Isnt it funny how things happen

[Location114 10]

So basically whats made my ask the question of 'isnt it funny how things happen' is that last week I was saying to my OH i might buy a surround sound soon anyway last night my friend phoned up and said Do you want a surround sound? Now I or my OH havent mentioned this to my friend so i was just a little woah isnt that funny.

[telman 10]

I got a letter saying I had won the Spanish lottery. I thought that's funny.

[DragonofAna 10]

I was reading the thread with Grahame and Cyclone and when I switched on the telly - amazingly - laurel and hardy were on.

[royalscam 10]

Have you ever asked youself how many times you have been talking about something and nothing with any connection to the conversation occurs.

This is not coincidence, it is synchronicity.

It has no relevance or indeed meaning.

The sheer number of conversations and actions that millions of humans undertake every day would inevitably lead to events such as you describe.

[HeadingNorth 11]

This is not coincidence, it is synchronicity

 

 

Any two things that happen at the same time are a coincidence, though they're only interesting if they appear connected, and - as you rightly point out - in a sample size of eight billion, apparently-connected coincidences are bound to affect thousands of people every day.

[DragonofAna 10]

Unless we use coincidence to explain something we have no explanation for. Not talking about 8 billion people. Just talking about one or two.

You are talking with a friend in a different country about a mate you have not seen for ages, and whilst talking to that friend there's a knock on the door, and it turns out to be the mate you have not seen for ages who just happens to have decided to be in the neighbourhood. Coincidence? If you want it to be.

 

Personally I do not believe in coincidence.

[HeadingNorth 11]

Unless we use coincidence to explain something we have no explanation for. Not talking about 8 billion people. Just talking about one or two.

 

Which is selective reporting.

 

You are talking with a friend in a different country about a mate you have not seen for ages, and whilst talking to that friend there's a knock on the door, and it turns out to be the mate you have not seen for ages who just happens to have decided to be in the neighbourhood. Coincidence? If you want it to be.

 

It's coincidence whether you want it to be or not. The two events coincided, in that they happened at more or less the same time.

 

Is it significant? Only if you can come up with an explanation that also explains the untold thousands of millions of times that people think of a mate they haven't seen for ages and that mate does not knock at the door. Otherwise, you're in the same position as Richard Feynman arguing that it was really amazing he saw a numberplate with YX05FNH on it; what are the odds that, out of all the millions of plates in the country, he would see exactly that one? It can't be coincidence, can it?