's some nature show.. I had no idea it was on..' Tell me your synchronicity stories, if you can recall them. I know there's something going on with this shit, but I don't know what.
• :)
• ...you know, despite all that, I have to say that the Police songs, parts one AND two, are both great. At the same time! Spooky. There has to be something going on. BlueHorse rocks also. Separately from the Police.
• and Wurwilf-- shewilf, as I know understand, you rock... albeit separately from Blue Horse. Y'know, I'm going to send this link to my admin, who speaks three languages *fluently* but is convinced that she has "unique polarity", as well as the personalities as ascribed by the Chinese birthing calendar (she's going to wait to have kids until the next "year of the Dragon"), and says that while she's sold on Microevolution, she can't buy into the Macro version. And I'm being called a twit today?
• Thanks mct -- . link. Above for some reason insists on adding a gratuitous period before the word link, although I haven't typed it in. However, the link seems to function now.
• The red Jetta thing was a mistake. That is coincidence, when you notice something just because it's relevant to you. Nothing paranormal about it - although five in a row would be pretty weird, if they were the same type as mine which was a very unusual pinky-red. But synchronicity is a different thing, beyond coincidence, that I still don't think is paranormal. It just happens (when it's happened to me) that you've come in on the beginning of a trend, probably accidentally. And because you've thought about this minor concept and then see it somewhere a few days later, your memory pulls it out because it's relevant to you. Hm, so maybe it is just like the red Jetta. I need to think of a better example, I think. It's an interesting subject. And I really hadn't thought of it as some zany new-age karmic thing before. That would be enough to make me a firm non-believer. ;)
• The most copper-bottomed, platinum-card proof of divine intervention, of some holy master-plan, would be if there were no coincidences at all! That really would look suspicious. (Iain M. Banks, Piece)
• One time my sister called me up to tell me that she had just had a very vivid dream that I had died. She was calling to see if I was dead. I was not.
• I hadn't thought about my ex in years, and not long ago she just popped into my head, out of the blue. And here's the funny part: the very next day I found her house and cut the brake lines on her SUV. Weird, huh? j/k or am I?
• This is tangental, but it happens often enough that it has had a profound influence on how I view my connection with the world; I am beloved by the Small Gods but hated by the Large. Meaning I am very 'lucky' with things turning up free after I've decided I needed them. Not just regular dumpster or free pile stuff like basic lamps or dishes, but fairly obscure stuff like serenity fountains, sewing machines, and a lamp that had exactly the specifics I wanted; torchiere with a second adjustable reading lamp, and all in a brushed nickle finish. Somebody put it out by a dumpster and you know why? Because it needed a $4.00 lightbulb. I've actually got into the habit of waiting a bit for these things rather than buying them - the window for them to turn up seems to be about a month.
• Speak of the devil.... Just watching "The Lonely Island" episodes which were posted in Metafilter... (The 'Bu) the Mpeg stopped loading so I clicked back to this tab... The last thing I heard was the Kid Aaron saying "Harvard's great, but I miss the 'Bu, Weird, huh?" Which left me right at Tenacious Pettle's post... Weird, huh? *is creeped out now*
• This thread reminds me of a story a friend told me years ago: He dreamt that he was in an empty white space, and he could hear his buddy yelling his name over and over somewhere in the distance. He kept wandering around the space, but couldn't figure out where the voice was coming from. The next morning, the buddy called him, and told him he'd dreamt that he was buried in a snowdrift and his calls for help were ignored by my friend, who appeared to be strolling around obliviously. My friend thought this was an amazing coincidence, maybe proof of some psychic link or something. But the buddy's reaction to the shared dream was, "What!! You admit it! You were right there and you ignored me while I was freezing to death?! What kind of friend are you?!" Fortunately, the friendship survived.
• I thought of one. The Big Lebowski is set during the first gulf war, in the first scene Dude is buying half & half from Ralphs, & has to write a check for 69 cents. The Bush 'this aggression will not stand' speech is on the radio, IIRC. The date on the check is September 11 1991. The film was made in '98. /shrug "I know there's something going on with this shit, but I don't know what." I don't see this statement as a wacko loony thing, he/she's saying that there is a process at work that we are not perceiving. I think that covers a lot of ground. I like skeptics, specially SCICOP types, they always get really upset about things. Isn't James Randi a member of NAMBLA? YOu know what, I prefer not to get my reality interpreted by pedos, but that's just me :D free ad hominem with every box of cornflakes
• WTF? Google reveals nothing on that claim... "Earth to Doris, come in Doris..."/ Was/Not Was
• I finally found the place I saw this, which was, incidentally, only a day or so ago. Oh yeah, wasn't there some scientific study with random number generators that showed weird variances just before the tsunami in asia & 9-11? Like there was a ripple in random number groups before a shattering event in human society? Kinda like a tremor in the force. Hmmm.
