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Coincidence

BillyJoe

Penultimate Amazing
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Aug 4, 2001
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I recently returned to the JREF on a limited basis to participate on the Puzzle Forum's "Catch Phrase" thread (which my son started nearly three years ago!)

Two nights ago, he and I were searching through a site that lists popular phrases with a view to making up a catch phrase - just in case we happened to solve one and had to post a new one. I came across the phrase "salad days" and recalled that one of Jethro Tull's songs contains this phrase and that, despite listening to this song countless times, I had never bothered to find out what it meant. Curiousity finally got the better of me and I looked up dictionary.com for a definition.

The very next day "salad days" appeared amongst my emails as Dictionary.com's "Word of the Day" (despite being two words).

What's the chance of that?

BJ
 
The other night when I looked on the "guess the movie quote" thread, the new quote was from the movie I was watching on DVD at that moment.

That was spooky.

Strange things are afoot on the JREF forum.
 
Yesterday I made a comment in the Ley Line thread that spoke of Feng Shui. Not one half an hour later I got a company e-mail informing me that the Feng Shui class was now full.

Was there a full moon yesterday? Or maybe my office resides on a ley line?
 
How about this one.

A couple of years ago I placed all my MP3s (music and humor) in a playlist set for suffle.

A couple of tracks in to the set, Dennis Leary's 'everything is horrible' came on.
That song ends with
and John Denver on compact discs!?! Oh god!.
Click to expand...
that was followed by Graham Chapman saying
and now the sound of John Denver being strangled.
Click to expand...

Coincidence?

:D
 
BillyJoe said:
I recently returned to the JREF on a limited basis to participate on the Puzzle Forum's "Catch Phrase" thread (which my son started nearly three years ago!)

Two nights ago, he and I were searching through a site that lists popular phrases with a view to making up a catch phrase - just in case we happened to solve one and had to post a new one. I came across the phrase "salad days" and recalled that one of Jethro Tull's songs contains this phrase and that, despite listening to this song countless times, I had never bothered to find out what it meant. Curiousity finally got the better of me and I looked up dictionary.com for a definition.

The very next day "salad days" appeared amongst my emails as Dictionary.com's "Word of the Day" (despite being two words).

What's the chance of that?

BJ
Click to expand...
I opened this post while listenting to Jethro Tull's Nothing Is Easy.
 
I once was driving somewhere in the car and after a few minutes of driving turned on the radio.

Before anything else happened, the display of radio flashed my own name at me.

The explanation is, of course, very simple: A song of "The Rasmus" was playing and the first bit of text received from the RDS was "Rasmus".

It is also very much possible that I didn't notice that music was already playing, or that I wasn't looking at the display when other text flashed up before that. I was, after all, driving.

Still, it was a very bizarre moment before the entire situation dawned on me.
 
When I was a kid, I once slept over my cousin's house. We were playing some game when bedtime came, but we didn't want to stop just yet. So we turned out the lights, waited until my aunt and uncle went to bed, then turned on our little TV with the sound off to continue playing. The light wasn't quite bright enough, so one of us got the idea to turn up the brightess on the TV. Only we turned up the sound knob instead. We instantly realized our mistake and quickly turned the sound back down. But not before two words -- and only two words -- got blasted out, the two words in the whole world we least wanted my sleeping aunt and uncle to hear:

"WAKE UP!"

Just try telling a traditionally raised Catholic kid that God wasn't punishing his disobedience after something like that..
 
BillyJoe said:
I recently returned to the JREF on a limited basis to participate on the Puzzle Forum's "Catch Phrase" thread (which my son started nearly three years ago!)

Two nights ago, he and I were searching through a site that lists popular phrases with a view to making up a catch phrase - just in case we happened to solve one and had to post a new one. I came across the phrase "salad days" and recalled that one of Jethro Tull's songs contains this phrase and that, despite listening to this song countless times, I had never bothered to find out what it meant. Curiousity finally got the better of me and I looked up dictionary.com for a definition.

The very next day "salad days" appeared amongst my emails as Dictionary.com's "Word of the Day" (despite being two words).

What's the chance of that?

BJ
Click to expand...

It's the phenomenon of synchronicity.
 
