How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

Starthinker said:
Those sites remind me of this story:

In 1922 a Mr. John Lords was living in Hyderabad, India, when he discovered that his next door neighbor was also an American. He introduced himself and they quickly discovered that not only were they from the same small town in Nebraska, but they lived right next door to each other on the same street. After talking some more they learned that they had both moved to New Orleans after school and also lived right next door to each other and both worked for shipping companies. This was their third time being next door neighbors, even on the other side of the world.

See what I did there?
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Not quite sure what it actually IS that you did there.



I have to say that many of those anecdotes do not have any proof that they happened, so I could explain the coincidence as being made up.
 
Just a couple of the cases in Marshmallow's link:

The James Dean car:

James Dean's car curse

In September 1955, James Dean was killed in a horrific car accident whilst he was driving his Porsche sports car. After the crash the car was seen as very unlucky.

a) When the car was towed away from accident scene and taken to a garage, the engine slipped out and fell onto a mechanic, shattering both of his legs.

b) Eventually the engine was bought by a doctor, who put it into his racing car and was killed shortly afterwards, during a race. Another racing driver, in the same race, was killed in his car, which had James Dean's driveshaft fitted to it.

c) When James Dean's Porsche was later repaired, the garage it was in was destroyed by fire.

d) Later the car was displayed in Sacramento, but it fell off it's mount and broke a teenager's hip.

e) In Oregon, the trailer that the car was mounted on slipped from it's tow bar and smashed through the front of a shop.

f) Finally, in 1959, the car mysteriously broke into 11 pieces while it was sitting on steel supports.
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a) A seriously damaged car is not unlikely to fall apart during transport.

b) Racing, especially old Porches, is inherently dangerous. I read somewhere that a disproportionate number of Porche owners were killed in their car.

c) Garage fires are not exactly rare. And here I ask for the first, but not last time: Is this documented? Because if the garage burnt with the car in it, I'm more than a little puzzled about how it can have much history after that.

d) So, it wasn't burned after all?

e) So it was moved about a lot over several years. Not unlikely that it should be involved in some accidents.

f) After all it had been through, it is not too surprising that it should break up one day.

And:

A bullet that reached its destiny years later

Henry Ziegland thought he had dodged fate. In 1883, he broke off a relationship with his girlfriend who, out of distress, committed suicide. The girl's brother was so enraged that he hunted down Ziegland and shot him. The brother, believing he had killed Ziegland, then turned his gun on himself and took his own life. But Ziegland had not been killed. The bullet, in fact, had only grazed his face and then lodged in a tree. Ziegland surely thought himself a lucky man. Some years later, however, Ziegland decided to cut down the large tree, which still had the bullet in it. The task seemed so formidable that he decided to blow it up with a few sticks of dynamite. The explosion propelled the bullet into Ziegland's head, killing him. (Source: Ripley's Believe It or Not!)
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This is a typical story which seems compelling, but once you start dissecting it, it begins to look unlikely to have ever happened.

First, of course, the tale is over a century old. So no verification is possible anymore.

The brother of his ex girlfriend wanted to kill him. OK, breaking up was serious back then. But, the killer just fires one shot, then kills himself, without making sure his victim is dead? That sounds rather unlikely. Certainly not normal killer behaviour.

So he was shot at, but only wounded. We must assume he fell over bleeding, otherwise how can we even begin to believe that the killer thought him dead? But he somehow know the bullet lodged in the tree? How did he know that?

OK; now he wants yo take down the tree. Since the bullet supposedly grazed his head, the bullet must be sitting some 6 ft above the ground. He decides to use dynamite. What you do to fell a tree with dynamite is to drill a few holes and stick dynamite in them. Obviously, he would do that close to the ground (no reason to leave a tall stub), but how should the bullet, sitting about six feet up in the tree and now covered in bark be propelled anywhere by that?

I think the following happened: The guy was shot at. Maybe perpetrator shot himself, but anyhow our guy survived. Later he put down a tree near the scene, with dynamite, and was killed by flying debris (a very real risk in such an operation, if you are a bit careless). The rest is conjecture.

