Human beings are susceptible to a very basic flaw in their thinking and observations. Once we expect to find something, it’s easy for us to fool ourselves into “finding” it wherever we look. So if we look for a reason why a certain coincidence happened, we could come up with all sorts of reasons. We could even say “Well, there must be some reason, I just don’t know yet.”

Sometimes people do act on coincidences and sometimes get results that are favourable to them. This also brings to light another basic flaw in human beings, the confirmation bias. It means we tend to remember the things that positively appeal to us, and forget things that don’t. If out of hundred coincidences that a person observed, let’s say five of them has some kind of special appeal to the person (like being led to form a new friendship or having her life saved), she is much more likely to remember these five coincidence than the 95 other coincidences.

An example would be like this: Suppose you and another stranger purchase the same drink at the same drink store at the same time, is there a reason for it? It’s merely a coincidence. But it doesn’t mean the event was non-causal. You thought of buying a drink, you walked to the drink store, you decided on a particular drink, you used your mouth to ask for it. Something similar happened with the other person. So there are causes leading up to the coincidence.

But cause should not be confused with reason. A reason would be why it happened. It’s neither what caused it to happen (aka “how it happened”), nor what happened (or what you did) after it happened. You can fabricate your own “reason” for this coincidence if you want to. Perhaps you could come up with the reason that this person might be a potential friend, and you would start chatting with him, forging a new friendship. Maybe this could lead to a business deal, or something like that. All these are not real reasons, but decisions made by you and consequences of those decisions.

And there could many instances where you would have bought the same food or drink as a stranger, or used the same pen, or sitting together in the same class room, or anything. In fact you can find millions of coincidences if you just look for them. A lot of people are coincidentally travelling on the same bus, train or flight at this exact moment. Any reason? Nothing really, it was just caused by them wanting or having to go through the same route.

We as humans don’t remember thousands of coincidences that occur in our lives but because of confirmation bias, we remember the ones that do have some special meaning as to what happened when we acted on them.
.-= ADTC´s last blog ..General Scepticism • Re: Challenge : Can you turn me into an atheist? =-.