Weird Experience
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Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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You didn't talk about a belief in God, you professed that many scientists believed in non-materialistic explanations for phenomena such as poltergeists.
I'm glad you modified that statement because you're right, your wife didn't make a prediction, if how you've described events is accurate.
Is it, though? What time-span would such an event need to occur on in order to count as a "hit"?
Indeed. It can be difficult to see these things from the inside.
So you do at least agree, then, that you would have found this significant had it occurred at any point during your current crisis? What period of time are we talking, if that's information you're willing to share? Days, certainly. Maybe weeks.
I would certainly think it unlikely, but I would attach no more significance to it than that. It's just as likely as any other combination.
No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't conclude that and, if I did, I wouldn't be right. That the dice were fair was set out in the premises. If I were to conclude that the dice were loaded, then my conclusions would be at odds with reality.
Yes, we are human beings and our perceptions and cognitive functions are flawed. That we may attach meaning to things does not imply that that attachment is warranted.
Incidentally, FWIW, your reasoning here is exactly the same reasoning Jabba is using to attempt to prove he is immortal in the "Immortality and Bayesian Statistics" thread. It's an example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
It is, and that's one good reason why the fine-tuning argument is flawed.
And where we differ is in how unlikely we consider the events you're describing to be.
It is impossible to roll 10 ordinary fair dice and get any result that is not an integer between 10 and 60.
This alternate situation you're describing is nothing like the coincidences you've described in this thread.
BTW, FWIW, I hope you don't feel I'm picking on you or anything. I have sympathy for your situation, and my intent here is not to cause you pain or discomfort of any kind.
True. Ian Stevenson comes to mind. Same with some doctors who have studied NDE's and Deathbed Visions. Ditto some parapsychologists I've read about. I could probably list 100 names, if you pressed me on it, but then we end up quibbling over what "many" means.
If 30% of scientists believe in in God, then right there, you have "many" scientists who aren't materialists, unless they had the very peculiar belief that God is made of matter.
Quibble. If someone said I should ask for a sign, and I did, and I asked the person, "what kind of signs do you get?", and they talked about car accidents, and I got into two car accidents hours later, I would be equally flabbergasted, although, technically, no prediction was made.
That's like asking "how much money do you have to have to be rich?" The fact that it happened hours after we talked about it is significant. To me, at least.
Right, but I reject your explanation on rational grounds. I don't go around looking for signs. Meeting someone I haven't met for over a decade is always noteworthy, and it just happens to be the person who helped me over this crisis that I'm currently going through? I don't believe it's an example of apophenia. It was a rare event and very meaningful. Such events need to be explained.
One week, so far. If I ran into the guy a month from now, I wouldn't think much of it. But running into him right after leaving the doctor's office, where I "prayed" to God to humor my doc? I'm not religious, but neither am I a strict atheist. If it's a coincidence, it's an extraordinarily unlikely one.
LOL! A six-sided die that rolls 6666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666
is loaded. You would have to be an idiot to believe the die was fair after those rolls. What you're not getting is that, while every possible outcome is just as likely, not every possible outcome is just as significant. I'll give you an example:
Suppose we take two six-sided dice and roll them 20 times.
Die 1: 23261325131114314556
Die 2: 66666666666666666666
Is it your claim that we can't conclude anything about die 2? Absurd! Die 2 is obviously loaded for 6's, even thought a bunch of 6's is just as likely as a bunch of 1's, 2's, and so on.
Look, if you think we can't tell which one is loaded, then, please, start a thread on this in the science forum. Trust me, though. If we ran it through Bayes Theorem of Conditional Probability, the probability of die 2 being "fair", after rolling 20 6's, would be extraordinarily small.
But take it to the science forum, if you don't believe me.
Southwind17
Philosopher
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[emphasis added]
And THERE'S the rub ... you're being selective ... evidently.
We can look at coincidences across a spectrum from almost certain to almost impossible. You've given two examples above that lie at different points along the scale. At what distance from where you live does a number plate have to originate for it to become completely non-coincidental, and who are you to make that distinction?
It's inevitable you're going to encounter coincidences across the spectrum all the time. You're completely overlooking the more likely ones (because they're off your own personal 'coincidence scale') and attaching meaning to those the lie above a certain threshold, i.e. on your scale. Can't you see that you've set your own scale according to what seems 'unusual' (because technically it is unusual, by definition), but when looked at as a continuum it's inevitable you're going to encounter the more 'surprising' coincidences now and then?
