• Question: Is there such thing as a coincidence?

    Asked by daisy to Ben, Sam, Kirsty, Maggi, Rose on 16 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Kirsty Miller

      Kirsty Miller answered on 16 Jun 2017:

      Hi Daisy! Fascinating question! Yes, I think so… There are often things that happen that people want to say are due to ‘fate’, or things like deja vu or premonitions (that we’ve discussed in some of the other questions), but these are just really coincidences that people want to try to give some meaning to! As humans, we like to try to find meaning in things but really they are just coincidences that our brains pick up on and try to link together!

    • Photo: Rose Turner

      Rose Turner answered on 16 Jun 2017:

      Hi Daisy! So many things happen to us that don’t seem to link up and sometimes there are bound to be things are connected, and these are the things we notice! I heard a psychologist talking about how it is always 11.11 when he looks at the clock. I have since found it is always 11.11 when I look at the clock! Of course it isn’t always 11.11 – it is in fact only 11.11 twice a day, and no more than it is 11.12 or 11.10! But because that’s become a significant time in my head, now when I look at the clock and it happens to be 11.11 I really notice it (and it feels like it happens much more than any other time)! To take another example, it’s strange when you meet someone and have friends in common, or it turns out you went to the same event years ago. But we meet so many people we don’t have friends in common with and never went to the same event as, but we don’t pay attention to those ones! The human brains loves patterns!
      P.s. I’m really sorry that since you’ve read this, you’ll now probably also find it’s always 11.11 and you won’t be able to get it out of your head either 😉

    • Photo: Sam Carr

      Sam Carr answered on 18 Jun 2017:

      Yes. Because I think that the word “coincidence” wouldn’t have entered into our language if it didn’t mean something about human experience. I think a lot of people experience a “coincidence.” In general terms, the word seems to be used to describe an occurrence that seems unlikely – like bumping into an old friend you haven’t seen for years the day after you were just thinking about them.

      I used to share an office with a famous parapsychologist (he studied the paranormal). He was interested in people who experienced premonitions (so, they might have a dream that their plane was going to crash the next day, get scared about it, and cancel the flight – and then the next day the plane actually crashed) quite frequently. His interest was in whether these experiences are just coincidence – or whether these people actually have some sort of capacity to pick up on future events – and “see” them ahead of time. He was working with astrophysicists to look at whether such people “might” be picking up on signals from the future!

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