… except for filtered observations of random events.
All things we can see, observe, feel and happen, do so for a reason.
This is no spiritual belief, rather a call to note, observe and think about details.
People say things, act in specific ways, dress the way they do for a reason. Even their faces tell stories about themselves.
I think we are fascinated by films like “The Mentalist”, “Sherlock Holmes” or “Dr. House”, cause the protagonists point out the meaning of small details. In reality the conclusions aren’t that straightforward and deterministic, but looking back many random phrases or events made sense for me in a later, more insightful context.
Still I see many people placing too much importance on random events and overestimating their experiences while not understanding statistics. This can even be observed historically through religious beliefs or our self centered perspective on the universe back in history. Both dramatically overestimate our - humans - role in the universe and even assume it exists because of us. While we cannot prove the opposite and while believing this might bring some advantages, there is absolutely no reason to assume it is the case.
The best example for such a selection bias is the following “funny” classical experiment:
1. Tell 512 people the prediction: VFL Bochum will win the next game; and 512 people they won’t.
$\to$ one will be true; keep only the people you told the truth.
2. Tell 256 people the prediction: VFL Bochum will win the next game; and 256 people they won’t.
$\to$ one will be true; keep only the people you told the truth.
…
10. Tell one person the prediction: VFL Bochum will win the next game; and the other person they won’t.
$\to$ for one person you are an ultimate VFL Bochum expert, as you predicted 10 games in a row correctly.
He/she will trust you with your next prediction.
I think the same problem arises with many narratives only told by people who are successful.
We only get to know the opinions of the people who made it, not the huge majority of the people who tried and failed. This creates huge pressure on social media and society and makes hard work seem like a sufficient condition, even though it is only necessary and the rest was luck.
This creates sadness and disappointment in the people who believe in that narrative.
This leads us to the following formula of unhappiness through long term goals:
\(\text{"success"} = \text{doing necessary stuff} + \text{luck}\)
\(\text{doing necessary stuff} + \text{believing it is sufficient} \Rightarrow \text{believing you are the problem} + \text{blaming yourself} + \text{trying harder} = \text{unhappiness}\)
A good video on the importance and meanwhile underestimation of luck in success is this one.
Another classical example is how people remember coincidences happening in their daily lives.
Some people have some magical number “appearing over and over” in their lives.
Others tell me regularly they think of a person and then seconds later they meet them, while they didn’t do so for years (“when you speak of the devil”).
In my opinion no energy in the universe is responsible for that, but rather the selective bias of only remembering the situations in which this very unlikely experiment was successful. Meanwhile throwing away - forgetting - all the times you saw another number, or you thought of someone and didn’t meet him or her.
I once had a conversation with someone, who also thinks quite rationally, but had crazy, very unlikely coincidences, that made me wonder if this low probability is statistically significant.
So I came to the conclusion, that the amount of coincidences is (~ $\pi \cdot \text{thumbs}$) statistically relevant compared to the expected coincidences of a life full of completely random events.
He argues, that there are indeed things we humans cannot experience with our 5 senses like radio frequences. Additionally our research on the human brain isn’t close to complete yet. And it is true, that you cannot prove that there isn’t something else we don’t know yet.
But once again these kinds of events are no reason to assume there is something else either.
Even if someone experiences extremely unlikely sequences of events, one has to correct for selection bias again:
We didn’t consider the selection bias in the selection of that person.
There are many other people, who didn’t have this amount of coincidences in their lives and on that spectrum only the ones with such unusual experiences will report those and claim to believe in something spiritual. All the other people who didn’t are not considered for that experiment. This is why I am impressed by other people’s or my own story of coincidence, but do remember that it is only a random event.
The crowning phenomenon of all this is astrology, a pure confirmation bias.