Or, maybe the whole story is fiction.

I think that if you go through all such stories, most will be much less fantastic.

And for the rest? Well, lottery tickets come out against incredible odds all the time.

Hans
 
Skeptical Greg said:
I find it hard to believe that two people who lived next door to each other, in a small town in Nebraska, did not recognize each other immediately ...

New Orleans ... Not so much ...
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It doesn't say that they didn't know that. This might have all been intentional on their part.
 
A couple years ago, I was on a business trip with some co-workers that I knew only vaguely. We had an early morning meeting, so we met on a shuttle bus in the morning. The fellow sitting next to me looked like he hadn't slept a wink. I asked him if he had a rough night, and he answered quite the contrary, with a very interesting story.

His flight coming in was late and he had arrived at the hotel after midnight. There seemed to be a lot of confusion at check-in, as they thought he had checked in already. But he showed ID, and they gave him the pass key to his room.

When he opened the door and turned on the light, he saw that someone was already asleep in the bed. He quickly went back down to reception. The occupant of the room got up and dressed and also went down to the front desk to complain.

My co-worker turned around and saw that it was his father, of whom he had been estranged for twelve years, and with whom he shared the same name (which was not a common name - they were of Japanese descent and this anecdote took place in the Midwest USA.) The two sat up together the rest of the night and renewed their relationship.

My coworker attributed this amazing coincidence to the workings of Jesus, and the other guys in the van agreed. Of course (especially on our way to a customer meeting) I was not going to challenge them in this belief. But I knew if I were to try some line like "well, of all the nights you spend in hotels every year something like this was bound to happen eventually" I think they would have thought me ridiculous. Of course it was bound to happen to someone at some point in history, but when it happens to you one can't help but feel as if there are some supernatural forces at play.

I love coincidences. They test my skepticism.
 
When I was a student, I would regularly be greeted and hailed by people I'd never met before who thought I was a friend of theirs. This happened wherever I was, not just in one town, so it wasn't just a local double. It happened so often (a couple of times a week at least) I'd mention it to my friends, and a couple of times I was still with a friend I'd told when a stranger would 'recognise' me. What confused me was that I didn't look average or nondescript at that time, but stood out from the crowd in appearance.

I later realised that, although there would have been very few people in each area that bore any resemblance to me, for that very reason, their friends/relative/colleagues would expect someone who looked like that to be the person they knew, and would probably rely on the aspects that characterised the differences from the average rather than finer personal details - they seemed to do this even face-to-face.

It was a bit spooky though - I once spent 5 mins with a group of girls who approached me to express their sympathy about the break-up of 'my' relationship with a girl I'd never met. They apparently knew me well, asked after my family and other friends I'd never heard of, and wouldn't be persuaded I was not who they thought I was (they assumed I was joking and play-acting).

When I got a job, a haircut, and a suit, it all stopped. Now I'm the one people ask for directions...
 
dlorde said:
When I was a student, I would regularly be greeted and hailed by people I'd never met before who thought I was a friend of theirs. This happened wherever I was, not just in one town, so it wasn't just a local double. It happened so often (a couple of times a week at least) I'd mention it to my friends, and a couple of times I was still with a friend I'd told when a stranger would 'recognise' me. What confused me was that I didn't look average or nondescript at that time, but stood out from the crowd in appearance.

I later realised that, although there would have been very few people in each area that bore any resemblance to me, for that very reason, their friends/relative/colleagues would expect someone who looked like that to be the person they knew, and would probably rely on the aspects that characterised the differences from the average rather than finer personal details - they seemed to do this even face-to-face.

It was a bit spooky though - I once spent 5 mins with a group of girls who approached me to express their sympathy about the break-up of 'my' relationship with a girl I'd never met. They apparently knew me well, asked after my family and other friends I'd never heard of, and wouldn't be persuaded I was not who they thought I was (they assumed I was joking and play-acting).

