Coincidences. Yes, they're real, they happen.
All too often I come across people (online of course, but I've met a few in real life) who seem to believe that just because there happens to be an apparent similarity between two events, for example, that there just has to be an underlying (and of course, sinister) connection between them.
The logic in this line of thinking is so hopelessly flawed, that I don't even know where to begin with it. For starters, it's fallacious to believe that just because event A preceded event B, that there must of necessity be a link between them. That's what's known as the post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("after the fact, therefore because of the fact") fallacy. The two events in all likelihood have no connection whatsoever, but because we're beings who tend to see patterns within nature, and tend to see them all the time, and automatically, we'll of course have to be hyperalert to the possibility of our mind being deceived like this.
Then of course there is the widespread belief that chance apparently plays no (or a very limited) role in our lives. You could not be more wrong about this. Things happen, they just do, and quite often there is just no good or apparent reason for whatever it was that occurred. We live in a universe that is far more chaotic than most seem to realise, and the "laws" that we've been able to discern are simply the natural result of our natural tendency to sort things out, to impose order on chaos.
I don't believe there is anyone "in charge". Politicians do what they do because they're corrupt, greedy, incompetent and selfish, and not because they're receiving orders from 'The Order of the Illuminati Lizard-Aliens', and they're all trying to murder us. I mean, that doesn't even make any sense from the perspective of a power-hungry despot who wants to rule the world. One would assume they'd want us to produce more offspring, not fewer, because the more serfs you have control over, the more power you have, and you can depress wages during a manpower glut and make them work for peanuts. Right?
The logic in this line of thinking is so hopelessly flawed, that I don't even know where to begin with it. For starters, it's fallacious to believe that just because event A preceded event B, that there must of necessity be a link between them. That's what's known as the post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("after the fact, therefore because of the fact") fallacy. The two events in all likelihood have no connection whatsoever, but because we're beings who tend to see patterns within nature, and tend to see them all the time, and automatically, we'll of course have to be hyperalert to the possibility of our mind being deceived like this.
Then of course there is the widespread belief that chance apparently plays no (or a very limited) role in our lives. You could not be more wrong about this. Things happen, they just do, and quite often there is just no good or apparent reason for whatever it was that occurred. We live in a universe that is far more chaotic than most seem to realise, and the "laws" that we've been able to discern are simply the natural result of our natural tendency to sort things out, to impose order on chaos.
I don't believe there is anyone "in charge". Politicians do what they do because they're corrupt, greedy, incompetent and selfish, and not because they're receiving orders from 'The Order of the Illuminati Lizard-Aliens', and they're all trying to murder us. I mean, that doesn't even make any sense from the perspective of a power-hungry despot who wants to rule the world. One would assume they'd want us to produce more offspring, not fewer, because the more serfs you have control over, the more power you have, and you can depress wages during a manpower glut and make them work for peanuts. Right?
