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.
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If true, this is super interesting. Find the study and link it!
thanks for reading, "zers"
Unfortunately, I happened to have heard of this through socializing with an acquaintance one night many years ago.
I can't find it on the internet at this point, as he never told me the formal name of the study.
I might try searching math journals.
"Number duplication study" and "Number synchronicity study" returned no relevant results on google.
Will try searching math journals tomorrow.
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perhaps underused resource:
the stanford center for computational linguistics
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Einstein says "not everything that counted counts, and not everything that counts is counted" and I take it to the somewhat counterintuitive extreme: "there's the infinite in the miniscule, and to some extent, the apparent reverse: "the miniscule in the infinite."
examples of former: one poem being "miniscule" in terms of apparent impact, and amount of apparent information, but, while not infinite, vast in terms of knowledge you can learn from it, due to the complexity of language and the human brain. Also, multiple numbers of interpretations, associated thoughts and relevance to other poems, ideas, etc.
examples of latter: governments being vast and almost infinite due to vast labyrinths of computers, personnel, etc, but having hugely negative value.
I’m not sure that this is exactly what they were talking about, but Google “Benford’s Law”. This is an empirically observed phenomenon where in real life data sets the distribution of digits is not uniform, but rather skewed toward smaller values. For example, it has been observed that the first digit of values in such stat sets is a 1 with a frequency of about 30%, well above the expected 11% for a uniform distribution (first digits cannot be zero, so there are only 9 possibilities)
The connection with your question may not be obvious but mathematically it is more probable that digits from two different random sources will match when the distribution of digits is not uniform. For a uniform distribution of n possible digits, the probability that a digit from source 1 takes on a particular value is 1/n. The corresponding digit from source 2 has a probability of the same value also equal to 1/n. Therefore the probability of both digits having the same particular value (say 1) is 1/n^2. Since there are n possible values, the probability that both will match with ANY of the possible values is n*1/n^2 = 1/n.
Now consider a simple example with 3 possible digits. From the above, if each occurs with probability 1/3, the probability of a match is 1/3. Suppose that isnÂ’t the case though. Suppose the value 1 occurs with probability 1/2 and the values 2 or 3 with probability 1/4 each. (You can easily confirm this to be a valid probability distribution since the sum of probabilities is 1). The probability of matching 1s is thus 1/2*1/2 =1/4. The probability of matching 2s or 3s is 1/4*1/4 = 1/16. The probability of a match is therefore 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/16 = 3/8, which is higher than the 1/3 chance when itÂ’s a uniform distribution.
That is just suggestion by example, not a mathematical proof, but maybe this is the cause of what you were asking about.
wow. Thanks. I will need someone to explain this to me.
the other piece of the puzzle is my own experience with number synchronicity, which is what reminded me of the aforementioned study, presumably written up in some statistics or math journal...
I keep seeing the same numbers on electronic devices or clocks (analog as well.)
the numbers are 13, (half of 26), 26, which was the number of an old address, 47, my current address number, 48 for year of state of Israel founded (I'm Jewish) and reversal of my birthday. mostly those.
anyone else with similar personal, second-hand or anecdotal experience here?
if I had to estimate the chances of it having happened through pure statistical chance, I would guess effectively null (0).
Due to it happening so amazingly frequently (and consistently those four number for the most part), I would say far less than one in thousand trillion. Seriously.
the other bizarre thing is when the clock reads 5.26 I'll look at a youtube video and it will be either 26, 47 or 48 seconds elapsed.
cynics may think I'm insane or lying but I'm not "playing" or a troll, just genuinely curious about if anyone's had similar experience with something strange in numbers (even something that may seem unrelated).
+1 benfords law. depends how they determined "statistical probability"
My last two Quora questions:
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1. Has any neuroscientist studied whether aliens could be responsible for either controlling or altering targeted individual's brains or for the perceived UFO phenomena?
No answer yet
2. Has there been any studies in math journals confirming or refuting the following: if you look at two seemingly unrelated metric numbers on cell phone, you are more likely to see the exact numbers duplicated than statistical probability would predict?
As a connoisseur of synchronicity I've certainly experienced some striking number matches along these lines. But I don't think there is any reason to believe it occurs any more than expected, and the cited framework in the OP here reads like pure wives tale hearsay. No offense to the OP on that, just saying there is no verification provided or apparently available.
If indeed such a correlation exists, the whole idea inherent in synchronicity of things manifesting in our perception based on some unknown substrate to reality such as Bohmian "explicate/implicate order" arrangement would be a likely culprit.
Why a connoisseur of synchronicity? Just tonight pretty sure I invented the category of "anti-synchronicity." All respect to Jung. Luv his work on this and I am of a similar mind that it is hinting at a non-standard reality.
There must be a study with non-electronical devices. Some mathematician/poker player or somebody has to have studied whether the distribution of cards selected from a deck deviates from the expected random distribution according to statistical probability. Go figure it out!
come to think of it, there also must be a study for electronic devices. Just can't find it, maybe I'm searching for the wrong keyword on math journals.
This feels pretty strongly like a construct made up of multiple biases and weaknesses within the brain when it comes to pattern matching. Basic probabilities, which can be counterintuitive, benford's law, and so on.
Have a go at zipfs law: