Talk:Coincidence

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—Yamara ✉ 18:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Time/Assessment|WikiProject Time assessment rating]] comment 

message: the interpretation paragraph for Coincidence has an alternative definition for science, which reads
Science is the practice of constructing theoretical explanations of how events (phenomena) happen to repeatedly coincide. 
However the definition on the Science page doesn't reflect this, and in fact the word coincidence isn't in the article at all:
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge"[1]) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.[2][3] In an older and closely related meaning, "science" also refers to a body of knowledge itself, of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied. A practitioner of science is known as a scientist.
Maybe one, or the other needs some touching up?
50.174.214.23 (talk) 19:35, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: definition of Science

message: :: Having read the Synchronicity wiki-article, I found that one example has been written into the article.. the plum pudding example.. Now I have read Arthur Koestler's Roots of Coincidence and have been thinking that there has got to be at least a short example from his numerous discussions and cited research, so as to show that 'coincidence' has been taken far more seriously by the British Society for Psychical Research for the last 120 years than people might be aware of. Koestler makes an impressive list of the society's past presidents {which Koestler states includes "three Nobel laureates, ten Fellows of the Royal Society, one Prime Minister, and a galaxy of professors, mostly physicisits and philosophers" pg, 32 - then he cites a three page list spanning 120 years! William James, Sir William Crookes, Frederic W. H. Myers - coined term 'telepathy', Henri Bergson, Gilbert Murray, C.D. Broad, Lord Rayleigh, S.G. Soal - mathematician, H.H. Price Professor of Logic at Oxford, W.A.H. Rushton Director of Medical Studies, Trinity College; Professor of Visual Physiology, Cambridge; and more) up to the date that the book was published (1971). Anyway, Koestler explains on pages 22-25 of Roots... the Zenar cards example conducted by J.B. Rhine at Duke University in 1932(?). Rhine   conducted card-guessing experiments (5 types of unseen cards) and recorded the results hundreds of times. The results where analyzed using 'the law of great numbers' (a mathematical and statistical probability experimental measure) that showed statistical significant results concerning Rhine's card-guessing (ESP) research; results that showed more than 'chance-like' observations by the participants in the experiment. The density of Koestler's examples, citations and arguments remind me of trying to unpack Michel Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge. Koestlers books explores a number of scientific disciplines in order to explain the extraordinary phenomena surrounding coincidence.
:: Due to the fact that Koestler entitled his book using the word coincidence to show that it can have 'meaningful' non-ordinary roots (causation?), i would suggest a Koestler citation or summary of his research and a shor example to highlight Koestler's way of explaining 'coincidence'. The book, by the way, foreshadows the work of Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and indicates the politics that seem to never end between pure scientific mindsets and those that are willing to explore the statistical significance of parapsychological research. What do you think?Drakonicon 17:58, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Right. Had another thought.... In Carl Jung's semi-autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung remembers an argument that he had with Sigmund Freud, in which Jung was talking with Freud about coincidence and then Jung predicted there would be loud 'report' ('bang'(?)) in the bookcase near where they were talking; and then soon after Jung predicted another such report, which soon occured, to which neither Jung nor Freud could fathom. This seriously disquieted Freud, and they parted company. Would this kind of example (narrated cleanly) be a better example of coincidence/synchronicty?Drakonicon 18:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

text: It's only disturbing if you do not understand math. But you are missing the point of this page. It is for suggestions for improving the article. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:41, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Narrative Example of Coincidence needed?

message: How low a (perceived) probability does a pair of events happening in proximity have to be before someone considers it to be a coincidence?
Would the existence of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Improbability Drive increase the level of coincidences? (As a theroretical question, it being a theoretical object.)
Jackiespeel 17:46, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Probability and coincidence

message: I honestly think we should drop the Pope stuff are just leave one. They are quite minor. Marskell 18:43, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples cont'd 

message: Seems to be taken directly from:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/traffic/siblings.asp
:This has been picked up by a newspaper blog. I'm removing it since, even if it isn't a copyvio, it's OR/POV/unverfible.
Well, I believe in EXTREME coincidence. You can put something about that there. If you want more info, tell me. Why does everyone hate Torax2? 21:44, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Types of Coincidences 

message: So I was about to edit something out in the article, and as soon as I click edit and scroll down to the change I was going to make, it had already been made!
O RLY? 84.70.24.131 17:46, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Woah 

