FLUKEY OR SPOOKY? Incredible real-life coincidences or are they?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ivan Seeking
  • Start date Start date
AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers around the concept of coincidences and their significance, sparked by a story about two sisters who tragically collided while driving to surprise each other. Participants share various personal anecdotes that illustrate uncanny coincidences, such as a girl releasing a balloon that reaches another girl with the same name, and unexpected encounters with acquaintances in remote locations. Many contributors express skepticism about attributing these events to anything beyond chance, suggesting that the sheer number of interactions and occurrences in a large population makes such coincidences statistically probable. The conversation also touches on the psychological aspects of how people remember and interpret coincidences, often overlooking the countless instances where nothing remarkable happens. Some argue that while coincidences can be intriguing, they are ultimately explainable through statistical principles and human perception biases. The overarching theme emphasizes the randomness of life and the tendency to find meaning in unlikely events.
  • #201
DaveC426913 said:
There must be some significance to the book for each of you, otherwise you wouldn't have thought of it in the first place, and she wouldn't have bought it - or mentioned it. Before trying to find a possible connection between these two disparate events (yours and hers), what is it individually that brought it to your discrete attentions?
No clue. Reading the wiki description, I know why I never read it, I don't like those kinds of books. I can question her more about it to see if she can recall why she would have thought of the book. It won't be the first time that she's thought of something and it's popped into my mind.

Of course she thinks of things all day, every day that don't pop into my mind. So when something odd like this happens, it stands out.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #202
'Last night I was thinking of the book "The little prince", '

Something triggered that thought. There must be a reason that you started thinking about a book - especially one you've never read. We can deduce that you know of the book (otherwise it's just three words string together).

Now, I'm not suggesting you are going to be able to figure out what brought it into your head - in fact, what I'm suggesting is that we know there's something that triggered it that you are unaware of. Whcih means therein could hide the connection.

(Kind of like seeing 100 feet of garden hose, but no water coming out of it, even though the water's on. There's got to be a crimp in it somewhere, yet you can see 99 feet of the garden hose is uncrimped. There's only that one foot section where it goes behind a tree trunk...)
 
  • #203
Here's a coinky-dink.

Last night on Family Guy, Peter and Brian were crawling through some ducting and Peter aid 'Not I know what a TV dinner feels like'. Brain said 'What?' and Peter said 'It's a Die Hard Reference.'

I'd never heard that comment before.

Today, by coincidence, I'm watching Die Hard on Sunday afternoon TV. That reference is more than an hour into the movie.
 
  • #204
DaveC426913 said:
Today, by coincidence, I'm watching Die Hard on Sunday afternoon TV. That reference is more than an hour into the movie.

Now my line of thinking on that would be you were more inclined to watch it because you'd heard it - even on a subconscious level.
 
  • #205
JaredJames said:
Now my line of thinking on that would be you were more inclined to watch it because you'd heard it - even on a subconscious level.
Prolly.
 
  • #206
JaredJames said:
I have no idea what you're supposedly pointing out. You're maintaining a fact that no one has disagreed with or even questioned. From the start I said I knew it wasn't weird, so what exactly is your point?



Your comments are as if I've made out it's some weird event. At best I said "a bit weird" but immediately after that I mentioned the odds and how 'not' weird it actually is.

I honestly don't know what is being discussed here, or what I supposedly said to bring it about.

OK - I now understand that you said it wasn't weird.
 
  • #207
DaveC426913 said:
Here's a coinky-dink.

Last night on Family Guy, Peter and Brian were crawling through some ducting and Peter aid 'Not I know what a TV dinner feels like'. Brain said 'What?' and Peter said 'It's a Die Hard Reference.'

I'd never heard that comment before.

Today, by coincidence, I'm watching Die Hard on Sunday afternoon TV. That reference is more than an hour into the movie.

I'm sure you're not asserting there was something weird here ?

To make it simpler, I saw a number plate ending in 1234. I thought "that's cute" (or, I may have thought nothing at all).
10 minutes later I saw another plate ending in 1234. So what ? No one would claim anything anomalous here .. would they ?

I think the point of Evo's post however (please correct me if I'm wrong here Evo) is that she had a thought or mental impression of a relatively rare event, which subsequently occurred in reality - within a short space of time.

If such events are rare in a persons life, it is easy to call them flukey - coincidence.
However, if they are frequent, if they occur with regularity, and have a low probability factor, then the question has to be asked - "where did the information come from" ?
 
  • #208
alt said:
I'm sure you're not asserting there was something weird here ?
No. But what I thought was funny is that I had this funny coincidence occur while at that moment engaged in an online discussion about funny coincidences.
 
  • #209
DaveC426913 said:
'Last night I was thinking of the book "The little prince", '

Something triggered that thought. There must be a reason that you started thinking about a book - especially one you've never read. We can deduce that you know of the book (otherwise it's just three words string together).

Now, I'm not suggesting you are going to be able to figure out what brought it into your head - in fact, what I'm suggesting is that we know there's something that triggered it that you are unaware of. Whcih means therein could hide the connection.