Elizabeth I
Philosopher
There is ONE state - Arizona - between New Mexico and California. I would be surprised NOT to see any New Mexico license plates in California.
You can't say you're rolling fair dice but they're not fair. That doesn't make any sense. (And, as someone else pointed out, it's impossible to get anything but a whole number as a result when rolling dice, unless they are very strange dice.)
I would believe it could be chance. Things that have astronomically low odds of occurring happen all the time.
I've only met one other person in my life with the same birthday as mine. Is that weird?
At what point in the sequence are you going to draw your conclusion?
If I roll one six, the odds are 1:6 against. I wouldn't consider one six, sans a prediction, to have any particular significance. But the situation doesn't change for the second six either. I've already rolled one, so the odds of rolling a six remain 1:6 and I shouldn't be surprised at the second either.
And so on.
The significance comes from recognizing a pattern and then seeing that "prediction" bear out. But we already suspect we are pattern biased, so we ought to be skeptical when the item under inspection seems to be generating the very pattern we wish to test.
Wouldn't I be nearly as justified making an assumption about the die if the pattern were: 66666166?
The real divergence comes when we depart from things like dice and try to move the method out into our everyday world. For dice, I am controlling all but one variable and I understand everything I feel I need to about dice. But outside of this artificial construct, I am left guessing at a thousand different things, things I do not know about how the world may be. These are the assumptions which pollute the experiment. The same results (a significant coincidence) can have a hundred different meanings to a hundred different people - not so with the dice.
And finally, one critical difference blares out at us - the matter of repeatability. I will gain confidence in my analysis of the dice by repeating the experiment, but these anecdotes about mysterious happenings around us are almost designed to be impossible to repeat. To my mind, this is the greatest flaw in the analogy.
SezMe
post-pre-born
You, yourself, cite them as coincidences then say it's hard to see them as coincidences. So which is it.
SezMe
post-pre-born
Yes, it would. But I'd like to see a cite for the 30% number.
No it's not. It's just one state away.
ETA: Oops, Elizabeth I beat me to the draw on that part.
xterra
So far, so good...
The shortest straight-line distance across Arizona is 290 miles, or 465 km.
Interstate 40, in the northern part of the state is 365 miles from the California border to the New Mexico border.
Interstate 8/10, in the southern part of the state, is 390 miles.*
Fudbucker has not said exactly where he lives, but he has said that it is not an urban area, so probably the time of travel will not be as great as on an Interstate. (AZ speed limits on such roads are 75 mph except in cities, dangerous areas or construction zones.)
*ETA Distances are +/- 5 miles.
Interstate 40, in the northern part of the state is 365 miles from the California border to the New Mexico border.
Interstate 8/10, in the southern part of the state, is 390 miles.*
Fudbucker has not said exactly where he lives, but he has said that it is not an urban area, so probably the time of travel will not be as great as on an Interstate. (AZ speed limits on such roads are 75 mph except in cities, dangerous areas or construction zones.)
*ETA Distances are +/- 5 miles.
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wardenclyffe
Master Poster
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Fudbucker,
First, I'm very sorry to hear that you have to deal with this rough patch. Second, I'm glad that you are dealing with it and you are using methods that have helped in the past. Third, thank you for being so forthcoming about this. It helps to understand where you are coming from.
Fourth, I think your definition of a coincidence is different from the definition of most of the posters in this thread. You said that if you just saw someone that you hadn't seen for a long time, that would be a coincidence, but because you ran into the therapist who helped you long ago and you ran into him at the exact moment you needed him and after you prayed for intervention, that's more than a coincidence. I think you are mistaken. The first example of you meeting someone that you hadn't seen in a while is just and event or a happenstance. The second example is when the meeting coincides with other events or thoughts. That's what makes it seem special and that's what makes it a coincidence (note that the roots of the words are the same).
There is a website called www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com which collects stories of coincidences. It's a skeptical site run by skeptics. The object is to show that amazing coincidences happen all the time. They are fun and cool, but ultimately they don't seem to mean much after the initial thrill of the reveal.
