It's just a coincidence!!!

[-Fran-]

Anyway, sure enough, half an hour later I received a call letting me know that my grandfather had passed away around the time the door closed. It's stuck with me as the most weird coincidence that has ever happened to me. Of course, the old man had about 36 grandchildren...and I was never really anything special. Why would he contact me?

I think you have something there, that explains part of why so many people believe they can be contacted by the dead. The need to be confirmed as, indeed, having been something special to somebody.

 

[blobru]

...
I was at home doing some work of some sort, with nobody else around, when the front door swung shut with a huge bang. I hadn't even known it was open, and the back door was closed (I was sitting near it and had closed it myself due to the chill). It was a cold day but there wasn't much of a wind, if any.

I got up and called out, thinking somebody had come in and closed it, but saw I was still alone. It was odd and I remember thinking comically 'Hey, I wonder if Pop just died'. It was a strange thing to think but I tend to often do that.

Anyway, sure enough, half an hour later I received a call letting me know that my grandfather had passed away around the time the door closed. ...

This sort of story was very common in the small farming community where I grew up in Nova Scotia. Usually in the middle of the night, someone hears either a persistent tapping, or the sound of someone try to barge through the front door. Opening the door either reveals no one, or what looks like a ghostly hand. (If it's winter they add "...and there were no tracks to be seen.") Then sometime, maybe a month later by mail (telephones were rare in the era the stories are set), the family finds out a relative has died -- the same date they were awakened by the phantom knocking.

These visitors even have a special name: people call them "forerunners". [not sure if that's local dialect or borrowed paranormal usage.] Sure used to scare the hell out of me as a kid (and may explain where I developed my bizarre taste in sandwich spreads).

 

[ThatSoundAgain]

Denmark?

That's exactly right.

I am sorry that they got to you

Nah, we get by. The biggest gripe I have about the festivities is that it's tradition to sing an old hymn which has a quite beautiful melody. But this melody, including some meter changes and such, is considered too difficult for the general public, and so many places they use a completely bland, stadium-rock-like alternate melody written by a Danish rock band in the eighties. Grrr.

I just remembered that there's resistance to the witch thing too: I always see photocopied flyers pasted about the city around that time. It's this guy protesting the city's money going towards celebrations of the witch trials. He seems to have a gripe against both king Christian IV and Christopher Columbus, in addition to using the standard nut-case layout on his page. He's apparently not that nutty, though, just a very vocal activist.

 

[-Fran-]

That's exactly right.

Well, hi there, neighbour

Nah, we get by. The biggest gripe I have about the festivities is that it's tradition to sing an old hymn which has a quite beautiful melody. But this melody, including some meter changes and such, is considered too difficult for the general public, and so many places they use a completely bland, stadium-rock-like alternate melody written by a Danish rock band in the eighties. Grrr.

Oh my, atheist as I am, that does seem like total blasphemy (though old hymns can really be very beautiful). But to put a 80s stadium rock flavor on anything kind of is What's the rockband? I wonder if I am familiar with them??

I just remembered that there's resistance to the witch thing too: I always see photocopied flyers pasted about the city around that time. It's this guy protesting the city's money going towards celebrations of the witch trials. He seems to have a gripe against both king Christian IV and Christopher Columbus, in addition to using the standard nut-case layout on his page. He's apparently not that nutty, though, just a very vocal activist.

I checked that site out and as you say, the lay-out is... headache-inducing, so it's difficult to see the extent of his possible nuttiness he does seem to have opinions on most things though. I could agree, to a certain extent though that it's not really nice to celebrate the witch trials, but then most traditions, if you really start digging into them, has similar non-niceities in their history.

I am even worse at the history of the Danish royals than the Swedish ones, so I might mix all the Kristians up here (except Kristian Tyrann ) But is this King Kristian IV the one of which they said he sexually enjoyed to watch women get tortured as witches? Or is it just mean 17th century Swedish propaganda?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'm just suggesting that it would be more useful to make our reasoning explicit, since that is the step that Rodney and others seem to miss.

I agree, though I don't think Rodney in particular is willing to learn about coincidence, confirmation bias, shoe-horning, and cherry picking.

