Agnostic.com

9 1

What does coincidence in your life mean to you and how do you deal with it?

How do you view coincidences that occur in your life? If you're on one side of the world and the next person you meet is from your hometown but lived in the same neighborhood but also on the same street not two or three doors down, how do you view that? Is there some sort of meaning? Some connection? Kismet?

SamL 7 Nov 25
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

9 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

0

I do not 'view' this in any way, but whenever coincidences happen, I try to find my chances in it and to make the best out of them.

1

I would call that synchronicity 🙂

0

Every day there is an unlimited number of possibilities that may play out, some are more likely to happen, some less, and some very unlikely--but still within the realm of possibility. Coincidence is simply one of the less likely, or even most unlikely, scenarios playing out. Believers like to call some of these miracles--but only when the outcome its a good one.

0

I think it is way too easy to put too much significance on coincidence. We are drawn to the familiar, which affects our interpretation of events. There are also placebo effects. As a species we tend to adapt to our immediate enbironements and as we do so we tend to look for patterns and events that are familiar. Some of this is hard wired into us and helped to insure our survival back when humans were hunters and foragers.

However, coincidence can also result in making superfluous relationships which result in dogmas and superstitions. If something unfortunate happened to a person after a black cat crossed their path, they may attribute significance to it, when the two events are completely unrelated. People often confuse coincidence with cause and effect, which leads to gross errors in judgement.

Coincidence, by itself, shoudl nto be fiven much weight or significance.

0

I think nothing of it. Not even if something occurs 5 times in succession. Random chance means random chance. I cannot find a single rational reason to apply anything else.

0

Years ago, Apple's iPods had a shuffle feature that was entirely random, but people complained that it sometimes played a few of their songs in order. Apple made a change to take current position in the playlist into account, thereby eliminating the possibility, but they explained that it actually made it less random. So, when thinking about coincidence, it's important to remember that randomness necessitates some subjectively coincidental events or circumstances. It would be less random if those things never happened.

1

We, each, are single actors in a huge system of trillions of actors, variables, and forces. A characteristic of all huge scale systems is bounded chaos. That is, we will never be able to predict, with absolute accuracy or certainty which variables and forces will affect us at any given time. So, coincidence has played a role in each of our lives on many occasions. How do you deal with it? I try to predict situations and plan for them, but when different circumstances appear, I try to read the situation quickly and adapt accordingly.

0

Law of large numbers. Eventually, all kinds of coincidental stuff happens which you remember, but a far larger number of things happen which are not coincidental and you don't remember.

The closest I come to spooky coincidence is that my wife dreams numbers, and they come in more often than just chance but not so often that there is a verifiable result.

0

Things happen at the rate of chance. Sooner or later, something will happen that you might rate as a coincidence, or being particularly fortuitous. It means nothing.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:5170
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.