I would recommend that you submit your stories. I think you are currently in a position that makes you more vulnerable than you usually are to the power of coincidence. I think the stories of the coincidences that happened to a skeptic and how he reacted to them would make fascinating reading on that website.
Think about it.
And good luck with the therapy.
Ward
First, I'm very sorry to hear that you have to deal with this rough patch. Second, I'm glad that you are dealing with it and you are using methods that have helped in the past. Third, thank you for being so forthcoming about this. It helps to understand where you are coming from.
Fourth, I think your definition of a coincidence is different from the definition of most of the posters in this thread. You said that if you just saw someone that you hadn't seen for a long time, that would be a coincidence, but because you ran into the therapist who helped you long ago and you ran into him at the exact moment you needed him and after you prayed for intervention, that's more than a coincidence. I think you are mistaken. The first example of you meeting someone that you hadn't seen in a while is just and event or a happenstance. The second example is when the meeting coincides with other events or thoughts. That's what makes it seem special and that's what makes it a coincidence (note that the roots of the words are the same).
There is a website called www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com which collects stories of coincidences. It's a skeptical site run by skeptics. The object is to show that amazing coincidences happen all the time. They are fun and cool, but ultimately they don't seem to mean much after the initial thrill of the reveal.
I would recommend that you submit your stories. I think you are currently in a position that makes you more vulnerable than you usually are to the power of coincidence. I think the stories of the coincidences that happened to a skeptic and how he reacted to them would make fascinating reading on that website.
Think about it.
And good luck with the therapy.
Ward
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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For me, "many" would entail a sizeable percentage of scientists.
It says nothing about their opinion of poltergeists, etc.
It's actually a very important distinction.
In the OP you said that your wife said that the signs she gets are "mostly" in the form of licence plates, which means that there are other things which could have been taken as a sign. You also say that she gets messages from licence plates which are from places other than New Mexico, meaning that there are other licence plates which could have been seen as signs.
In fact, your talk of a sticker being a sign establishes that you know there are signs other than New Mexico plates.
You said you saw the sticker 2 days after your wife mentioned the place.
Coincidence is a perfectly good explanation.
Nobody is disputing that. But unlikely things happen all the time. Million to one chances happen 7m times every day, because there are 7b people in the world. Every once in a while, you will be one of those 7m people.
I explicitly set out in the premises that the dice were fair. You can't alter the premises and still speak as if the example is the same.
As the die is fair we certainly cannot conclude that it's not fair.
We can tell that no die is loaded, because the fact that the dice are not loaded was explicitly stated in the premises of the example.
At the point where P(Loaded dice) rises above agnosticism. Again, this is on a probability continuum, on par with asking "how much money makes a person rich?"
Ask yourself: would you play craps with dice that rolled snake eyes ten times in a row, or would you move on to a different game? I don't think you would, because as the result becomes more improbable, the hypothesis of cheating increases. Just take it to it's logical conclusion: if a pair of dice rolled snake eyes 1,000 times in a row, no one on Earth would consider them fair.
To tie this back to the paranormal (and science in general), surprising results need to be explained. This could be a drug trial where 50% of the patients on an experimental drug go into remission, the values of physical constants that seem remarkably fine-tuned for a universe like ours to exist, or someone getting 75 out of 100 cards right on a Zener ESP test. In all cases, "chance" is a hypothesis, but after awhile, it stops being a "live" hypothesis.
For example: if someone got 100 out of 100 Zener cards right, no one would believe it was chance (well, maybe some here, but they would be wrong). They might believe it was cheating, but the "chance" hypothesis would go right out the door.
This is wrong. As you roll more and more sixes, your confidence in the "fair dice" hypothesis drops. Let's go back to the Zener Card Test.
The person being tested gets the first card right. The "chance" hypothesis maybe drops a little (or not at all- 20% odds come up all the time). Then they get the 2nd card right. The "chance" hypothesis takes a little more of a hit, but is still very viable, because the odds aren't very long yet. But by the time they get around 10 cards out of 10 cards right, the "chance" hypothesis has taken a huge hit. Another 10 cards right, and there's no way it could be chance.
I mean, if you could get 100 out of 100 Zener cards right, in 10 trials of 10, in a controlled setting, you wouldn't win Randi's challenge? Of course you would, although it's always possible that you just got lucky. Luck is always a hypothesis, just not always a good hypothesis.