Speaking of cherry picking, that's a lot of what's happening in the Kennedy-Lincoln thing. There are plenty of similar comparisons that don't come out in synch at all. (Other cabinet members whose names are not at all alike, other important dates don't line up, etc.) Snopes has a decent treatment of these. Most aren't really longshot coincidences, and some are just not true. (That both murderers were commonly known by three names isn't true--at least not until after they were killed. The "theater/warehouse" thing is a stretch--a cinema and a theater for plays aren't the same thing; neither is a book depository and a tobacco shed. Booth wasn't killed in the tobacco shed until a few days after the assassination, so he didn't "run" there the same way Oswald "ran" and was arrested within about an hour.)

That 9-11 thing that went around where so many things associated with the WTC attack seemed to add up to the number 11, is another such example. Snopes shows that you could as easily prove that the number 2 is significant. And the Skeptic Dictionary's essay on the law of truly large numbers (a link which I'm posting to this thread now for the third time) lists a bunch of other 9-11 stuff that just doesn't add up to anything (proving that the ones that look so significant are merely cherry picked).

 

[TTLer]

I find the amount of my "coincidences" skyrocket during time frames where I'm pursuing a project involving many hours of research and reference, then adding in some local TV, radio and movies for relaxation, plus a favorite bestseller novel, and an outing with my friends. Throughout all this activity, on a daily basis I encounter brow-raising crossover coincidences among the different and unrelated sets of information currently occupying my thoughts.

The human brain thirsts for pattern among chaos, and often achieves it in creative and unexpected ways - if you feed it enough daily grist and social activities, it will indeed come up with some fairly dandy coincidences.

 

[Warge]

I find the amount of my "coincidences" skyrocket during time frames where I'm pursuing a project involving many hours of research and reference, then adding in some local TV, radio and movies for relaxation, plus a favorite bestseller novel, and an outing with my friends. Throughout all this activity, on a daily basis I encounter brow-raising crossover coincidences among the different and unrelated sets of information currently occupying my thoughts.

The human brain thirsts for pattern among chaos, and often achieves it in creative and unexpected ways - if you feed it enough daily grist and social activities, it will indeed come up with some fairly dandy coincidences.

Yep. It's a natural tendency to look for patterns - I mean, people saw the devil's face in the smoke from the towers in 9/11 for Pete's sake! We really are that desperate for order and meaning...

 

[-Fran-]

The human brain thirsts for pattern among chaos, and often achieves it in creative and unexpected ways - if you feed it enough daily grist and social activities, it will indeed come up with some fairly dandy coincidences.

Yep. It's a natural tendency to look for patterns - I mean, people saw the devil's face in the smoke from the towers in 9/11 for Pete's sake! We really are that desperate for order and meaning...

Yes. And it's ironic how that search for order and meaning, so often leads to something that is really the opposite!

 

[ThatSoundAgain]

That 9-11 thing that went around where so many things associated with the WTC attack seemed to add up to the number 11, is another such example. Snopes shows that you could as easily prove that the number 2 is significant.

That Snopes debunking has annoyed me since I first saw it. While I appreciate the effort made, I think it's too easy to dismiss. Showing that 2 is just as important as 11 is kind of easy when 2 is the digital root of 11.

 

[ThatSoundAgain]

Everyone, sorry for the following derail..

Well, hi there, neighbour

Tjena!

Oh my, atheist as I am, that does seem like total blasphemy (though old hymns can really be very beautiful). But to put a 80s stadium rock flavor on anything kind of is What's the rockband? I wonder if I am familiar with them??

Shu-bi-dua. Some of their quirkier stuff with a satirical bent is all right, but some of it (like this song) is awfully glurgy and populistic.

I checked that site out and as you say, the lay-out is... headache-inducing, so it's difficult to see the extent of his possible nuttiness he does seem to have opinions on most things though. I could agree, to a certain extent though that it's not really nice to celebrate the witch trials, but then most traditions, if you really start digging into them, has similar non-niceities in their history.

I am even worse at the history of the Danish royals than the Swedish ones, so I might mix all the Kristians up here (except Kristian Tyrann ) But is this King Kristian IV the one of which they said he sexually enjoyed to watch women get tortured as witches? Or is it just mean 17th century Swedish propaganda?

