Yesterday I was reminded me of a story a friend related to me, which I have mentioned on RF once before.
I have a friend -- let's call her Lisa -- who has sometimes told me of her painful and difficult childhood. Her hardships often were largely a consequence of the fact that her father was an alcoholic, rarely held a job, at least for very long, and was unstable in a number of ways. Soon after they married, Lisa and her husband allowed her father to live with them for a while, but that didn't work out well. At one point Lisa decided that she could no longer deal with her father's broken promises and deceptions, and ceased communication with him altogether. But she heard about him occasionally through her brother with whom she was close and who remained in contact with their father. Nevertheless, when I met Lisa, she and her father had not spoken with each other in more than 30 years.
Lisa eventually told me of a dream she had had several years before she and I met. In the dream, she was waiting at a bus stop, and her father walked up. In real life, her father always rode the bus because he never had a car. She said it was an unusual dream in its vividness, and the fact that she and he had a long, heartfelt talk about real things that happened in her childhood. She said her father looked older than when she had last seen him. Their conversation was very conciliatory and satisfying to her father, such that she understood things about her that she had never understood before. Eventually his bus came, they hugged, he boarded and it drove off. Lisa awoke after the dream; it was early morning, and she didn't get back to sleep. She was so impressed by the dream that it made her contemplate contacting him again
At breakfast the next morning, Lisa had begun telling her husband about the dream when the phone rang. It was her brother, who told her that their father had had a heart attack the night before, was taken to the hospital, and had died during the night. Lisa and her husband lived several timezones from where her brother and father lived; sometime later Lisa calculated that her father must have died around the time she was having the dream. After Lisa told me about this occurrence, her husband, at my behest, confirmed to me that Lisa had begun telling him about her dream when her brother called.
So this is my question: assuming that Lisa and her husband didn't just fabricate all the above, is it explanatory of the events (Lisa's dream and her father's death) to assert that they are a coincidence?
Dictionaries give "coincidence" definitions with subtle differences, which in turn raise different questions for me. For instance:
Definition of COINCIDENCE
In light of this definition, I ask: by what method does one determine that the occurrences of Lisa's dream and her father's death were an accident? Is there in fact a method by which to determine that Lisa's dream and it coinciding with her father's death were accidental?
The Wikipedia article says:
A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another.
Coincidence - Wikipedia
This article goes on to assert
But the article does not offer any reason to conclude that complex events such as Lisa's dream and its coinciding with her father's death were inevitable. The article eventually refers to "Littlewood's law," which the article says is "related to the more general law of truly law numbers". But as far as I can tell, neither of these "laws" could be used to calculate a probability of the coinciding of Lisa's dream and her father's death.
But the hypothetical proposition raises a relevant question in my mind. Namely, does a non-zero probability of two events coinciding always and necessarily eliminate other explanations for the two events happening together? E.g., if there could be found a non-zero probability of Mohamed Atta and Wail al-Shehri independently getting tickets on AA Flight 11 on 9/11/2001 and showing up with box cutters with plans to hijack the plane and fly it into North WTC, does it necessarily rule out that they conspired to perpetrate that crime?
If so, then that would seem to destroy the value of most all circumstantial evidence upon which people are routinely convicted of crimes.
I have a friend -- let's call her Lisa -- who has sometimes told me of her painful and difficult childhood. Her hardships often were largely a consequence of the fact that her father was an alcoholic, rarely held a job, at least for very long, and was unstable in a number of ways. Soon after they married, Lisa and her husband allowed her father to live with them for a while, but that didn't work out well. At one point Lisa decided that she could no longer deal with her father's broken promises and deceptions, and ceased communication with him altogether. But she heard about him occasionally through her brother with whom she was close and who remained in contact with their father. Nevertheless, when I met Lisa, she and her father had not spoken with each other in more than 30 years.
Lisa eventually told me of a dream she had had several years before she and I met. In the dream, she was waiting at a bus stop, and her father walked up. In real life, her father always rode the bus because he never had a car. She said it was an unusual dream in its vividness, and the fact that she and he had a long, heartfelt talk about real things that happened in her childhood. She said her father looked older than when she had last seen him. Their conversation was very conciliatory and satisfying to her father, such that she understood things about her that she had never understood before. Eventually his bus came, they hugged, he boarded and it drove off. Lisa awoke after the dream; it was early morning, and she didn't get back to sleep. She was so impressed by the dream that it made her contemplate contacting him again
At breakfast the next morning, Lisa had begun telling her husband about the dream when the phone rang. It was her brother, who told her that their father had had a heart attack the night before, was taken to the hospital, and had died during the night. Lisa and her husband lived several timezones from where her brother and father lived; sometime later Lisa calculated that her father must have died around the time she was having the dream. After Lisa told me about this occurrence, her husband, at my behest, confirmed to me that Lisa had begun telling him about her dream when her brother called.
So this is my question: assuming that Lisa and her husband didn't just fabricate all the above, is it explanatory of the events (Lisa's dream and her father's death) to assert that they are a coincidence?
Dictionaries give "coincidence" definitions with subtle differences, which in turn raise different questions for me. For instance:
2: the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection
Definition of COINCIDENCE
In light of this definition, I ask: by what method does one determine that the occurrences of Lisa's dream and her father's death were an accident? Is there in fact a method by which to determine that Lisa's dream and it coinciding with her father's death were accidental?
The Wikipedia article says:
A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another.
Coincidence - Wikipedia
This article goes on to assert
From a statistical perspective, coincidences are inevitable and often less remarkable than they may appear intuitively.
But the article does not offer any reason to conclude that complex events such as Lisa's dream and its coinciding with her father's death were inevitable. The article eventually refers to "Littlewood's law," which the article says is "related to the more general law of truly law numbers". But as far as I can tell, neither of these "laws" could be used to calculate a probability of the coinciding of Lisa's dream and her father's death.
But the hypothetical proposition raises a relevant question in my mind. Namely, does a non-zero probability of two events coinciding always and necessarily eliminate other explanations for the two events happening together? E.g., if there could be found a non-zero probability of Mohamed Atta and Wail al-Shehri independently getting tickets on AA Flight 11 on 9/11/2001 and showing up with box cutters with plans to hijack the plane and fly it into North WTC, does it necessarily rule out that they conspired to perpetrate that crime?
If so, then that would seem to destroy the value of most all circumstantial evidence upon which people are routinely convicted of crimes.
