Jul 30, 2019 08:03 PM
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde...e-numbers/
EXCERPT (Steven Novella): Weird things happen to most people at some point in their lives, and if not to you directly than probably to someone you know. But what is the ultimate meaning to such coincidences? They may seem amazing, and psychologically scream out for an equally amazing explanation. Skeptics caution, however, that our tendency to see patterns and impose satisfying explanations combine with our relative lack of intuition for statistics to jump to unwarranted conclusions. If we do the math, then it becomes clear that very unlikely events should happen all the time, given enough opportunity. [...Law of large numbers...]
Some people, however, do not want to give up the narrative value of coincidences so easily. Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, for example, has written a book about The Source and Significance of Coincidences, and prefers a more supernatural explanation. In a recent editorial for Psychology Today she strikes back at the skeptical explanation for coincidences.
[...] Human nature is to seek out and notice patterns. We subconsciously are mining vast amounts of data, looking for those patterns. There are simply too many variables to calculate the odds of any coincidence happening to any person at any time. But let’s say her estimate is somewhere in the ballpark. This is where she gets to her primary point:
"Again, what the skeptic doesn’t acknowledge is that the fact that there are 7 billion people in the world is only relevant if we know how many of those people have or have not experienced a similarly staggering event. The skeptic is making the unfounded assumption that there are not significantly more than 2,000 other people in the world who have experienced something like this—that is, that the number of such experiences doesn’t significantly exceed the baseline that would be expected on chance—but, without data, we can’t make that assumption. There could very well be many more than 2,000 people who have experienced such an improbable confluence of circumstances, and if there were, it would provide strong evidence that something more than chance was at work."
What she is doing here is shifting the burden of proof. Skeptics are simply pointing out that our naive sense of the probability of a coincidence happening is extremely flawed. If you consider the math more thoroughly, you will see that amazing coincidences should happen all the time. That takes a lot of the impact out of coincidences when we experience or hear about them. But if Rawlette wants to claim that coincidences happen more often than we would expect by chance, and therefore a supernatural explanation is required, then the burden of proof is on her to provide the data. Otherwise she is also making an argument from ignorance.
We also have to recognize that human memory is flawed. Because of confirmation bias, we tend to help coincidences happen by subconsciously tweaking our memories to bring things into better alignment. Our brains prefer the theme of a memory over the details, and can seamlessly alter those details to enhance the theme, such as the interest in an apparent amazing coincidence. There is a situation, however, where we can do some specific statistics... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT (Steven Novella): Weird things happen to most people at some point in their lives, and if not to you directly than probably to someone you know. But what is the ultimate meaning to such coincidences? They may seem amazing, and psychologically scream out for an equally amazing explanation. Skeptics caution, however, that our tendency to see patterns and impose satisfying explanations combine with our relative lack of intuition for statistics to jump to unwarranted conclusions. If we do the math, then it becomes clear that very unlikely events should happen all the time, given enough opportunity. [...Law of large numbers...]
Some people, however, do not want to give up the narrative value of coincidences so easily. Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, for example, has written a book about The Source and Significance of Coincidences, and prefers a more supernatural explanation. In a recent editorial for Psychology Today she strikes back at the skeptical explanation for coincidences.
[...] Human nature is to seek out and notice patterns. We subconsciously are mining vast amounts of data, looking for those patterns. There are simply too many variables to calculate the odds of any coincidence happening to any person at any time. But let’s say her estimate is somewhere in the ballpark. This is where she gets to her primary point:
"Again, what the skeptic doesn’t acknowledge is that the fact that there are 7 billion people in the world is only relevant if we know how many of those people have or have not experienced a similarly staggering event. The skeptic is making the unfounded assumption that there are not significantly more than 2,000 other people in the world who have experienced something like this—that is, that the number of such experiences doesn’t significantly exceed the baseline that would be expected on chance—but, without data, we can’t make that assumption. There could very well be many more than 2,000 people who have experienced such an improbable confluence of circumstances, and if there were, it would provide strong evidence that something more than chance was at work."
What she is doing here is shifting the burden of proof. Skeptics are simply pointing out that our naive sense of the probability of a coincidence happening is extremely flawed. If you consider the math more thoroughly, you will see that amazing coincidences should happen all the time. That takes a lot of the impact out of coincidences when we experience or hear about them. But if Rawlette wants to claim that coincidences happen more often than we would expect by chance, and therefore a supernatural explanation is required, then the burden of proof is on her to provide the data. Otherwise she is also making an argument from ignorance.
We also have to recognize that human memory is flawed. Because of confirmation bias, we tend to help coincidences happen by subconsciously tweaking our memories to bring things into better alignment. Our brains prefer the theme of a memory over the details, and can seamlessly alter those details to enhance the theme, such as the interest in an apparent amazing coincidence. There is a situation, however, where we can do some specific statistics... (MORE - details)
