Monday, August 14, 2017

Twinfirmation Bias

Gotta love Dan's remarkable ability to latch on to a topic and beat it to death. Then like a toddler who gets tired of the new toy moves along to play with the packaging until the next new toy arrives.


There's an inevitable transition period between topics. Which is often quite bizarre. Since were dealing with the same two digit numbers daily the numbers are always there for any topic. It's just a matter of what is on his mind. Transition periods often initiate a new topic and have scattered references to the prior topic. And they make absolutely no sense in combination. Space, NASA, Houston, Moon, Jesuits!, John Glenn, Saturn, Society of Jesus! Most of the other regulars don't do this.


Now, after a hiatus, he's back to twins. Superficially twins seem rare enough to be regarded as special, but in reality are drastically more common than most people would think.


A lot of the glamour around twins is driven by society's desire for some sense of perfection. And marketing preying upon that. Not perfection in the sense of Swedish Bikini Team identical twins with blonde hair, blue eyes, perfect alabaster skin and bilateral symmetry. Just seeing resemblance. Pattern recognition.


A couple of weeks ago some people met my brother for the first time. It's was to see that we are brothers; we look similar. Lots of siblings presumably from the same genetic make up look similar. (In other words, their mothers were visited by Attu The Wonder Turtle disguised as their father unexpectedly returning from battle for a night of passion and Scrabble with the mother.) And think of how many times two complete strangers are compared and it's commented how they look like twins. Or at least brothers/sisters. It happens. It's natural to not be a Durp and note similarity. You don't, on the other hand, ever meet two complete strangers and remark, "Well, holy fucking shit! They look so completely unlike each other! I'll betcha they AREN'T twins!"


Marketing jumps on the twinning by producing twin strollers, bikes, twin packs of paper, twin headed, di....mechanical massage aiding devices, twin packs of food, twin bill movies and ball games, etc....


There's an awfully lot of false twinning going on because the concept sounds prettier than saying, "Two." But what of actual real honest to gosh twin twins? Not quadruplets, a twin set of twins, but actual two people born of the same womb at roughly the same time.


Roughly 140,000 twins are born in the US every year. 2% of the US population are actual twins. Just in the US alone. That's about 7 million. That doesn't include triplets, etc...


An in depth analysis of medical issues of multiple birth longevity is beyond the scope of this blog, but one can presume it's in the ballpark of average. Twins are here and not going away any time soon.


Add on all the false twinning. Some specific kinds that have already been used in Dan's narratives and can reasonably be expected. The Minnesota Twins. Now everything about Minnesota is in the database. State number it entered the union, the gematria of the word Minnesota, GPS coordinates, blah, blah, blah. Twin cities. Paris, Texas and Paris, France. Arnold because of the movie Twins. Celebrity look alike contests and Elvis impersonators. Random people that look alike. We've already had specific mention of the same tattoo being encountered (granted, in combination with other physical similarities.). The list of what qualifies as a twin can get insane. And probably will.


Because that's how Dan operates. Now that Twins are on his mind he will latch on to it and the confirmation bias will suck out every bit if rational thought. Now the two digit numbers that used to mean Houston Rockets basketball and therefore space will turn into twins.


Not sure if I shared this joke before. Long time ago the paper reported on the winner of a Cher look a like contest. They had the picture of Cher and the winner side by side. The writer missed a golden opportunity to caption the pictures:


Cher and Cher alike.


There was a resemblance. Any such contest it can be assumed that in this case the winner would look like Cher, as opposed to looking like Nicholas Cage. Now thanks to numerology we are trending to Nicholas Cage look alike winning the Cher look alike contest because they were in a movie tog....oh outer space theme!



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