Good Morning Insomniacs! If any of you are out there.
Break out your coincidence score sheet, buckle up, and get ready for a ride.
Here's the official record on this so far.
Yesterday, in commentary regarding coincidences, I mention, The X Files. I specifically mention manufacturing a coincidence in regards to my favorite episode where Mulder purposefully breaks the condominium regulations to make the garbage monster appear. And how I would be looking for coincidences related to it. Posted somewhere just prior to 5 am EST.
I would have settled for something within a couple of weeks. Like a rerun on TV. But here you go. Mulder and Scully investigate under the pseudonyms Rob and Laura Petrie in that episode. From the Dick Van Dyke Show. If you haven't heard, Rose Marie, best known for her role on the Dick Van Dyke Show died yesterday. Well after my coincidence commentary, about half a day. Yet not months or years later.
Please pause the tape and think about that. I certainly can argue that as far as whether incidences are coincidental or not this has turned into a prime example. Many of my references are intentionally flippant that the ludicrousness of the event actually happening can't be. Alexa Davalos totally out of the blue. I never thought anything would happen with that. But there it is on Jeopardy! the day after. That's freaky enough. This is getting seriously into mind fuck territory.
There's a recency bias in considering coincidences. Oh boy did I nail that. I didn't wait until after Erin Moran died and claim I predicted her death. I called the shot, as they say, in advance. Half a day. Specific? I score there, too. There wasn't any other X Files episode they mucked through as Rob and Laura Petrie. Quick, name something Rose Marie was in other than the Dick van Dyke show. I have one, Witchboard. A rather insignificant role. Other than that my not inconsiderable memory is empty. Did anybody else even dredge that up without looking at her filmography?
And this after I was prepared to settle for dial switching and seeing that one of the classic TV stations was showing Dick van Dyke. Or further manufacturing a coincidence by active investigation. Which I did, just to prove I could. In the crew of that episode, is someone with the last name Gallop. A logical fallacy debating technique listed on rationalwiki is called the Gish Gallop after it's creator.
Now what do I do with this information? I see three prime options.
1). I add this to my list. I decide that I have some magical power of prediction. Surely the fact that I went on record ahead of time means something. How many more signs do I need? If I use another flippant example from the past and Rose Marie died by an attack of lampreys and/or hyper intelligent boogers spawned by household cleaning chemicals there's no doubt that this was a message from a higher power. But which higher power? And to what end? Am I supposed to use this power to kill off people I don't like? I already killed Brandon Lee* and Dennis Farina**. Or is it the evil cabal trying to get me to switch sides? But that's not really clear. She didn't die by hyper intelligent booger lamprey attack. So maybe its just a "clue". The script is deep. Dammit, where is a good hyper intelligent booger attack when you need one.
2). I could ignore it as a remarkable coincidence, and forget that I checked my phone after peeing, curl up and go back to sleep.
3). Or, I could use this information to blog about it because its something that MY life experiences, MY current events and MY desires lead me to.
I'd really rather sleeping was a viable option now.
Let's prime your coincidence pumps some more. The bell from D.I.N.G! (Dan Is Number Generating) will be borrowed to use as a cue to get you thinking about what happens in your near future that may or may not be a coincidence.
The entire blog post up to now. DING!
I had the honor of attending a lecture by Isaac Asimov (DING!) at school. I never forgot the bit about how he sarcastically mentioned the useless crap you learn in high school about things you don't care about. His example was the capital of Paraguay. (DING!) Thousands of intelligent college students and a hush settles as the murmur start. "I don't know what it is." It's Asuncion. (DING!)
My life experiences lead me to be interested in that lecture.(See, not totally random, there's a tie in.) He's a smart dude and I read a lot of his books. He also has a great quote about coincidences. Actually he has several, the one I like is something like, "The only thing remarkable about coincidences would be if you didn't have any.". Not sure about the exact wording, I'll have to check rationalwiki again (DING! again for mentioning rationalwiki another time.). Now, Isaac also did some great fiction about robots and his laws of robotics. I wondered some weeks ago what he would think about Alpha Zero (DING!) playing chess DING!) which is something I've gone on record here as being interested. But now he just happens to brought up about his quote on "coincidences". (DING!). Which might not be a coincidence because I could consider it a coincidence, but those without my life experiences don't give a rip.
Or it might not be a coincidence, because I forced the narrative that way, either intentionally or unintentionally. A decent program could "decode" a news headline the same way gematriaddicts do. One less advanced than Alpha Zero. Copy. Paste. Generate list of numbers. Match to freemason catch phrase. Every two digit number and low three digit number is covered.
Yet if you just stop at the numbers, the result requires further interpretation. Which kind of like, means you haven't really decided anything. And when you try and apply it to "coincidences" it's more like dream interpretation (DING!) and Freudian (DING!) stuff.
Crap, the bell broke. That was getting tedious anyway.
Now ask yourself this question. I don't need the bell because it's been repeated often as a flippant example. Do you want Wollongong to be a hotbed of gematria, which your system can easily prove, or do want it to be a lovely city in Australia with some great culture, a well respected university that has Baxter the duck as a mascot and lots of people that don't obsess about coincidences, much less trying to define them?
Oh....bell fixed just in time for the Wollongong reference.........
DING DING DING DING DING!
Just try and NOT think about Wollongong!
* Don't ask.
** No, really. Don't ask.
No comments:
Post a Comment