Bizarre coincidences and how they are interpreted.
Sean C
was talking to a friend yesterday, and we were discussing coincidences
and how people interpret them in a religious sense. I had earlier been
reading a book about Mexico, and the author was explaining how much
information you could convey using sign language and gestures, even if
you don't know the language.
Well, on the way home after seeing a movie involving guys with guns
robbing someone, i decided to stop at the local take-out Chinese
restaurant, and literally five minutes before I got there I was
thinking about how this area has almost no crime, and there has been
maybe one murder in the last 20 years. I thought about how I had never
heard of a store being robbed at gunpoint up here.
Well, when i entered the restaurant, the owners began to make gestures
like guns indicating that they had just been robbed! I immediately
called the cops, and then tried to find out what had happened. They
could scarcely speak a word of English (mostly just numbers), and I
know no Chinese, but I was able to piece together what had happened
using sign language and gestures, and gave a description of the
suspects to the police. I was then able to get them to call their
nephew, who speaks English and Chinese, and I was amazed by how much I
had gotten right--and how much I had gotten wrong. I got the ages,
approximate height, clothes and hair color right, that the two shortest
guys were carrying the guns, and the tallest guy was carrying the money
in a green bag, that they had got the money in the cash drawer but not
the money that was under it, and that they thought one of the guys had
once worked at the pizza place next door, and had a funny walk. What I
gotten wrong is that they were not three black guys, but three white
guys, two of whom were wearing all black clothes.
The coincidences here were so unreal it totally blew my mind. Here I
was talking about coincidences earlier, reading about communicating
without understanding someone else's language, seeing a movie involving
robbery with guns, and then thinking about the crime rate in my area,
only to come across a situation involving all these things.
I believe that given the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of
indvidual thoughts, experiences and actions we have in a day, it is
inevitable that our preceptions will cross paths with reality in such a
way that is so improbable as to make those of religious bent believe
they are psychic or that some devine force is manipulating events in
some way. I find these kind of things happening very frequently, such
as the classic one of thinking about a friend you haven't seen in
years, only to have that person call that very day, or thinking about a
plane crash and turning on the TV to see that a plane has just crashed.
I often heard such coincidences cited by the faithful as evidence of
the existence of God (well, how do you explain *this*, then...). Given
enough time, the improbable becomes the probable, and coincidences
occur.
I am wondering if anyone has ever sat down and tried to calculate the
probability of the improbable (probably not) and come up with some
figures on the likelihood that bizarre happenstance will strike you.
Anybody else have any wierd anecdotes to share?
Sean C
LP
In chapter 7 of Richard Dawkins book, "Unweaving the Rainbow", he
covers this subject. In the chapter he relates a story where his wife
bought a used watch for her mother at a pawn shop or garage sale, and
it had a price tag stuck on it. When she got home, she took off the
price tag and found that her mothers three initials were engraved on
the watch. He then goes on to estimate the odds of this happening and
concludes that the chances of this happening are not as unlikely as
one would first assume.
Kate
wrote:
I had a friend create a rather bizzarre piece of ceramic art. Kind of
a cross between a ram and a bowl. He sold it at a garage sale. A few
months later he came across his own ceramic art on sale at the local
Marshalls. Marshalls is one of those stores that sells damaged and
unsalable department store goods at a large discount. There are
probably 2 or 3 of them in the area of Sacramento. The only thing we
could figure was that who ever bought it, took to the Marshalls and
claimed it was a return. It sure was wierd that the artist would run
across it.
Robibnikoff
"Kate " <cob...@newscene.com> wrote in message
news:43951760....@news-west.newscene.com...
snip
>
> I had a friend create a rather bizzarre piece of ceramic art. Kind of
> a cross between a ram and a bowl. He sold it at a garage sale. A few
> months later he came across his own ceramic art on sale at the local
> Marshalls. Marshalls is one of those stores that sells damaged and
> unsalable department store goods at a large discount. There are
> probably 2 or 3 of them in the area of Sacramento. The only thing we
> could figure was that who ever bought it, took to the Marshalls and
> claimed it was a return. It sure was wierd that the artist would run
> across it.
Oh dear, was he insulted? I think I'd have a fit of any of my art ended up
in Marshalls. The ones around where I live are terrible junk stores.