In my case, is the luck hypothesis the best one? I don't know. I'm on the fence about it. I don't go around ascribing meaning to every coincidence that happens to me, and some very odd things have been coming up lately. I'm also not exactly in the best frame of mind to evaluate this, so I'm on the fence with it. I don't a priori rule out supernatural events, just as I don't a priori rule out naturalistic explanations. I think a skeptic should have an open mind.
One should always be skeptical, but a die that rolls six 20 times in a row should not be trusted to be fair. No one would ever bet on it, and I'm surprised I'm having to explain this.
Yes, because loaded dice don't always have to come up a certain way. Again, you roll it a bunch of times and get: 666666666166666661666666666661
Is that a fair die? Would you bet money on it? I sure wouldn't.
Very true, and why I'm on the fence about what's happened lately. I'm also on the fence about NDE's. Is a dying brain capable of creating a totally coherent, lucid, life-changing hallucination that is vividly remembered by the person the rest of their life? And should it be common that these hallucinations include things like life-reviews, and meeting dead relatives? I don't know for sure. It's very strange phenomena.
Yes, it's maddeningly frustrating when people I trust tell me X happened, and I can't repeat X, and X sounds utterly fantastical. And yet, there are people I trust, whom I'm convinced aren't lying to me, who claim to have experienced very strange things. Are they lying to themselves? Did their senses take leave of all of them? I don't know.
But repeatability isn't everything. Let's say President Obama dreams a huge earthquake is going to strike Lima at 10:15 am, and tries to get the authorities to evacuate the city, and a huge earthquake hits Lima at 10:15 am. You might never be able to repeat something like that, but I'm betting a lot of your beliefs would be changed, if something like that happened. The "chance" hypothesis would be utterly blown out of the water.
Unfortunately, in the world of paranormal research, hits like that never happen. The "evidence", such as it is, has to be sifted through to get even the tiniest confirmation of anything paranormal. Extremely frustrating!
Obviously, I see them as prima facie coincidences, but adding it all up, I don't know what to think.
I would agree with all that, yet I also know myself to not ascribe much meaning to stuff like this. Normally.
But as you said, I'm not thinking 100% clearly, so I'll probably just remain agnostic about it all.
Posting on the forums is, oddly, therapeutic. Thanks for your kind reply!
Exactly. And this was my basis for objecting to the word "conclude." I would accept "suspect" as a better choice. My suspicions increase, I cannot conclude, based on this happenstance alone.
This is where we part ways. To make progress on which hypothesis to accept, it isn't enough to identify which explanation is more probable. Probability alone doesn't have explanatory power. If, on the other hand, we take the die apart and find out how it's been altered, that is a good explanation. Probability can influence our suspicions and lead us to look for one explanation over another, but that's it.
The lack of confidence (unwillingness to bet) is akin to an opinion. And you are right - I am a cautious bettor and would avoid it. However, when we wish to make assertions about the world, this should go beyond suspicion and opinion - we need to check and demonstrate to provide a positive explanation, not one built on whether something was improbable or not.
I generally see this type of argument used in a similar fashion - to show some intelligent interference behind an improbable phenomenon. We are saying the dice are "fixed" - meaning there is purpose and intent. So too does the creationist, stunned by the improbable outcome of a world with them in it, say the situation is "fixed" and designed. But it's the explanation behind the different ideas that holds sway - not merely the unlikelihood I should be here to comment.
Again, I disagree. The chance explanation is always in play until some other explanation is settled upon. Consider a deeper question. Suppose I grant that Obama's prediction couldn't have been a chance event and was based on some secret ability of the President. I can then ask, even without knowing what that ability is, what the chances are that he should have the ability itself? And, receiving an answer to that, I can ask what the further chances are for the next level.
So long as we accept our universe is fundamentally built from random quantum events, no matter how improbable anything may be, we already know, deep down, chance rules the game. I see no escape from this.
Squeegee Beckenheim
Penultimate Amazing
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FWIW, the odds of a die coming up 6 10 times in a row is 6^10, or 60,466,176. That means that if there are a million dice on the entire planet being rolled 10 times every day, then we'd expect one of them to roll a 6 10 times in a row within 2 months.
I don't know exact figures, but I'd be willing to bet that that million estimate is very conservative.