You're not suggesting that she's going to be able to figure out what brought it into her head, but that something did ? I'm sure she knows that. And I'm sure she IS unaware of what that trigger was, else, we would have no issue here.
 
  • #210
DaveC426913 said:
No. But what I thought was funny is that I had this funny coincidence occur while at that moment engaged in an online discussion about funny coincidences.

i was reminded by the picture from Madagascar that i also have a birthmark ...shaped...like...Africa :eek:

but not on my Paw

ibfc
 
  • #211
several years ago i noted some interesting coincidences in three novels which i read close together. i mentioned this to a friend in an email:

"...I hope you like the Puzzler book. There were several coincidences linking it to other
books i read recently. In the Whaleboat House the dead body of the girl starts moving...
it turns out there was a fish underneath. In the Tasmanian book they refer to dead cows moving
...due to being eaten from the inside by Tasmanian Devils. In the Puzzler a dead pig starts moving...this time a piglet is the cause ! "

it is possible that the "meme" of dead bodies moving due to animal/fish activity was passed from author to author when they read each other's books...or perhaps i subconsciously sought out books which were likely to contain such events. has anyone come across this particular "meme" in other novels ?

i find such coincidences intriguing and definitely positive, life-enhancing events ( even though the details in this case were decidedly gruesome ! )

ibfc
 
  • #212
I just had my own DaveC moment.

Opened xkcd (without looking at it) and changed the TV channel.

Right at that moment the TV announcer said "and now for Family Guy and they're doing a remake of one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made" (Blue Harvest, the parody of Star Wars).

Then, I look at xkcd and on the first page as what I can only assume is a random pic they show on entry: http://xkcd.com/890/ (when I opened it was only http://xkcd.com, I added 890 so you could see the image).

It's a Star Wars Millenium Falcon joke.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #213
JaredJames said:
... what I can only assume is a random pic they show on entry: http://xkcd.com/890/ ...

That's not random, just today's comic. So the real coincidence is that today's xkcd is Star Wars-related. (I'm too lazy to calculate the probability of a random xkcd being Star Wars-related.)
 
  • #214
jhae2.718 said:
That's not random, just today's comic. So the real coincidence is that today's xkcd is Star Wars-related. (I'm too lazy to calculate the probability of a random xkcd being Star Wars-related.)

Ah.

Still works for me - first time I've ever visited that site. Just saw a pic on here and figured I'd check it out.
 
  • #215
I was in A concourse, and the [St. Louis] tornado actually hit C concourse. And within about 15 minutes, I get a phone call telling me that the tornado had hit my house.

So I left to come home, and I had to hike in because power lines were all down. And I came across to the top of that hill, and I looked to see my house, and all I saw was a space. And there it is. That's my house... [his house was completely destroyed]

SIMON: And one of your personal photographs got swept up in the cloud and wound up at the airport, traveled four or five miles.

HAYES: It -- yes. One of the men that I work with called me yesterday morning. They found a picture of my daughter and one of her classmates from 1997. The wind had blown it, and it stuck to the window of the break room that I work in.

SIMON: Well, that is absolutely amazing.

HAYES: It sure was.
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1104/25/cnr.03.html
 
  • #216
It happened again !

On Thursday evening i was reading a book by Kary Mullis ( honestly that is his real name ! ) in which he recounts a strange event involving a GLOWING RACCOON.
The next day at the Gym i was idly watching a kiddies show called Wingin' It... and there was a RACCOON puppet...which gave off light !:eek::bugeye:

I swear on Dawkins' grave that this is true

ibfc
 
  • #217
One day, I was sitting in my living room reading a library book when I came upon a library receipt. For whatever reason, I decided to see who it belonged to. It was my boyfriend of less than 24 hours. I'd had no idea that he liked books of that genre.
 
  • #218
ToniLStark said:
One day, I was sitting in my living room reading a library book when I came upon a library receipt. For whatever reason, I decided to see who it belonged to. It was my boyfriend of less than 24 hours. I'd had no idea that he liked books of that genre.
Just to be clear, you're saying you got this book out of the library and that you discovered he had taken it out before you ever met him, right?
 
  • #219
I asked a work associate what he was doing for the 4th. Not much, he replied. "No fireworks?". Nope. They stopped doing that some years ago.

Well, when you think about, said I, "you are just burning money". I swear, to the best of my knowledge I have never said this before or even thought about it quite that way. I always loved fireworks but am getting a bit cynical in my old age.

He responded by saying that's really funny. He attended a funeral this morning for the father of a friend. During the eulogy, it was mentioned that the father always referred to fireworks displays as " just burning money"
 
  • #220
My sister, her husband, and their kids were up from California. My brother-in-law was thumbing through our old Hubble photo book and in it found his son's birth announcement - now age 13.
 
  • #221
I once listened to a song on a cd in a car. When i took out the cd and it automatically switched to radio, the station it tuned to was playing the exact same song and it was on the exact same point in the song as when i stopped it. The song wasn't a very new song, so it didn't get played often.
 

Similar threads

2
Replies
56
Views
4K
Replies
38
Views
1K
Replies
8
Views
2K
Replies
26
Views
2K
Replies
3
Views
1K
Back
Top