Anybody not believe in coincidence

[studiot]

The attachment says it all.

[Manticore]

This was thoroughly debunked years ago. See https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4360

[studiot]

Debunked ?

 

So which of the statements is not literally true?

 

And what did I say that needs 'debunking'?

 

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/lincoln-kennedy.asp

 

BTW your link doesn't work for me.

Edited August 15, 2017 by studiot

[Manticore]

Try http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4360 -  some browsers don't seem to be able to handle https:// addresses properly.

[Lord Antares]

Honestly, I don't see why it couldn't be coincidence. You are good at math, so you're aware that coincidences like these aren't unbelievable given that there are so many variables, possible outcomes, people and generally ''high entropy'', to put it like that.

Personally, I find the one where a kid dropped from some floor on a person and then 1 year later (or something like that) it fell from the same floor on the same person more unlikely - but it doesn't have to mean anything. It would be extraordinary if coincidences like that didn't happen.

[Outrider]

1 hour ago, Manticore said:

This was thoroughly debunked years ago. See https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4360

Hi Manticore

1st time posting on the new board and also my new phone so if I make errors please forgive.

A coincidence is just an unexpected aligning of facts so I can't see what there is to debunk. I have read both the skeptoid and snopes articles on this subject and they more concerned with what L.A. said. We should expect these things to happen. 

If someone had made the claim that this was supernatural I am sure you could provide evidence to the contrary. But Studiot made no such claim  and neither am I.

With that said I find these types of coincidence remarkable and very interesting.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

The attachment says it all.

Hi Studiot

Congrats you have posted my all time favorite string of coincidences. 

Lets add a few shall we.

In 1863 or 1864 Edwin Booth (John Wilke's brother) pulled Robert Lincoln (Abraham's son) out of the path of an oncoming train.

Robert went on to see one president die, his father, and see another president get fatally shot, James A. Garfield, and he was close by when James McKinley was assassinated.

Also in 1911 The White Star Line launched 3 luxury  liners the Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. Stewardess Violet Jessop was on the Olympic when it collided with another ship. The Olympic made it back to shore with no casualties. She was on the Titannic when it sank and the Britannic when it sank. Such a brave woman she continued to go out to sea for many more years before she retired.

Also Mark Twain came in with Halleys comet  and went out with Halleys comet. He famously predicted his death. BTW he didn't  believe  in the supernatural it was more of a joke that coincidentally came true.

Quote

 ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together’.”

Mark Twain AKA Samuel Clemens

[studiot]

Hello outrider and welcome.

I deliberately left the thread a bit open to see what folks made of it but,

You have caught the gist of my post in one.

 

One point, however, concerns your definition of coincidence, which I find too narrow.

Even this one is too narrow in my opinion.

"A notable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection."

 

My favourite example is more esoteric and concerns leylines.

[Outrider]

Yeah I wasn't really impressed with my definition either. Like many other things I think I know what it means but when I try to precisely define the word it's not  so easy. I did look it up before and saw your definition and others. I didn't really like any of them.

How about "a low probability series of events that we tend to connect in some arbitrary way". No thats not really that good either. Guess I'll just wait on you.

I had to look up leylines and I have no idea where you are going with that.

Oh and BTW this has been discussed somewhat beforehttp://www.scienceforums.net/topic/102779-coincidences-sought/

[studiot]

Leylines are just examples of coincidence that have been glorified as having some paranormal significance.

I like the following demonstration:

 

Take a sheet of plain white paper.

Randomly sprinkle on some black pepper.

Take a ruler and observe lots of leylines where the pepperdust particles have fallen.

Draw the lines in.

Shake the pepperdust off and resprinkle

Observe

1) New leylines emerge

2) Many particles fall on the original leylines you drew in 'reinforcing' them

 

A special twist on this if you looked up Wiki on the subject.

Leylines gurus don't realise that all maps distort the true shape of the land in some fashion.

And this distortion is different for different map projections so straight lines on one projection are not sraight on another.

Yet the gurus somehow cheerfully draw in the same straight lines on these different maps.

[Outrider]

So the pepper leylines and historical coincidences are the same? I don't disagree. 

Doesn't take the fun out of it at least not for me.

[Endy0816]

Mentioned before here, but the Lincoln automobile does ultimately owe its name to Abe Lincoln(via Lincoln Motors). The founder of the company named his company after the first president he voted for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Motor_Company#1917.E2.80.931940:_Lincoln_Motor_Company

There's probably more, but would have to go back and back to find the connections.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Endy0816

[swansont]

Coincidences happen. With famous/well-known/highly-scrutinized lives there are simply more facts with which to make connections. The fact that they were elected 100 years apart is going to give rise to a whole bunch of coincident dates being 100 years apart. These are dependent, not independent, probabilities. (i.e. they are not random events)

Also, the Monroe, Maryland item is debunked in the snopes link (Monroe died in '62, so the claim is not possible). It's a bit of humor that this infographic's creator apparently took seriously. 

[DrP]

I had a conversation at work last year sometime..  It was about probability and coincidence. I was arguing that for a system to be random you MUST see patterns which look non random from time to time...  I argued that if you threw a bucket of Dice from the top of a skyscraper, although the probability is immense, it HAS to produce all 6's sometime.. (if you repeat the throw over a billion years they will come up..  or at least have a chance of coming up). My point was that you cant use the fact that something is unlikely as proof that it cannot happen.