One evening at a local tapas bar my wife and I were making fun of a local artists' painting depicting a monkey on a woman's back. (I'm sure that, in time, this artist will blossom into a modern day Rembrandt.)

When we left the establishment what was the first song to play on the 'oldies' radio station we listen to? Peter Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey". I hadn't heard the song in years.

We were shocked at what the asking price of the painting was. Coincidence?
 
Stellafane said:
Just try telling a traditionally raised Catholic kid that God wasn't punishing his disobedience after something like that..
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That's why I gave up the faith. Absolving my sins didn't outweigh absolving my Catholic guilt.

Is it mere coincidence that many apostates like me have not been struck dead by lightining yet?
 
Stellafane, that was hilarious.


On 6/6/06 when I got to work, the first piece of data I had to enter on my computer contained a birth date of 9/11/##. A conspiracy nut would make a big deal about that, I'm sure. OK, so where I live, the date was actually the 9th of November, but numerology is arbitrary to a lot of those guys.

Another one: Last Saturday, without ever discussing the problem with her, both I and my mother-in-law (who's the opposite side of the globe) had to complain to our respective neighbours about continually barking dogs, something I'd never done before at all.

I'm still in dumbed-down mode after analysing Les Raphael's coincidences, or I think I normally wouldn't discuss the subject, as it makes me feel woo. With coincidences, we (sometimes) remember the hits and always ignore the infinite number of misses.

I had to ask my husband what the coincidence was with his mum, as I'd forgotten it. I remembered the first one only because I'd been participating in 9/11 discussions for ages and the 6/6/06 thread for quite a while. I can't think of any others.
 
Apollyon said:
Definitely coincidence.

If John Denver's ultralight had crashed directly in front of you just as Graham Chapman got done speaking...now THAT would have to be questioned. :)
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I was driving passed the area where John Denver's ultra light crashed and was listening to a pod cast of Pen radio Monkey Tuesday. If John Denver had been a monkey that would have been a real coincidence. :D
 
Ian,

Interesting Ian said:
It's the phenomenon of synchronicity.
Click to expand...
From Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/synchronicity

syn·chro·nic·i·ty
1 The state or fact of being synchronous or simultaneous; synchronism.
2 Coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related, conceived in Jungian theory as an explanatory principle on the same order as causality.

synchronicity
n : the relation that exists when things occur at the same time; "the drug produces an increased synchrony of the brain waves"

syn·chro·nic·i·ty
n : the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

Which one are you meaning?

At one end of the spectrum of definitions for synchronicity, it means the same as coincidence. I guess you are saying that you are on the other end of that spectrum?

BJ
 
BillyJoe said:
Ian,


From Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/synchronicity

syn·chro·nic·i·ty
1 The state or fact of being synchronous or simultaneous; synchronism.
2 Coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related, conceived in Jungian theory as an explanatory principle on the same order as causality.

synchronicity
n : the relation that exists when things occur at the same time; "the drug produces an increased synchrony of the brain waves"

syn·chro·nic·i·ty
n : the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

Which one are you meaning?

At one end of the spectrum of definitions for synchronicity, it means the same as coincidence. I guess you are saying that you are on the other end of that spectrum?

BJ
Click to expand...

The way that Jung used it. Essentially an acausal connecting principle as he described it.
 
BillyJoe said:
How do you tell the difference between coincidence and synchronicity?
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You can't tell the difference on any specific occasion. But when such coincidences are somewhat more numerous than would reasonably be expected by chance, we can surmise that, at least on many occasions some other principle is involved.
 
Interesting Ian said:
You can't tell the difference on any specific occasion. But when such coincidences are somewhat more numerous than would reasonably be expected by chance, we can surmise that, at least on many occasions some other principle is involved.
Click to expand...

I'll rot in hell for this, but how can you tell how many of these occurrences should be expected by chance?

And how do you count? You would need to have a number of occurrences of mostly anything that doesn't happen to be a remarkable coincidence - like every single time I torn on the radio on my car when there's no song by "The Rasmus" playing.

And what then justifies the speculation that there is a "principle" at work, rather than just a streak of improbable events? Who is counting the many people that have long streaks of unremarkable occurrences of random events?
 
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