I first watched “Fahrenheit 9/11” on 9/11 (that’s the 9th of November. It’s Date/month in the UK. The odds of that are 365 to one right???)
I just posted a thread “Ask the Atheist”, came out, looked to the right “9 11” (that’s 9 replies, 11 views)
These are just two examples of the term “9/11” turning up in far too many incidences in every day life. :dubious: :dubious: :dubious:
No, I’d say they probably occur at exactly the same rate as any other number combination in your life, you just don’t have anything to associate with them.
It’s not just that they are turning up. It’s that they are turning up in relation to the event.
the first example, the film I watched was named, and about (indirectly) 9/11. The second example, a thread about Atheism, and 9/11 being religiously motivated (fanatic religion)
I understand the idea that we tend to pick things out of otherwise random occurences if they hold special meaning, and it only seems like a coincidence.
Isn’t the number 23 supposed to pop up at odd times?
Growing up, our mail was sent to PO Box 169. In school, I had locker number 169. Before moving a few miles north, I lived off exit number 169. My phone number used to be area code, prefix, 1691.
Everything in my date-of-birth seems to be divisible by something else. When it doesn’t, I jsut introduce my time of birth, in either 12 or 24 hour clock. Clearly, I’m the devil.
Our lives are full of numbers - THOUSANDS of numbers. I have 5 numbers in my address, 10 in my phone number at home plus two business numbers. I have numbers on my license plate, in my birthday and the time of my birth, in all the houses I’ve lived in, in my social insurance number, my driver’s license. I still remember the number of my military ID. Roads, times, pages, books, baseball statistics. Numbers everywhere.
It seems to be that with our lives plagued with numbers, it’s almost inevitable that a few specific numbers will by random chance crop up a lot.
Come again?
Right, and as soon as you see “9 11” come up once or twice, you’ll start looking for it subconciously, and find it more, even if it doesn’t actually come up any more than any other combination. We had a thread on this a couple months ago. Someone claimed that almost every time he looked at the clock, it was [something]:23. The concensus was that he just started expecting it to be 23 all the time, so he noticed it when it was, and completely dismissed most other times. If you have a digital clock, you might notice the time “11:34” a lot because if you turn the clock upside down, it looks like “hELL.” If you get 5 green lights in a row, on a street where that rarely happens, you’ll think it’s some kind of miracle, when in fact coincidences like that should happen every once in a while. Or if you flip a coin 10 times and it comes up heads, you’ll think the 11th one is almost certain to be tails, even though the chance is still 50/50.
I think I rambled a bit, but the point is that probability and intuition rarely match up. Especially when the probability is based on the huge quantity of numbers that you see in your life, such as the list RickJay gave.
fnord
Indeed.
23
23
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23
23
23
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23
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23
23
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23
I booked a round the world trip a couple of years ago… I left on November 9 (9/11) and my flight number was TG911.
Coincidentally, we weren’t hijacked.
Usually around twice a day my clock says “9:11”.
Freaky.
:rolleyes:
the train bombings in Spain were 911 days after sept.11/01
It’s confirmation bias.
Although speaking of weird dates, my birthdate (9-18-81) is pretty weird. Nine is half of eighteen and the square root of 81, eighteen is 81 reversed, and the date is a palindrome if written in the European fashion (18-9-81). I don’t pretend it means anything, but I do think it’s cool.
Not really. Although Snopes calls this “True”, it’s only true if you use a fairly wacky way of counting. The Madrid bombings happened 912 days after 9/11. So while you can argue that there were 911 days between the two attacks, it’s a bit of a stretch. I mean, if event A happens today Friday) and event B happens on Monday, you wouldn’t say that B happened “two days” after A.