Again, this is the difference in perspective that it's hard to appreciate. The question isn't "what happens to this die in isolation?", it's "what happens to this die which is part of the much larger set of dice which exist on this entire planet?". It seems significant if it happens to you, and it may be significant if you had predicted beforehand that you were going to roll 10 6s, but rolling 10 6s, in and of itself, is not an event that's remarkable. It only seems that way because it happened to you.
I don't know exact figures, but I'd be willing to bet that that million estimate is very conservative.
Again, this is the difference in perspective that it's hard to appreciate. The question isn't "what happens to this die in isolation?", it's "what happens to this die which is part of the much larger set of dice which exist on this entire planet?". It seems significant if it happens to you, and it may be significant if you had predicted beforehand that you were going to roll 10 6s, but rolling 10 6s, in and of itself, is not an event that's remarkable. It only seems that way because it happened to you.
Fair enough.
. Right, it just says a sizeable majority aren't strict materialists. Belief in God is belief in the supernatural, which was really my point.
How so? If your spouse talks to you about a dream they had where someone close to them got in a car crash, but they don't explicitly predict you will get in crash, and you get into two car crashes later that day, you wouldn't find that odd? I would. I might ultimately think it's a coincidence, but it would still be an extremely odd thing to happen.
But she only mentioned New Mexico plates specifically. After I saw the two N.M. plates, I asked her what else she gets as "signs" from her mom. She then talked about Carlsbad license covers. Then I saw one of those a few days later. Then another, on the freeway, two days ago. I don't know if I mentioned that one.
There are two that she's talked about, which have both come up: New Mexico, and Carlsbad. N.M. is pretty far away, and not very populous. Carlsbad is closer, so that's not so much of a hit, but a hit, nonetheless. Those are the only two things she talked about when it came to signs from her mom.
Just N.M. plates and Carlsbad plate covers. Both of which I saw.
Right. The N.M. plates were hours after she talked about it. The Carlsbad one was a few days later. That one's not as impressive to me, but I still find it a strange coincidence.
The N.M. plates were impressive because, as I said, it happened only hours after our conversation, and it's a rare occurance, and I had "asked for a sign" from her mom. Since then, I've been looking for N.M. plates. No luck yet. I doubt very much I'll see them around town any time soon. On the freeway, perhaps, but then I didn't see the original ones on the freeway. If I had, it wouldn't have made much of an impression on me.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I haven't made up my mind yet.
Right, someone usually wins the lottery, because so many people play, but the plate-thing happened, and then I ran into my old therapist...I'm not entirely happy with the coincidence explanation on this one. But, as I've said, I'm not 100% myself these days.
Then your point is lost on me. Fair dice, by definition, roll fair. Although, if you thought you had fair dice (if you were sure of it, in fact), and you rolled snake-eyes a hundred times in a row, I assume you would change your conclusion about the dice being fair? Yes?
Sure we can. Beliefs about things like fair dice are on a continuum from 0 to 1. 0 is reserved for logically (or metaphysically or mathematically) impossible events, and 1 is reserved for logically (or metaphysically or mathematically) certain events. In between 0 and 1 lie all our beliefs about the world, including fair dice. If your premise is "the dice are fair", and you assign a 99.99999% degree of certainty to that belief, and you roll a thousand snake-eyes in a row, your belief that "the dice are fair" will still drop to almost zero.
Then your example was a bad one, since we can never have certainty in our beliefs about the world. Our beliefs are constantly being updated as new information comes in. I have new information now (some unlikely coincidences), and so my beliefs have to be brought up-to-date. Maybe they stay the same, maybe I move away from materialism a bit. I don't know yet.
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A side issue, but still relevant:
The world is full of predictions. They are offered up by psychics, mystics, weathermen, stockbrokers, and that guy in the bar who plays the ponies.
I would like to know if there is some method I can use, pre-event, to decide which predictions I should pay attention to and which to dismiss. This business of only finding out afterwards doesn't help me at all.
The world is full of predictions. They are offered up by psychics, mystics, weathermen, stockbrokers, and that guy in the bar who plays the ponies.
I would like to know if there is some method I can use, pre-event, to decide which predictions I should pay attention to and which to dismiss. This business of only finding out afterwards doesn't help me at all.