Can probability explain uncanny coincidences?
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Image: bbc.com
Personal synchronicities sometimes outpace chance, some researchers insist.
Summary
Statistical and cognitive accounts explain many uncanny coincidences without invoking paranormal causes. The key is to consider all opportunities for events to match, not only the match that occurred; to account for hidden causes and dependencies; and to recognize that memory and perception make rare events feel rarer and more meaningful than they are.
- The law of truly large numbers means that events extremely unlikely in one specified instance can become expected across vast numbers of opportunities.
- Coincidences can result from hidden causes, psychological selection and recall, broad definitions of matching, and accumulated interactions.
- People commonly misjudge randomness and coincidence because they focus on the observed outcome rather than the broader set of possible outcomes.
Deeper Insight
Billions of people make some coincidences inevitable. That doesn't explain why one keeps happening to you, at the worst possible moment.
Skeptics have a trump card: with billions of people and endless chances, something astonishing is bound to happen somewhere. True, but it answers a different question. The puzzle is the pattern that repeats in one life, with timing and detail that feel aimed. A coincidence can still be evidence that your explanation is missing something. Chance explains that it happens, not what it means.
- What it could changeJudging each coincidence on its own details, not the law of large numbers, would reopen cases skeptics closed in bulk.
- How it touches todayPeople already treat repeat coincidences as signals, and some research says that can be rational.
- Our futureWe may find that meaning is a kind of data we never learned to measure.
- The existence of billions of people and many opportunities makes some extraordinary coincidences likely, but does not by itself show that chance is the best explanation for every coincidence.
- Some advocates of synchronicity argue that recurring or highly structured personal coincidences may contain significance not captured by general appeals to large numbers.
- A coincidence can be evidence for revising a favored causal theory, even when it does not establish the alternative; its evidential force depends on the competing explanations and their prior plausibility.
Sources · 9
Featured · Analysis · math.uchicago.edu
Methods for Studying Coincidences
## Methods for Studying Coincidences PERSl DlACONlS and FREDERICK MOSTELLER* This article illustrates basic statistical techniques for studying coincidences. These include data-gathering methods (informal anecdotes, case studies, observational studies, and experiments) and methods of analysis (explo
Read sourceAnalysis · sharonrawlette.com
How Skeptics Misapply the Law of Truly Large Numbers – Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, PhD
How Skeptics Misapply the Law of Truly Large Numbers – Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, PhD ## How Skeptics Misapply the Law of Truly Large Numbers The fact that there are 7 billion people in this world means that some pretty mind-boggling coincidences are likely to happen to a lot of people just by chance.
Read sourceAnalysis · cocosci.princeton.edu
doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2006.03.004
##### From mere coincidences to meaningful ##### discoveries q,qq Thomas L. Griffiths a,*, Joshua B. Tenenbaum b a Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Box 1978, Providence, RI 02912, United States b Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of
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