Anyhoo, speaking of art and weird coincidences, while helping my mother move
out of her house into a much smaller home this summer, many of her paintings
(she's an artist, primarily water colors) had to take up temporary residence
in my dining room until we figured out where we were going to hang what. In
going through the paintings, I came across one of my daughter that I had
never seen before - and my mother rarely does people, mainly landscapes,
still lifes, etc. I told my mother I'd seen the painting and asked her when
she'd done it. Turns out she'd done the painting two years before my
daughter was born! Freaky ;)
--
Robyn
Resident Witchypoo
#1557
Kate
<witc...@broomstick.com> wrote:
>
>"Kate " <cob...@newscene.com> wrote in message
>news:43951760....@news-west.newscene.com...
>
>snip
>>
>> I had a friend create a rather bizzarre piece of ceramic art. Kind of
>> a cross between a ram and a bowl. He sold it at a garage sale. A few
>> months later he came across his own ceramic art on sale at the local
>> Marshalls. Marshalls is one of those stores that sells damaged and
>> unsalable department store goods at a large discount. There are
>> probably 2 or 3 of them in the area of Sacramento. The only thing we
>> could figure was that who ever bought it, took to the Marshalls and
>> claimed it was a return. It sure was wierd that the artist would run
>> across it.
>
>Oh dear, was he insulted? I think I'd have a fit of any of my art ended up
>in Marshalls. The ones around where I live are terrible junk stores.
Yeah I know. The commercials are funny - they act like you can
actually find department store grade stuff in them.
He thought it was funny and bought it because he figured if it had
worked so hard to come back to him, it should.
>
>Anyhoo, speaking of art and weird coincidences, while helping my mother move
>out of her house into a much smaller home this summer, many of her paintings
>(she's an artist, primarily water colors) had to take up temporary residence
>in my dining room until we figured out where we were going to hang what. In
>going through the paintings, I came across one of my daughter that I had
>never seen before - and my mother rarely does people, mainly landscapes,
>still lifes, etc. I told my mother I'd seen the painting and asked her when
>she'd done it. Turns out she'd done the painting two years before my
>daughter was born! Freaky ;)
That is really wierd.
Robibnikoff
> On Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:49:25 -0500, "Robibnikoff"
> <witc...@broomstick.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Kate " <cob...@newscene.com> wrote in message
>>news:43951760....@news-west.newscene.com...
>>
>>snip
>>>
>>> I had a friend create a rather bizzarre piece of ceramic art. Kind of
>>> a cross between a ram and a bowl. He sold it at a garage sale. A few
>>> months later he came across his own ceramic art on sale at the local
>>> Marshalls. Marshalls is one of those stores that sells damaged and
>>> unsalable department store goods at a large discount. There are
>>> probably 2 or 3 of them in the area of Sacramento. The only thing we
>>> could figure was that who ever bought it, took to the Marshalls and
>>> claimed it was a return. It sure was wierd that the artist would run
>>> across it.
>>
>>Oh dear, was he insulted? I think I'd have a fit of any of my art ended
>>up
>>in Marshalls. The ones around where I live are terrible junk stores.
>
> Yeah I know. The commercials are funny - they act like you can
> actually find department store grade stuff in them.
Every once in a blue moon, you can find something decent, but most of it's
crap, the stores are a terrible mess and the employees extremely
disgruntled. I generally avoid them.
>
> He thought it was funny and bought it because he figured if it had
> worked so hard to come back to him, it should.
How cute! Honestly, I probably would have done the same thing just to get
it out of there.
>>
>>Anyhoo, speaking of art and weird coincidences, while helping my mother
>>move
>>out of her house into a much smaller home this summer, many of her
>>paintings
>>(she's an artist, primarily water colors) had to take up temporary
>>residence
>>in my dining room until we figured out where we were going to hang what.
>>In
>>going through the paintings, I came across one of my daughter that I had
>>never seen before - and my mother rarely does people, mainly landscapes,
>>still lifes, etc. I told my mother I'd seen the painting and asked her
>>when
>>she'd done it. Turns out she'd done the painting two years before my
>>daughter was born! Freaky ;)
>
> That is really wierd.
Yeah, that's one reason why I have yet to have it framed and hung up in my
house anywhere.