Is It a Coincidence or One of the Possibilities?

We often hear people experiencing spectacular coincidences. When we come across things that we can’t explain by proper reasons or we are so mesmerized by them that we call it a coincidence.

However the most commonly given explanations are either fate or possibility.

“Rare events do happen, but for a rare event to be a coincidence, we need to regard it as meaningful in some way” — David Hand

We live in a complex world, therefore every variable is both an input and an output. These numerous variables evolve chaotically as inputs and outputs that it is impossible to come to a clear conclusion. Eventually, people starts to call these events coincidences. Let’s make an induction with a little storytelling:

You couldn’t wake up in the morning because you’re hangover and you’re late for work. Because you’re in hurry, you can’t find the key to your car and decide to take the bus. You come to work late and you get on the elevator immediately. While being unaware that you’re with the CEO of a partner firm, you have a little chat with her. You get a job offer in the coming days because she is impressed with you due to your elevator speech, and you meet the love of your life in this new workplace.

To make it even simpler, is it a coincidence that 4 comes when we roll the dice, or does it come because it is already one of the possibilities that can happen?

Now is that all a coincidence? If you didn’t have a chat on the elevator or if you weren’t hangover at the first place or if you just found the key to your car that may have never happen. Or you could just meet anyway at some point in life, that’s one of the infinite possibilities too.

The common example given in that sort of situations is the Butterfly Effect. The Butterfly Effect tells us how the tiniest change in an event of a deterministic nonlinear system can cause an enormous difference. (Butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.)

That, in fact called chaos and as the phenomenon says;

Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

Since there is a lot to talk about the chaos theory let that be a topic of another chaotic day.