I think the torture thing is what the just-well guy is so angry about. Christian IV is also the one who built half the remarkable buildings in Copenhagen, vastly improved the fleet (and initiated the Danish colonial adventures), and was at war with you guys (Kalmar). Consequently he almost drove the country bankrupt, and also had to cede most of what is now southern Sweden (excluding Skåne / Scania, which went a decade later). Of course, the royal family from that time was notorious for marrying their first cousins, and a lot of them were quite excentric. One cool thing he did was to have the castle Rosenborg built with a sound system in it, so a chamber ensemble could sit in the basement and play music that would be audible through channels in the walls.

All right, I'll stop now, but note that I once saw his monogram grown in a flower patch in (I think) Lund. So I guess some people in Skåne still like him.

ETA: Jan Guillou apparently wrote a book containing some of the same criticism as the site above. That's news to me.

 

[Cuddles]

Isn't 7 days a logical subdivision if you're making a lunar calendar (based on the moon phases)? I admit I know nothing about this, so it's just a guess.

A quick bit of Googling says that our 7 day week is based on the Babylonian Lunar calendar. I can't say for sure, but it seems likely that the 7 day week became popular from this one root rather than being a common occurence, much like the choice of base 10 for counting. For example, the Chinese calendar didn't use a 7 day week until introduced in the 16th century by missionaries, and the Mayan calendar includes subdivisions of 9, 13, 18 and 20 days.

 

[Warge]

That Snopes debunking has annoyed me since I first saw it. While I appreciate the effort made, I think it's too easy to dismiss. Showing that 2 is just as important as 11 is kind of easy when 2 is the digital root of 11.

Yes, but try 3 or any other number. Personally, I think Snopes is totally, 100% correct in it's assumptions and calculations. And this tendency of ours, to find meaning and patterns in everything is when one think about it quite scary. I mean that it's scary that people go to such lengths to find patterns that they sooner or later end up in one of the CT threads here or a nutjob site on the web.

It's quite sad really...

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

That Snopes debunking has annoyed me since I first saw it. While I appreciate the effort made, I think it's too easy to dismiss. Showing that 2 is just as important as 11 is kind of easy when 2 is the digital root of 11.

I think it was meant to be more of a joke. You're right, of the 12 "two" examples, 5 of them were just showing that 2 is the digital root of 11 (but 7 of them don't).

Still, the point is that the rules for this game are totally arbitrary. If you get a word with 10 letters, you can add an "s" to make it 11. If a first name and second name doesn't match, try the variations with middle initials or whatever. Why did you add here, but subtract there, except with an eye to hit the target number? If all else fails, tell a lie about the facts (similar to pyramidologists filing down stones to fit their pet numerology theory).


Give me a different target number (up to say 20), and I'll bet I can come up with at least half a dozen of these things.

How about lucky number 7?

New York: 7 letters
the date 9/11: 9-(1+1)=7
World Trade Center: 16 letters; 1+6=7
The hijacked airplanes were two 767s and two 757s: a total of eight 7s
The 757 has a 124 ft wingspan: 1+2+4=7
Al Qaeda: 7 letters
The plane that hit the Pentagon was AA 77: two more 7s
Taliban: 7 letters


Nope, these things are entirely devoid of significance, and deserve to be dismissed.

 

[Warge]

I think it was meant to be more of a joke. You're right, of the 12 "two" examples, 5 of them were just showing that 2 is the digital root of 11 (but 7 of them don't).

Still, the point is that the rules for this game are totally arbitrary. If you get a word with 10 letters, you can add an "s" to make it 11. If a first name and second name doesn't match, try the variations with middle initials or whatever. Why did you add here, but subtract there, except with an eye to hit the target number? If all else fails, tell a lie about the facts (similar to pyramidologists filing down stones to fit their pet numerology theory).


Give me a different target number (up to say 20), and I'll bet I can come up with at least half a dozen of these things.

How about lucky number 7?

New York: 7 letters
the date 9/11: 9-(1+1)=7
World Trade Center: 16 letters; 1+6=7
The hijacked airplanes were two 767s and two 757s: a total of eight 7s
The 757 has a 124 ft wingspan: 1+2+4=7
Al Qaeda: 7 letters
The plane that hit the Pentagon was AA 77: two more 7s
Taliban: 7 letters


Nope, these things are entirely devoid of significance, and deserve to be dismissed.