When I got a job, a haircut, and a suit, it all stopped. Now I'm the one people ask for directions...
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I have had experiences very similar to this - including people stopping to ask me for directions now. Another coincidence :)

Some of the stories:

- In high school, my uncle phoned my dad and told him I was skipping class when he thought he saw me at the mall.

- A girl I worked with waved and talked to someone she thought was me at a bus stop.

- When I was working at a casino, one of the patrons came up to my table and was asking me how I could hold down two jobs at once without appearing tired. He had seen my "double" earlier in the day at a charity event, and was amazed at how much we looked alike - same glasses, hairstyle, weight, height, etc.

- Again in high school, a local politician held a press conference and a teacher of mine saw "me" in the audience.

I have never run into this person, and I thought it would be really strange if I ever did.

I do get stopped all the time by people asking me for directions, and I have been told I have "one of those faces" or that I seem very familiar to a person when meeting them for the first time.
 
Marshmallow said:
In most cases, I would probably agree with you. However, there are certain series of events that seem like they would have closer to a "billion in one" probability of occurring.
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Once they happen they're one to one. You can't post-dic probabilities when you didn't know all the circumstances involved.
 
quarky said:
What are the odds of a single sperm finding and fertilizing an egg?
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Then not self aborting, and not dying of some environmental or genetic factor finally to grow up to be as awesome as me!!


goddidit and i'm the apple of his eye.:rolleyes:
 
Sledge said:
Thinking about it, I rang a friend on Friday evening JUST AS THEY WERE ABOUT TO TEXT MESSAGE ME!!! :eek: Evidence of a higher power, or evidence of us both realising at the same time that my friend was supposed to have let me know where we were going for a meal on Saturday night? Clearly, mystical forces were at work.
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More likely mystical farces, if you ask me. But you didn't. Sorry.


M.
 
MRC_Hans said:
Just a couple of the cases in Marshmallow's link:

The James Dean car: <snip>
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I've seen several different versions of this legend with different items in the list of strange coincidences that supposedly occurred involving the car. None have ever included any traceable attribution.

MRC_Hans said:
First, of course, the tale is over a century old. So no verification is possible anymore.

<snip>
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And yet, there somehow was a trained ballistics expert present who was able to confirm that it was, in fact, the same bullet--before the science of ballistics even existed. Now THAT is a coincidence of supernatural proportions! :rolleyes:
 
quarky said:
What are the odds of a single sperm finding and fertilizing an egg?
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This depends on what you mean. Are you asking the odds of a single sperm unaccompanied by many of its "brothers" fertilizing the egg? The odds of that are zero. In normal circumstances fertilization requires the presence of a lot of sperm cells. Now if you're asking what are the odds that a single sperm specified in advance is the one that "gets in" and becomes part of the zygote, you can calculate that by the number of sperm.

Be careful though that you're not asking this question after the fact (and committing the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy). Such as, "What are the odds of the sperm that fertilized the egg that resulted in the formation of a specific individual being the one sperm that got in and formed the zygote?" That's a done deed. Specifying that sperm is like drawing a small circle around the bullet hole and asking what are the odds of hitting that exact spot.

However, if you're simply asking what are the odds of a woman getting pregnant, they're pretty good. Humans are very fecund. World population is approaching 7 billion!
 
The classic example of someone calling you just as your thinking of them seems to me to be simply an exaggeration of the odds of that even happening in the first place.

At first reading the story seems to suggest "out of all of the millions of people in the world that could have phoned me at that exact time, it happened to be the person I was thinking of" when in reality the number of people the a) have you phone number and b) have any reason to call you and c) you are likely to be thinking about on a personal level, are actually quite small, so the odds reduce dramatically.

There's also the obvious problem of your own habits or actions reducing the odds of something happening, for example I have never had the experience of reading a word and someone saying the same word on the TV at the same time, because I like to read in complete silence. Obviously the more you read with the TV on in the background the more and more likely it becomes.

