I had a tumor on my back, between the skin/fat and muscle layers, since about 2003, at least. The last night I worked as I got back into town from running my route I got into a bit of traffic. Where I stopped the car ahead had a license plate of 02MURZ. The cyst was removed about 10 hours later.
I seriously do not see any connection there. Did the number plate mean something?
madness said:
1). What unlikely occurrences have you encountered?
A few. But, I am an absolute reactive sceptic and cynic.
Consider the amount of things happening simultaenously in any present moment. There are literally infinite permutations of cause-and-effect all around you; and of course sometimes random things will coincide
to the observer. How many times did you throw a ball and it didn't bounce back to you? How many times have you lost at roulette? We are pattern seekers- we see patterns as significant regardless of whether they are or not. There is no man of the moon, or face on Mars.
I guarantte you that of the 7 billion people alive, I bet that at least 12 million JUST blinked at the same time. No-one could observe this though, so we don't see how amazing this is.
2). Do you feel like this is caused by some outside force, or is it simply that a mathematical formula is at play?
There is no outside force intervening in the chain of causality simply to . . . . what? Return a golf ball you had hit- for what reason? Is it more likely that an unknown outside force temporarily susperseded the rules of physics to return a ball to you OR did you simply randomly hit it at the right velocity at the right trajectory for it to return? I wonder, when the ball bounces off the tree and, say, hits another tree rather than returning to you; does that tree count itself significant? After all, what are the chances of you intentionally doing that?
Its all up to chance and luck
3). Do you think unlikely occurrences happen to you more or less often than the average person?
No idea, tbh. Before I really examined what coincidence is, I tended to believe in it and experience it a lot- especially during periods when I was heavily smoking DMT and taking ketamine. Anyway, I asked myself- what about the countless, infintite, overwhelming number of non-synchronous events constantly occurring? There is randomness and chaos here, and the brain evolved to try and make sense of that. Sometimes it gets it wrong.
I had one experience about 3 years ago that involved a sequence of physically impossible events (voices/noises without any source, physical contanct on my shoulders- this was about 2am wondering the local fields- I could expand, it was creepy as fuck), which seemed to continue for a couple of months later, with Miss Swilow also experiencing some weirdness. We are both sceptics but I have no explanation for what happened.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of synchronicity, but we are in a universe that appears deterministic; all physical occurences/objects could have a timline traced back to the inception of our universe- a coincidence would have to be eningeeered intp the system from the beginning- you cannot have a cause without a chain of prior effects. This would suggest the universe has been waiting for you to hit a golf back into your face. How probable is that?
I guess I am ranting about synchronicity here, which is slightly different to what you are saying. But, in a potentially infifinte universe, the unlikely is actually the inevitable.