• "Hold on, you have to slow down. You're losing it, you have to take a breath. Listen to yourself. You're connecting a computer bug I had, a computer bug you might have had, and some religious hogwash. If you want to find the number two sixteen in the world, you'll be able to pull it out of anywhere. Two hundred and sixteen steps from your street comer to your front door. Two hundred and sixteen seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, it will filter everything else out and find examples of that thing everywhere. Three hundred and twenty, four hundred and fifty, twenty-three. Whatever! You've chosen two sixteen and you'll find it everywhere in nature. But Max, as soon as you discard scientific rigor, you are no longer a mathematician. You become a numerologist." from Pi.
• Look up 'james randi sex tape'. I dunno about the Nambla thing, that was just a joke. He has been convicted of libel tho. That doesn't mean anything. This gets back to the nazi musician crossdresser discussion, doesn't it?
• Pretty good joke, randomly slandering people. Ha ha.
• Randimly slandering people ;) Anyway, what does it matter if he wants to solicit sex from teenage boys? That doesn't invalidate his research, does it? Besides, he can escape from jail if he wants to.
• How to make money from coincidences? Use the Birthday Paradox that someone else mentioned already. Normally i would reveal this for $40 but to Monkeys, it's free!!!.... Go into a room with 25 people. Bet someone in there that two of them share exactly the same birthday. The odds of a match are about 57%. That gives you an advantage of 7% which is better than most roulette games. Repeat multiple times and retire rich. Want better odds? In a room of 34 people, the odds are 80% in your favour. Mathematical proof available for $2 or a banana. The birthday paradox does provide an example of why weirdness is a natural part of this wonderful world. The probability of me having someone else's birthday is only 1/365. But the probability of a bunch of people sharing some unspecified birthday is a lot higher. Soooo, the probability of middleclasstool meeting a certain specified individual in a bizarre way is pretty low. But the probability of him meeting an unspecified individual in an interesting way is probably high, and definitely not astronomical, especially given that we are six degrees of separation from everyone on the planet. If you walk this earth for any length of time, you is gonna see some wacky goings-ons.
• I don't see this statement as a wacko loony thing, he/she's saying that there is a process at work that we are not perceiving. I think that covers a lot of ground. That's what I tried to say earlier. The only specific mention AS2B made of &deity; was to specifically point out that (s)he wasn't meaning to posit the existence of &deity;. Here's a quote: BTW, I'm not saying it's god or something, I'm more inclined to think it's something to do with consciousness influencing random events on some microscopic level, quantum thingamy groupings or whatnot. A debatable point, the consciousness thing, but hardly wacko superstitious rhetoric, especially given the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, &c. It's likely only coincidences, patterns emerging in the natural way that chaos math says they do. The only people who have been making arguments about &deity; are those who have been arguing that this is a stupid argument in support of the existence of &deity;. Which it is. And which not one single person has made in this thread. The whole point of this thread was to have a discussion in which we share bizarre web-related coincidence stories, explore a sense of wonder about occurrences in the natural world (at least, that's how I took it). Yes, it's chatfilter, but we've got a long history of chatfilter CG posts around here, we've had discussions about them in which the consensus seemed to be that they're generally okay, and it's a bit late to start complaining about them now out of the blue.
• If you walk this earth for any length of time, you is gonna see some wacky goings-ons. Precisely. What's wrong with talking about that, with celebrating that random wackiness? Why can't we just occasionally point at it and smile, remind ourselves that life can occasionally still surprise us, relish the weird feeling that comes with these occurrences, without feeling like we have to grind it under the heel of reason?
• No no no, the point is that coincidences are DEFINITELY not magical and therefore are totally uninteresting and boring and we should derive no enjoyment from them whatsoever. Stop deriving enjoyment, damn you!
• No no no, the point is that coincidences are DEFINITELY not magical, and are therefore completely boring and we should stop deriving any enjoyment from them whatsoever. Stop deriving enjoyment, damn you!
• *climbs back into box, takes Nickdanger off of Christmas list, sobs*
• Let's talk about something else, like numbers maybe, or rice. Or perhaps about how astrologers are stupid and I'm smart.
