Spooky Coincidences?

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THERE’S MORE! Click to watch the LEANBACK playlist: http://bit.ly/YwNHiF

my twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tweetsauce
my instagram: http://www.instagram.com/electricpants

“7 Laws of Magical Thinking”: http://magicalthinkingbook.com/

“The Improbability Principle”: http://improbability-principle.com/the-improbability-principle-the-book/

Speed of light and pyramid coincidence: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/the-great-pyramid-of-giza-and-the-speed-of-light.2154/

Illinois lotto numbers: http://www.illinoislottery.com/en-us/winning-number-search-year.html#loadingImg2

Anagram genius website: http://www.anagramgenius.com

Other anagrams: http://wordsmith.org/anagram/hof.html

Michael Stevens illuminati tweet: https://twitter.com/vasilstefano/status/507611100594966528/photo/1

reverse speech sites:

http://reversespeech.com/reversal/john-f-kennedy-assassination/
http://www.reversespeech.com/Children_Reversals.htm
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/demon-haunted_sentence_a_skeptical_analysis_of_reverse_speech1/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backmasked_messages

virtual recorder app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ix.com.android.VirtualRecorder&hl=en

Karsten Johansson phonetic palindrome poem: https://soundcloud.com/intruder-1/wei-touke

Pareidolia: http://www.reddit.com/r/Pareidolia/

Apophenia as exhibited by a person with Schizophrenia: http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/2f182l/this_is_schizophrenia_album/

“may he poop on my knee?”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOgALTFzFbQ

iTunes shuffle:

http://lifehacker.com/5929611/why-itunes-shuffle-isnt-random-and-how-to-fix-it

dancing spiderman gif: http://factsvillage.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/spiderman-dancing.gif

dancing ninja gif: http://imgur.com/jfzZFnf

dancing gif sync explanation: http://www.radiolab.org/story/299399-why-spiderman-such-good-dancer/

Movie SYNCS:

http://www.moviessynced.com/
http://www.ingsoc.com/waters/info/oz.html

vague predictions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdiction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

Disney World coincidence: http://www.insidethemagic.net/2010/06/voutsinas-relive-disney-magic-by-recreating-now-famous-childhood-photo/

Kennedy and Lincoln coincidences:

lightning coincidence: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/statistician-david-j-hand-shows-how-the-seemingly-improbable-becomes-a-sure-thing/

Spooky coincidences contest: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/coincidences_remarkable_or_random/

Littlewood’s Law:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Littlewood's_law
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/mar/25/one-in-a-million/

(speaking backwards)

Hi, Vsauce. Michael here.

(static noises)

You can practice speaking backwards,
so when your words are reversed

they're intelligible.

But here's something
else that is weird.

The digits in the speed of light
are exactly the same

as the latitude of the great pyramid of Giza.

And, as the anagram genius has revealed,

all the world's a stage,

but if you rearrange the letters
in the meaning of life

it becomes the engine of a film.

Or more pessimistically, the fine game of nil.

What does all this mean?

Are these just coincidences
or are greater powers at work?

Why is it so easy for us to find hidden messages?

Why can a mere coincidence give us chills?

And why is it so fun?

When you reverse Neil Armstrong
saying, "Small step for man,"

you can hear what sounds
like "man will spacewalk".

- (Armstrong) That's one small step for man.
- Man will spacewalk.

One small step for man. Man will spacewalk.

Small step for man. Man will spacewalk.

Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated
president John F. Kennedy,

and in this interview, he defends the Fair
Play for Cuba Committee,

of which he was a member.

The fact that I did live for a time in the Soviet Union

gives me excellent qualifications
to repudiate charges

that Cuba and the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee is communist controlled.

Now listen to what it sounds like
when we reverse him saying,

"...and the Fair Play for Cuba".

...And the Fair Play for Cuba
I wish to kill president.

I wish to kill president.

I wish to kill president.

Is that a coincidence or a subconscious
confession hidden within his own words?

It's a coincidence.

For crying out loud, if anybody says,
"...and the fair play for Cuba"

and reverses it, it sounds the same.

I wish to kill president.

This app, by the way, is called Virtual Recorder.

It's a really easy way
to quickly reverse your own speech.

Matthew Hudson, in The Seven Laws of Magical
Thinking,

points out that if you record yourself saying,

"Ooh! You sniff turkey fat!"
And then reverse it,

it sounds a bit like "Happy birthday to you!"