message: Removed the link to the Google search tips.  It's a guide for getting the most out of Google searching.  Has nothing to do with coincidence, unless you consider it a coincidence that adding more words to a Google search gets you closer to what you're looking for. PacificBoy 18:08, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links 

message: I think the definition of coincidence, as proposed here, deserves a bit of discussion. Someone has simply stated, that a coincidence is "two or more events or entities occupying the same point in space or time." I'm not sure where this definition comes from. I think the actual definition is not this cut and dry. Even Webster's is understandably ambigous about the term: "a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent casual connection."
Also, the inclusion of the word "colloquially" has no place in this entry. Colloquial is a term of language, not of casual connection.
: I'm not sure if I've done any better than what was in the article already but I've had a go. It's hard to convey the definition of a coincidence without implying certain prejudices about what we consider to be coincidences. --86.26.160.235 (talk) 15:54, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coincidence Definitions 

message: I don't know if this deserves its own article, but it definitely does NOT deserve 90% of the coincidence entry.--Ellissound 13:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kennedy vs Lincoln

message: Since there is a significant difference between "randomness" and "coincidence", whe should be careful with these two terms. I already corrected this page linking to the german article to "Zufall" (= Randomness), now it links to "Koinzidenz". But as I just noticed this article links to the Japanese article "ランドム" ("Random"). Could someone who knows more Japanese than me check this and correct it?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.196.173 (talk) 00:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links to other languages 

message: There is no reason to explain the word coincicdence with the prefix co- and neglect the neccessity of more than just the occurrence of the sole event. There must be something second, e.g. another event or just a condition. Otherwise a linguistic contradiction might reside. However, coincidence does not require nor define a relationship, neither causal nor otherwise modal.Wireless friend (talk) 14:54, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prefix co- 

message: The accompanying article is probably best described as an improper combination of an article on a vague topic, with sections on a couple of topics confusable with it, created to the exclusion of a Dab needed to Dab'ate at least 
: Coincidence (film)Coincidence (mathematics) andCoincidence (road)
to mention only the most obvious pages.
   I am putting the article in use until i quit in the middle, to continue another day (probably soon). I suspect i cannot thoroly fix it quickly, and perhaps i'm not the best candidate for the task, but when an article is so neglected that no one has seen the glaring need, any start is a better than a delay in starting.--Jerzy•t 01:52, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page structure 

message: The following content was in the page that i found, moved, and split. I doubt it belongs in the corrected article, but the vagueness of the statement of so technical a topic suggests to me that it offers only hints, not evidence, of any relevance to the article. Your thots?
--Jerzy•t 02:55, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Physics—nonlocality theory

message: I removed 
: 
which evaluates to 
: For more on simultaneous events, see Concurrency (disambiguation).
I think i put the lk in the See-also of the new Dab, and so far i think that suffices.--Jerzy•t 03:06, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concurrency 

message: Substituted at 19:52, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: I know somebody who frequently gets the urge to look at a watch or clock just when it happens to be a special time, such as 1:11 am, or pm, or 12:34 for examples. Some people may explain those urges and the various coincidences, and others, that we are being managed by somebody or something "out there", possibly called a spirit or an angel, or God, 70.27.152.243 (talk) 03:20, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Urges to look at a watch/clock at a special time. 

message: An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect How Kid boy got his name. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so.  gnu57 14:47, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "How Kid boy got his name" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: I tweaked the introduction... A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of two or more events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another.
 
… However, chaos theory states that there's only an appearance of randomness in chaotic systems and that there is interconnectedness, underlying patterns, initial conditions, self-similarity/fractals, feedback, and the butterfly effect. Nonlocality has also been proven. These recent scientific discoveries support there are no coincidences. 
From purely a statistical perspective, coincidences are inevitable and often less remarkable than they may appear intuitively...  However, the relationship between mathematics and Nature is not exact
Believers in God usually believe that there is no randomness - that there are no coincidences - whereas atheists believe in randomness and coincidences. 192.88.124.40 (talk) 16:16, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see WP:RS, WP:CITE and WP:LEAD.  Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 23:05, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  OP is just User:Brad Watson, Miami.  WP:RBI applies. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:12, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 23:14, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chaos Theory, Nonlocality & Belief in GOD Support 'There Are No Coincidences' 

message: Coincidence is just a temporal correlation of two events. That does not include or exclude a causal relationship. Coincidence is often used as "mere coincidence" in the sense of randomness. But that isn't fully correct. --2003:C1:4F03:4979:1860:6959:D969:7AFB (talk) 17:55, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coincidence isn't randomness.