• Hey Nick, ya old buzzkill. Run on up to the minimart and get us some more ice. And chips Yea, more chips We're outta chips and uh ..um ...er...ice. Take yer time.
• Rats, i can't remember any of my own coincidences so i have to borrow this one from the Book of Lists: On Dec 5, 1664 a ship in the Menai Strait off North Wales sank with 81 passengers on board. There was one survivor named Hugh Williams. On the same date in 1785, a ship sank with 60 passengers aboard. There was one survivor - named Hugh Williams. On the very same date in 1860, a ship sank with 20 passsengers on board and yes, there was one survivor named HUGH WILLIAMS!!! Yeagh!!! (therefore God exists, ahem.)
• MonkeyFilter: I thought I was going to be the only one posting. MonkeyFilter: free ad hominem with every box of cornflakes MonkeyFilter: you is gonna see some wacky goings-ons MonkeyFilter: Stop deriving enjoyment, damn you! Oh, great. It's happening again. It's strange. It's scary. It's, it's ... SYNCHRONICITY!
• StoryBored - moral of that story: when booking passage on a tramp steamer or taking a pleasure cruise make sure you sign up as Hugh Williams, just in case. Wonder if it works for air travel? Either that or there is an indestructible immortal Welshman who likes sinking ships.
• I'm going to name my next offspring Hugh Williams, so he/she lives forever.
• What's wrong with talking about that, with celebrating that random wackiness? Why can't we just occasionally point at it and smile, remind ourselves that life can occasionally still surprise us, relish the weird feeling that comes with these occurrences, without feeling like we have to grind it under the heel of reason? I think you misunderstand. I think it does these things - and life - a miscredit to chalk it all up to magic. I think coincidences are interesting, and I find chains of circumstance absolutely fascinating (like mygothlaundry was talking about, as I understood - the "look at how we got here - what are the chances?" factor). But I also believe that this is just how life is. I don't think it's gods, I don't think it's faeries, I don't think it's magic, and I don't think it's Some Mystical Power Beyond the Understanding of Man. I think that oversimplifies things FAR too much. Yes - I think chalking it up to magic oversimplifies it. I think it does life/the world more credit to realize just how complicated it really is, and how things are dependent upon chance. To me, life is random and beautiful, you never know what might happen, and that is absolutely wonderful and awe-inspiring - without one shred of hoodoo. I can experience wonder without pixie dust. I'd rather experience wonder without pixie dust. Because pixie dust in its own way is an explanation, a simplification, and I'd rather allow things to be as they are, and marvel at that, rather than grinding it under the heel of "well there MUST be an explanation - it's magic! that's what! There, I feel safe now. Explanation found. Whew." I've felt it - I ended up with my former partner by a chain of coincidence that is simply not to be believed. It was literally the only time I could have come in contact with him, and I did, and everything else resulted. But rather than take this as The Wheels Of Fate Decree That We Were Meant To Be, I choose to marvel at the way things did line up. I don't believe it was predestined; we look at these things in retrospect. It ended up that way because it ended up that way. And it's the fragility of that chain of circumstance that I find fascinating, after the fact. So it's the other way around - but I still celebrate interesting things, just differently from you. Please don't tell me that I have no sense of wonder because I don't believe in faeries. The world as it is, visible, has enough wonders if you choose to see them that way. Science is not evil. Probability is not evil. Rationality is not evil. And none of them crush all possibility of marveling at the world. In fact, I marvel at the world because of science sometimes. Looked through a microscope at pond water lately? It's super-keen. It's a false dichotomy. That's what I'm trying to say. Thank you.
• I don't think it's gods, I don't think it's faeries, I don't think it's magic, and I don't think it's Some Mystical Power Beyond the Understanding of Man. Please don't tell me that I have no sense of wonder because I don't believe in faeries. Never said either of these things. I said quite the opposite in fact, twice now. I said it's probably just patterns emerging in the way that we now know that they naturally do, but it's still pretty cool. Please try reading for comprehension before you unload your snark. The following quote from your comment is exactly what I was trying to say: The world as it is, visible, has enough wonders if you choose to see them that way. That's what this discussion was supposed to be about. Got derailed from that pretty quickly, though. You're welcome.
• No, please read my comment. I said that wonder != magic. This discussion was about magic, period.
• It was? Funny, I've read this thread a couple of times now. I don't see anybody saying anything about magic or faeries existing. Doing a ctrl-f search for "magic" on this page reveals only comments which say that magic doesn't exist.