Happy birthday to you!

Kind of.

If a word can be spelled
the same forward and backward,

it's a palindrome.
But if a word or phrase

sounds the same, whether
spoken forward or rewound,

is a phonetic palindrome.

For example, "Say yes."

- Reversed?
- Say yes.

Pretty cool.

But check out this poem by
Karsten Johansson.

"When I wonder why
What's never been's never been so

We would lie when we say
'Yes, you know we all love you'

What's never been's never been so
Hell, we're nowhere now."

When I wonder why
What's never been's never been so

We would lie when we say,
"Yes, you know we all love you."

What's never been's never been so
Hell, we're nowhere now.

By the way, some people
can speak in reverse on the fly.

It is really cool to see them in action.
Watch guys lean back after this video.

It's linked down in the description

and it's full of pretty cool coincidence videos.

Apophenia is the perception of
connections, or patterns,

in information.

One type of Apophenia is Pareidolia,

the seeing or hearing of things
that weren't meant to be there.

For instance, hearing your name being
called, or your phone ringing,

in the sound of running water.

Or hearing English words
in a non-English song,

or seeing faces that weren't
purposely placed there.

Our brains aren't good at this kind of work,

probably because being
hyper-attentive to patterns and faces

can save your life.

If there's ambiguity
as to whether that thing hiding

in the shadows is a threat or just a shadow,

it's advantageous
to err on the side of threat.

Organisms with a healthy sense of Apophenia

live longer--long enough
to have kids and raise them

and naturally become the norm.

We connect with faces so well,
Hudson relates a story

of a friend who draws faces
on things she doesn't wanna lose,

like her bags.

She says the faces make her
less likely to forget about them.

If you like, it you should have put a ring on it.

If you like not losing it,
you should've drawn a face on it.

We are so good at at teasing out patterns

and faces from random noise,

actual random sequences don't always
feel random to us.

Originally, Apple's iTunes shuffle feature
generated complaints from users.

They said that similar songs,
or songs from the same artist,

appeared in a string...which, of course,
is to be expected from randomness.

But it didn't feel random enough,

so Apple introduced a smart shuffle

that avoided totally random
sequences that nonetheless

didn't seem random
to our pattern loving brains.

As Steve Jobs explained,
we're making it less random

to make it feel more random.

Our impressive ability to imagine
patterns also expresses itself

when it comes to connecting
songs and moving images.

This dancing Spider-man animation
will famously sync up

with any music you play.

Try it. What kind of black magic is going on here?

Well, as it turns out,
most of it is in our heads.

RADIOLAB reported that
Michigan State University explains

that the major movements
of dancing animations like this one,

or this one, move at typical song tempos,

but also contain, like most dance,

various other different
related rhythms of movement

allowing them to seemingly fit
many different tempos.

Selection bias helps a lot too.

We fall prey to this when we reject
all the times the animation

doesn't really sync up, focusing instead
on the more surprising times

when it does.

The bizarre pyramid coincidence
mentioned earlier is a lot less bizarre

when you consider
the fact that we got to control

where we placed the decimal point.

And that a number of degrees this precise
isn't necessary to locate the pyramid.

By the fourth decimal, we're only talking
about a matter of a few meters,

so it's easy to make the rest fit
the speed of light exactly

and have still picked
a point on the pyramid.

Confirmation bias
also comes into play here.

If you really want two things to sync up...

they will

We often look for evidence that supports
what we already believe,

while marginalizing things against it.

As Marshall McLuhan said,

"I wouldn't have seen it
if I hadn't have believed it."

These biases also help explain
the seemingly mind-blowing coincidence

that famous movies
and famous albums can line up.

One the most popular states
that if you start playing Pink Floyd's

Dark Side of the Moon

at the same time as the Wizard of Oz,
they will eerily line up.

Entire communities have sprouted
around the syncing

of movies and albums.

Some of my favorites are
the Yellow Submarine soundtrack

and The Little Mermaid.

Lordes Pure Heroin
and Twilight's Saga, Breaking Dawn II,

and the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey,

with Pink Floyd's echoes.

There are conspiracies that these
were somehow secretly planned.

Though, in reality, they're
just accidental music videos.

