Coincidences

[Talentless]

Why do many people not believe in them? Not just by an individual case, but at all?

 

[wfooshee]

Coincidences happen, but they are not signs from God, or anything like that. Is that what you mean by believe in them?

 

[Pupik]

People want to believe that there is "order in all that chaos", especially when they aren't rolling the dice. I suppose it organizes people's little worlds, and makes for good conversation. It also gives someone an easy answer for their problems.

 

[Talentless]

Well, I believe in coincidence. I'm mostly looking to here, though, for some logical refutation of coincidence.

To me, a hypothetical of a bank robber whose getaway car suddenly fails even though it had been otherwise superbly reliable, thanks in no small part to excellent maintanence, can be explained by coincidence, and isn't explained, in the sense that this supposition is validated, by the mere proclamation of 'divine providence.' The more probable explanation even when exact cause of failure cannot be found or repeated within the same parameters as were in the time around the robbery and attempt to escape capture, is that some natural phenomena occured which cannot be repeated because its presence is rare.

 

[Pupik]

Well, as long as there's a logical reason for something to occur, a cause-and-effect, then there can be no coincidence. We can post hypothetical situations all day long, but there's a reason for each. Some coincidences are just a bit more amazing than others, especially if there's many more variables involved. However, to give a short answer for a complex scenario, it's easier to state things as a coincidence.

We don't know everything, nor will we ever know everything. But we can learn a lot, or enough to get by. I personally would rather know exact details, rather than chalk things up to coincidence, if I'm interested enough in some story or scenario that occurred.

 

[Talentless]

In my experience, albeit it's not great, most assertions of non believance in coincidence premises from the believe of "god" being the cause. My point is, that two events occuring together, where one affects the other, need not have always been planned by some higher power. Coincidence isn't an avoidance of the answer, it's skepticism of a convenient answer, which is how I would define saying it was divine providence that made the bank robber's car fail.

 

[Pupik]

Coincidence isn't an avoidance of the answer, it's skepticism of a convenient answer, which is how I would define saying it was divine providence that made the bank robber's car fail.

Hmm, because I see it as the opposite of what you state. Maybe I see a coincidence as something completely different.

The way I see it, there have to be some criteria for a series of events to have "conicidence". 1) Two (or more) mutually exclusive events have to occur. 2) Something or some part of them ties the two (or more) together. 3) Someone has to have an idea of why the two events are related. 4) No other explainable reason can tie them together.

Perhaps this is best left for the Opinions Forum. (Do you have any mod powers left over, T?)

 

[Talentless]

Not that I am aware of or can recall, but I will digress for the time being and just let the explanations come as they may.

 

[Boundary Layer]

Perhaps this is best left for the Opinions Forum. (Do you have any mod powers left over, T?)

I was about to post that 2 hours ago.

I thought this forum was for questions with definite answers, like "How is pi calculated?", and not questions about why people hold certain beliefs, etc.

 

[Wolfe]

A related Wikipedia article...

 

[a6m5]

There is a mysterious, scary coincidences called(by me) NBA free throw jinx. During a game, announcer/analyst will say something along lines of "he has made last 12 consecutive free throws.... ". Then in my observance, the shooter almost always miss. Last few years, average has easily been about 70, 80% miss. This season so far, 100%.

Considering that only good shooters are put in these situations, chances are, their miss ratio shouldn't even be close to 50%. Why?

 

[Talentless]

I was about to post that 2 hours ago.

I thought this forum was for questions with definite answers, like "How is pi calculated?", and not questions about why people hold certain beliefs, etc.

Many would assert such a question has a definite answer, though it might be arrogant of them to do so. Besides, despite my later injected opinion, which was partially a clarification of my original question, I did phrase the initial post as a question (said original question), albeit not one without some implied bias, but it remains a valid question. It's answerable so far as the logic of rejecting coincide can be defended by logic, not that I am the most logical person, but I try to be decent at it. So it's not solely about me seeing who I can challenge. Anyway, it won't cause real harm for this thread to be moved.

 

[Talentless]

A related Wikipedia article...

That article appears to support me.