I once spent a week in Amsterdam and on the first day 5 different people came up to me and asked me for directions, which seemed like a pretty freakish occurrence, until my friend pointed out that I was wearing a bright Orange T-Shirt that was exactly the same color as the Dutch football teams colors, and that people were just assuming I was Dutch
 
Ohh, those coincidences about people mistaking you for someone else, etc, are reminding me of a story about myself.

When I was about 19, I was working in the summer for a mail order company in town. At the time, I had an old Mercury Cougar that I'd been doing some body work on. It was mostly blue, but most of the back, of the car was bondo'd and primed. Pretty much the whole trunk and rear quarter panels, and part of the roof. It was not in any way common looking. It stood out. I don't mean in a good way. It stood out because it was a half-finished job and two different colors.

Anyhow, one day I was sick and missed work. Legitimately. I lived at home still. My mother was home that day as well, and knew I was home.

The next day I went to work, and I got called into the managers office. They then proceeded to tell me that some employee at work had seen me at a mall on the further northern outskirts of town, at least 40 miles from where I lived (on the southern side of town).

I was like "What?" because it threw me for a loop. I was home sick. I certainly didn't go on a long trip like that. I pressed the issue, and they wouldn't tell me the name of the person in the company accusing me, or let me defend myself against them. And they pointed out how my car stands out a mile away.

I ended up telling them to call my mother, un-announced, and ask her where I was. She of course confirmed my whole story. Then they suddenly let it go and sent me back to work.

To this day I never understood what happened there.. but as I write it out, I begin to suspect that the boss just wanted to assume I missed work for no good reason, and was trying to bluff me into admitting that I wasn't really home sick. So maybe no a coincidence after all. Otherwise someone else was driving a same year and color Cougar with half finished body work.
 
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grunion said:
... with a very interesting story.

His flight coming in was late and he had arrived at the hotel after midnight. There seemed to be a lot of confusion at check-in, as they thought he had checked in already. But he showed ID, and they gave him the pass key to his room.

When he opened the door and turned on the light, he saw that someone was already asleep in the bed. He quickly went back down to reception. The occupant of the room got up and dressed and also went down to the front desk to complain.

My co-worker turned around and saw that it was his father, of whom he had been estranged for twelve years, and with whom he shared the same name (which was not a common name - they were of Japanese descent and this anecdote took place in the Midwest USA.) The two sat up together the rest of the night and renewed their relationship...

...I love coincidences. They test my skepticism.
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My first thought on this was, "they thought he had checked in already" was a big red flag. The coincidence here is that the father and son picked the same hotel on the same night. It's not that rare for fathers and sons--especially first-born sons--to share a name. Since the hotel staff didn't assume that to be the case since he has an uncommon name for that area (if he was "John Smith" they would not have given him a key to a room that was already occupied, and we'd have no strange story) the odds of this occurring are exactly that of someone else sharing his name being at the hotel that night, that is, 1:1.

Frankly, this is to me a story of incompetent staff! With a mild touch of racist overtones, since an Anglo name would have immediately triggered the assumption that two people were involved...I'm glad the guy got back on terms with his Dad, but it's not that weird in terms of unlikely events occurring. If you suppose this is a location that is far enough from home town to require a hotel, but not so far as to be an unlikely place to visit -- in my area, this would be Portland, where it's quite common to have a meeting if you work for a Seattle company--and even the hotel on the same day is not that unlikely, especially with a decade involved.

The classic Ripley's "woman buys fish which has her long-lost ring in its stomach" story is far less likely, given the odds of a ring being eaten, and how many fish there are that might be caught or escape, and how many buyers...

Just my thoughts, MK
 
patchbunny said:
Had something like that happen once as a kid. I dialed a friend of mine, the phone didn't ring, and suddenly Kevin's voice was on the line sounding out my phone number as he pushed the buttons. He had picked up his phone to call me after it connected, but before it rang. Wild.
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This just happened to my wife and I; futhermore it has happened at least 3 times in the last 30 years. So there.
 
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