The product of selection bias,
confirmation bias,

And the Law of Near Enough,

a behavior of our pattern sensitive minds.

Two things don't have
to line up exactly, or literally,

for us to see a connection.
This is why vague predictions

are a great way to look psychic.

These are also actually unsurprising
when you consider the fact

that the number of narrative paces
and rhythms we enjoy,

and typically use, are much smaller
than the number possible.

In The Improbability Principal,
David J. Hand calls this

the probability lever.

What may be rare on average, or when
considering all possible scenarios,

can be less rare for specific scenarios,

even if they are only marginally different.

Getting struck by lightning
is a proverbially unlikely event,

but Walter Summerford wasn't just struck
by lightning once during his life,

he was struck three times.

It never killed him, but
four years after his death

his gravestone was
also struck by lightning.

What are the chances?
I mean, clearly Summerford was

some sort of robot built
out of lightning rods,

or had somehow angered Zeus. Right?

Probably not.

You see, while for the average person,

the chance of being struck
by lightning is quite low.

For an avid outdoor sportsman
like Summerford, it's not as low.

The Law of Truly Large Numbers
also comes into play here.

With lightning striking earth
40-50 times a second,

billions of people for it to strike

and thousands of years of recorded history?

It's actually not surprising at all
that at least once,

a story like Summerford's
would've happened.

Given the truly large
number of people

who visit Disney World every day,

and the fact that they take
photos--and lots of them--

it's actually not surprising
at all that at least once so far

a story like Alex and Donna
Voutsina has happened.

While sorting through
old photos before their wedding,

Alex and Donna found a photo of Donna

at Disney World, 14 years
before the couple met.

But then Alex noticed something.

He too had visited Disney World
as a child and there,

in the background, was
his father pushing him in a stroller.

Sometimes coincidences can be tragic.

In 1864, Abraham Lincoln's son,

Robert Lincoln, was saved from
serious injury, or possibly even

death, when a stranger
grabbed him by the shirt collar

moments before he plunged
onto train tracks below.

That stranger turned out to be Edwin
Booth, one of the most famous

Shakespearean actors of the time--

so famous, in fact,
Robert recognized him

and had a letter sent thanking
him for saving his life.

Less than a year later

Edwin Booth's brother,
John Wilkes Booth, undid the favor by

assassinating Abraham Lincoln. STOP 11:04

map says that given enough time and
psychology says that given up interest

in finding them

coincidences and connections will be

them

even unlikely the coincidences between

Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy are
Banus

both were elected to the presidency in
the year Indian

sixty Lincoln was shot at boards

dealer kennedy was shot in 1961 Lincoln
Continental four-door convertible

made by forward both presidents last
names have seven letters

and both assassins had 15 letters in
their names

the list goes on as it should

if you look long enough you can find
coincidences between any two people or

things were tense

any seem strange at first but tend to
wind up being in the end

pretty expecting for just one example

name like isn't that wildly variable

seven-letter names are pretty common
Lincoln

Kennedy I'll Michael Stevens

ok in the famous spooky presidential
coincidences contest

held by the Skeptical Inquirer in 1992
one contestant alone

found similar lists of crazy
coincidences

between 21 pairs a former presidents

given the vast amount details in anyone
in our lives

its pretty easy this court can be
exploited to almost comedic Heights

when it comes to overanalyzing of course

hidden messages in fines are often
intentionally included in media

for fun or to reward attentive viewers

but unintentional extraordinary things

happen all the time its not really that

extraordinary there's a the
miscalculation

that is known as little woods law given
the number I've

hours we are awake every day and
assuming an event only takes about a

second

to occur if you calculate the odds of
something happening to you are only one

in a million

well you should expect that thing to
happen to you about

once every 35 days DDG

and took this even further with seven
billion people

on earth the chance that an event with a
one in a million probability of

happening

take each of us won't happen today is
one

intended 3,000 boring as Percy diet
colas put it

the truly unusual day would be a day
where

nothing unusual happens and as always

thanks for watching me

you may have noticed a lot of YouTube
channels making videos about learning

this week

well that is not a coincidence it is
school

YouTube week many people are going back
to school or college right now

but across the world millions a children

won't be either because the work to
support their families

work lived without a home bring areas
where there is conflict

inexperience overcrowding at school or a
lack of teaching

school supplies but luckily we can help

donations to comic relief school love
you too campaign

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