• AND OMG LINCOLN'S SECRETARY WAS NAMED KENNEDY!
• Also, I'm wearing pants. And I bet js is wearing pants, too! COINCIDENCE?
• MCT, you seem to be randomly selecting the better part of this thread-- the entertaining stuff- and ignoring the fact that there was an undertone of the pixie dust goin' on: "What *mechanism* creates a series, where I pick up a random book, think about the author, then randomly see reference to the very data I was thinking about, scant hours after this, when for years I never encountered that data, despite having a personal interest in it? Probability does not predict this. Neurology does not predict this. Jung didn't suggest this, he was on about some group-mind archetypal symbol pool, or something. Probability suggests random groupings, random patterns. Not groupings related to the current focus of the observer; that is by definition not random, because of the involvement of the human consciousness - the interested observer. The best that apologists can offer is blather about "well if you stood on the corner long enough..." hey, calculate it for me. Bring me a mathematician. posted by At Swim Two Birds at 04:40PM UTC on March 21, 2005" And Wurwilf and I didn't start snarking-- I believe the word "twit" opened the door for our lack of patience, however well we've held it back. If this is truly chatfilter, great... but don't expect us to let the implied pixie b.s. go.
• I agree that the "twits" comment was way out of line. I'm certainly not defending that. What I'm trying to do is see that the ideas don't get washed out by bad feelings and snark. I'll post this comment again, to clarify: BTW, I'm not saying it's god or something, I'm more inclined to think it's something to do with consciousness influencing random events on some microscopic level, quantum thingamy groupings or whatnot. Doesn't sound like pixie dust to me. Again, AS2B is describing something like the classic Copenhagen interpretation, a once predominant hypothesis that conciousness can effect physical states, as discussed elsewhere upthread and in roughly a thousand pop physics books (John Gribbin's is quite good). Where's the pixie dust? This part of the quote you posted I firmly disagree with, as I've said twice now: Probability does not predict this. Of course it does, as I said. AS2B's ideas are certainly debatable, but two points about that: First, the text of the original post makes it clear (to me, anyway) that the intent wasn't debate about metaphysical issues. If others read that differently, I'm willing to concede the difference. But that brings me to my second point: if we're going to derail and debate this, we can do so without throwing in straw men like God or pixie dust, which nobody introduced as a part of their argument. Awhile back TenaciousPettle posted a CG thread in which he encouraged us to share ghost stories and freaky occurrences. What's the proper response to that thread, to answer the question, or to make the profoundly obvious point that ghosts probably don't exist?
• Again, MCT, you're a classy monkey who is seeing only the classy part of this post. Two bananas for your combination of understanding of the science *and* your willingness to appreciate the wonder that is coincidence and longshots paying off. That said, though, I read the whole thread again just to make sure, and W, js, and I all found the repetitious "something going on with this" something we felt we could clarify, only to be heckled ("Shall we dance?) by the poster. And yes, we file it as "pixie dust"-- "consciousness influencing random events" is meta-pixie, good-energy-from-these-rocks, check-yer-aura-at-the-door goodness. But to play nice, and to accept your suggestion to answer the *creative* part of this post: I dug out an old B.B. King tape for a flight to Paris when I was in high school-- hadn't listened to it in years-- and when I stepped off the plane, B.B. King was at the gate. I still have the "B.B. King and Lucille" autograph.
• I started the phrase "pixie dust" here, which is snarky. I am referring to ideas like "things happen all the time because I think of them; I control all of reality with my mind" and "this is beyond the bounds of probability" - we are in agreement on the latter part. I can and will be less sarcastic, although the tone that you're only allowed to contribute if you agree with the original poster rubs me the wrong way. Particularly if it's chatfiltery. If this is what you believe, fine; you shouldn't worry about naysayers. Your beliefs aren't going to shatter if someone disagrees with you. So anyway, okay, weird coincidences. *clears throat* I never went into chatrooms; they annoyed me. I never visited the relative's house that was, at the time, my one internet connection on weekdays. And I thought the AOL roleplaying stuff was immensely stupid. And yet, for some reason that I've now forgotten, one time - one - I visited on a weekday, had some time to kill online, got incredibly bored, and (because of a mixup about the name which misled me as to what it was) wandered into one of those roleplaying chatrooms. A year later I was meeting the room's "owner" in person; two years later we lived together; five years later I was dithering on Monkeyfilter about whether to sell off all the stuff he left behind; five years and two weeks later, unbeknownst to me, he had a complete mental breakdown. Was it caused by my thread? Should one never enter chat rooms, lest it cause schizophrenic episodes? Not in my worldview. In my worldview, chains of coincidence are examined after the fact, not determined ahead of time, and you can never predict everything that will come out of the actions you take now, because probability affects everything. But in some people's views, perhaps that is the case. All goes to show that AOL is evil. ;) Still hate those damn RP rooms. I also used to have moments of deja vu connected to dreams - if I could Predict The Future!!, I was an exceedingly mundane psychic, since it amounted to "look out of the window, think about an elephant." But I had hundreds of dreams that never came true. Which is a good thing, considering.