Well done sir! This is exactly what the search for patterns is - a totally meaningless exercise in adding, subtracting and avoiding things not fitting into the big picture.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Yes, but try 3 or any other number.

These are kinda fun:

a 767 has a 156-foot wingspan; 1+5+6 = 12; 1+2=3
one tower was 1,362 feet high; 1+3+6+2 = 12; 1+2=3
the supports are 39 inches apart; 3+9 = 12;1+2=3
Osama Bin Laden: name is 3 words
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: name is 3 words
World Trade Center: name is 3 words
Manhattan: 9 letters; 9 is 3 squared
number of hijacked planes that hit their targets: 3
The date 9/11/01: 9+11+1=12; 1+2=3
Global Terror: 12 letters; 1+2=3

 

[Warge]

These are kinda fun:

a 767 has a 156-foot wingspan; 1+5+6 = 12; 1+2=3
one tower was 1,362 feet high; 1+3+6+2 = 12; 1+2=3
the supports are 39 inches apart; 3+9 = 12;1+2=3
Osama Bin Laden: name is 3 words
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: name is 3 words
World Trade Center: name is 3 words
Manhattan: 9 letters; 9 is 3 squared
number of hijacked planes that hit their targets: 3
The date 9/11/01: 9+11+1=12; 1+2=3
Global Terror: 12 letters; 1+2=3

Oh dear, we have a connection! Someone call the Loose Change group or something!

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The date 9/11/01: 9+11+1=12; 1+2=3

Ooops 9+11+1=21; 2+1=3 is what I meant.

Or
9+(1+1)+0+1=12; 1+2=3

 

[FSM]

Speaking of numbers, I just watched Number 23, the Jim Carrey movie just released on DVD and I actually kind of enjoyed it. I don't really understand perfectly how to do a spoiler window yet, so I'll just be really careful not to ruin it for anyone. For anyone who hasn't seen the trailers or the film, it's about a man who gets a book for a birthday present re: #23 and he starts being cursed or haunted or whatever by the number. It starts appearing everywhere he looks... in his phone number, on signs, in dates and times.... eeeeeerrrrieee. More eerie than molasses on a sandwich, even.

I rented it expecting it to be a really woo thing, but it ended up being not so much about woo as it was about a Hollywood scriptwriter's intensely laborious plot machinations... and one big HUGE plot hole big enough to drive a Transformer through...Still, I liked it, all in all.

We were watching the movie in a hotel while I was on a business trip and I had to keep turning it up and down because the air conditioning unit was so damned loud and would intermittently turn on and off. Every time I turned it up, I intentionally stopped the volume setting on 23. After I did it a few times, my boyfriend said, "I know you're doing it on purpose, goofy. You might as well stop it."

So much for me trying to mystify him...

Why does he have to be so skeptical about everything?

 

[eir_de_scania]

Christian IV is also the one who built half the remarkable buildings in Copenhagen, vastly improved the fleet (and initiated the Danish colonial adventures), and was at war with you guys (Kalmar). Consequently he almost drove the country bankrupt, and also had to cede most of what is now southern Sweden (excluding Skåne / Scania, which went a decade later). [....]
All right, I'll stop now, but note that I once saw his monogram grown in a flower patch in (I think) Lund. So I guess some people in Skåne still like him.

At least in Kristianstad where you can see the monogram C4 all over the place


This is NOT a coincidence as he founded the town.

 

[SusanB-M1]

A coincidence that I still haven't quite puzzled out:
A friend was running her life according to Madame Francesca and wanted me to see her too. I did so in order to convince her that Madame F was rubbish no trouble there as she said nothing of any relevance (I taped it by the way). My friend had said that she would answer questions too, so in order to complete the rubbishing I took with me an item from each son - for S a camera and for A a leather camera case

She took one in each hand and there was an immediate change in her attitude from waflle to sharp confidence. 'Oh, this one (A) is going to do so well, very successful ... this one (S) is going to do very well too, but not so well as (A). You think this one (S) will get married, but it will be this one (A), you don't think so at the moment but it will be this one.' (He did not meet the girl he married until a couple of years later.)

There was more and it turned out to happen that way. I was of course extremely careful to reveal nothing, even sitting rather limply to try and disguise my confidence!

I do not doubt that it was coincidence, but I would be interested to hear any comments.