Number Synchronicity puzzles
This was studied at I believe Princeton.
The finding I believe was that if you look at two seemingly unrelated metric numbers on an electric device, such as the time, and your battery level, you are more likely than statistical probability would predict to find duplications of numbers. (if you see one 3 or whatever number on the time, more likely than probability would suggest to see a 3 something on your battery level.
What are the potential explanations, and implications of this bizarre deviation from the realm of traditional probability theory?
To me, it suggests that it may be possible for things that appear to have a zero chance of happening to happen.
4 Replies
The probability that an analog clock will read exactly 4:36 is zero.
very funny, poo-bah.
I'm going to watch Winnie the Pooh now, and maybe you should to...
I wasn't being funny but simply illustrating that events with zero probability do occur. They constitute the class of infinite possible occurrences.
@OP can you find and link the paper? Paywall is ok.
@statman I don't think continuous distributions are to be taken literally and I'm not sure many physicists would. I doubt it's accurate to say that zero-probability events occur from a physical clock or any physical process.
Related is this great post about "topological" vs "measurable" impossibility - https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/8...
I haven't fully digested it yet, but my TLDR takeaway is that if "impossible" is to be defined at all in probability, it only makes sense (in the context of probability theory) to say that any zero-probability event is impossible. The alternative—requiring the event to be an empty set of outcomes—leads to bad results.