• See, Wurwil, it's actually kind of fun, isn't it?
• Here's my story. A couple of years ago I googled my daughter's name for fun. She has a highly unusual first name (Vedic deity) and our last name is pretty unusual as well. The only search result linked to some obscure naval archive about the civil war. There was a picture (woodcut? lithograph?) of a battleship with my daughter's exact first name! It turns out this battleship had only one sortie, and was sunk by a gunship that was named after a general with our last name! I guess you could argue coincidence or whatever; I found this strangely fascinating and a little chilling.
• ... or maybe this isn't exactly the kind of experience being discussed here.
• MCT- No, in fact, when I posted that I was not wearing pants. And neither was my girlfriend, though she was on a different computer. Coincidence? (I am now wearing pants. Coincidence?) I consider coincidences interesting only because they show connections in the human mind between disparate things. I think that's interesting, fascinating. I think juxtaposition can show incredible things about two images or sounds or what-have-you. I consider it incredible (and vaguely depressing) that the atoms of my being never really contact anything else— everything is held apart by tiny magnetic fields. There is no friction, just the slow pull of electricty. I consider it fantastic that we are really giant colonies of tiny organisms that all work together well enough that I can type this message about an abstract topic that does my fingernail cells no good. But I also believe that meaning is created, not inherent. And so the fact that I say "Cola" at the same time you do (and I jinx you! You can't speak until I say your name!) is really meaningless. My dreams are only meaningful to me, no matter how they relate to the world (see the Wim Wenders movie "Until the End of the World" for that). And I tend to regard those who believe otherwise, gently, as if they have just fallen from the turnip truck. I have no problem with those who use metaphor and alternate framing through some level of spirituality to communicate the same sentiments, but if any level of spirituality is put forth as truly causal and not explanitory, I, again, can't take what they're putting forward as serious, because it's contrived. "Pixie dust," to borrow, is for those who cannot comprehend wonder without a crutch, and people who cannot be interested in the world as it is (Mond qua mond?) My toilet and a tornado turn in the same direction. That's not a coincidence; that's the coriolis effect.
• C'mon guys, free turnip rides! Who's with me!?
• You had to say it. You just had to say it.
• Actually... the Coriolis effect isn't all that strong. Significant in terms of hurricanes and very large storms, but the bit about the drain is a myth. This pedantry brought to you by Bad Meteorology. I get your meaning, though :)
• Pianistic- Wow, that guy's a dick. And a dick who cannot seem to teach to save his life, despite his vow that his pages are pedegogical in nature. Like his "greenhouse" explanation, where he keeps seeming to say that the atmosphere is the source of earth's warmth. The atmosphere is an insulator which reradiates heat. He would seem to believe that if a rock is heated in an oven and then radiates heat, there is no connection between the heat and the oven.
• I won't disagree, js, that site is pedantic as all hell. My thermo's pretty bad, so... I was not meaning to argue. Though that Simpsons episode with Australia was pretty funny.
• Recent Metafilter thread on the subject (some entertaining stories in the comments).
• MonkeyFilter: I don't think it's gods, I don't think it's faeries, I don't think it's magic, and I don't think it's Some Mystical Power Beyond the Understanding of Man. My toilet and a tornado turn in the same direction. pffftttt MY toilet's on rollerskates.
• I bought all those people red Jettas and then told them to caravan past you JUST TO FUCK WITH YOUR HEAD. Did it work? Hmmmm?
• This afternoon I had a nap as is my wont and dreamed continually of the writings of Epictetus, Greek stoic philosopher who probably originated the serenity prayer. This evening as I catch up with the Pepys Blog, I notice that on the very entry I read, Pepys included a Greek phrase - Epictetus' warning against worry.
• I was thinking about Freddie Laker just 2 days ago, after 18 years (I used to go to school with a relative of his) and today I read he's carked it.