That evening I played a table top game with some friends...  I mentioned my conversation at work because we were about to roll some dice...  We had to roll to see who went first. We both rolled 6's so had to roll again...   we both rolled 6's 7 times before one of us lost the roll off.  It was very spooky, but a beautiful demonstration of what I was talking about. My opponent said it must mean something..  I just said that it proved my point. The whole game was riddled with rolls of all 6's all 1's and things like that....   but totally random. I have rolled a lot of dice...  sometimes they seem random, sometimes you get remarkable demonstrations of probability in action.

[DrKrettin]

2 hours ago, DrP said:

That evening I played a table top game with some friends...  I mentioned my conversation at work because we were about to roll some dice...  We had to roll to see who went first. We both rolled 6's so had to roll again...   we both rolled 6's 7 times before one of us lost the roll off.  It was very spooky, but a beautiful demonstration of what I was talking about. My opponent said it must mean something..  I just said that it proved my point. The whole game was riddled with rolls of all 6's all 1's and things like that....   but totally random. I have rolled a lot of dice...  sometimes they seem random, sometimes you get remarkable demonstrations of probability in action.

I play backgammon regularly on-line, and I experience all kinds of weird improbable sequences of throws of (allegedly random) dice. Things are sometimes so annoying that you can't really believe that they are not somehow stacked. Recently I was far ahead in one game and the opponent threw three double sixes in a row to win by one pip. That's a probability of one in 46,656. But having played over 10,000 games in the last two years, I know that that kind of event is not so strange as you might think, because of you play enough games, very unlikely throw sequences do happen. One has also to take observation bias into account, because the weird throws are very noticeable and so the tendency is to think they happen more often than they do.

[John Cuthber]

On 15/08/2017 at 7:09 PM, studiot said:

The attachment says it all.

No.

This says it all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

 

[studiot]

47 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

No.

This says it all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

 

 

No what?

 

As I understand the rules of this forum I shouldn't have to go offsite to find out what you are saying, particularly to a page which has no less than 23 'see also' pages as well as an extensive reference base.

[Strange]

21 minutes ago, studiot said:

As I understand the rules of this forum I shouldn't have to go offsite to find out what you are saying

You only need to go off site if you really don't know what "confirmation bias" is.

And I would be very disappointed if you don't. But it would explain why you posted this nonsense in the first place.

[studiot]

 

4 minutes ago, Strange said:

You only need to go off site if you really don't know what "confirmation bias" is.

And I would be very disappointed if you don't. But it would explain why you posted this nonsense in the first place.

 

Feel free to demonstrate your claim by proving that every one of the dozen to a dozen and a half statements in the article are false.

 

[Lord Antares]

56 minutes ago, studiot said:

Feel free to demonstrate your claim by proving that every one of the dozen to a dozen and a half statements in the article are false.

Why do they have to be false in order to disprove your claim? Why can they not all be true and still be coincidental? 

As I have stated, you seem to be good at probability, so I'm interested to know why you think these events are not coincidental? And what is the alternative to coincidence?

[Evgenia]

Do you know the exam system when the number of exam ticket is written on paper and it is flipped over? You choose the one from the table and give the answers for the questions written on it.

My friend was passing the exam session with me. For the first time she took the ticket with 13 number. By the way, in my country 13 is unlucky number. Next day she took the ticket with 13 number again.

For the third day she said she read the answers for 13 so she was no nervous at all. And yes, that happened! 13 number one more time..

All the exams,days,subjects,rooms and teachers were different. She could not see the number through a paper.

It was just a beautiful moment of seeing the smile of universe in action.

[Strange]

9 hours ago, studiot said:

Feel free to demonstrate your claim by proving that every one of the dozen to a dozen and a half statements in the article are false.

As I didn't make any such claim (or any claim) that is a bizarre request. 

I don't think anyone has said they are all false, have they?

[Tub]

In my last post on Wednesday, ( in Speculations ), i quoted from " Alice in Wonderland ", saying " Curiouser and curiouser " ; the next thread i opened, that very same day,was this one and the first thing i saw, in those bold capital letters, was " Curiouser and curiouser " and, what's more, my surname and initial are an exact anagram of " Lincoln " ! Ha,Ha!

6 hours ago, Evgenia said:

 It was just a beautiful moment of seeing the smile of universe in action.

 

 

 

 Yes,that's a lovely way to put it. I hope the Universe never gets tired of smiling.

[StringJunky]

Is there a point, or set of odds, in the absence of an apparent cause, that we have to say that something might be paranormal?

[Tub]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Is there a point, or set of odds, in the absence of an apparent cause, that we have to say that something might be paranormal?

Hmmm. Tricky; i imagine that, in the great scheme of things, and like the monkeys/typewriters, any two or more similar events could eventually coincide without it being considered paranormal or supernatural - after all, we are creatures of habit so many things must be continually replicated on a grand scale ,even daily.  Then again, are coincidences at all significant anyway? Jung seemed to believe they are and i,at least,can't argue with him in such matters. He introduced his concept of " Synchronicity " to address the idea of separate events having a meaningful relationship without having any apparent causal relationship. He defined Synchronicity as " ... a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved ". So is Synchronicity normal or paranormal?  Are all coincidences meaningful? Without having Jung's expertise, I suppose it boils down to a subjective reaction in each individual. I have had several  strange cases of coincidence, ( and serendipity ), in my life, just as in my post above, all with a happy outcome, fortunately, but i can't explain them myself so I'll leave it to Jung's claim that events can be connected by meaning as well as cause, and those events connected by meaning do not necessarily have to have a cause. Is that paranormal? I really don't know.

[Strange]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Is there a point, or set of odds, in the absence of an apparent cause, that we have to say that something might be paranormal?

I don't think you could say that about a single event. That is why tests of psychic ability, for example, have to look at a number of events and see if they are consistent with pure chance or if they imply some other effect.