#coincidence

Coincidence obeys no laws and if it does we don't know what they are. Coincidence, if you'll permit me the simile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on our planet. A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures. In that hurricane, in that osseous implosion, we find communion. ↗

— Roberto Bolaño

#simile

It may be a coincidence, but from the minute I took anti-depressants, I didn't pick up a guitar or a pen for seven years. ↗

— Adam Ant

#guitar #i #may #minute #pen

I love England. It's no coincidence it's the first place I moved to for a more cosmopolitan life, which is the only thing Iceland lacks. ↗

— Bjork

#cosmopolitan #england #first #i #i love

I don't believe in coincidence. ↗

— Juliette Binoche

#coincidence #i

All I really wanted to do was make an album that was going to be just back to what I like to do... And it was a coincidence that these new bands, this new wave of bands, were doing Alice and Iggy rock. ↗

— Alice Cooper

#alice #back #bands #coincidence #doing

Is it possible that there are no coincidences? ↗

— M. Night Shyamalan

#possible

For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#coincidence #equality

J. E. Littlewood, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote about the law of truly large numbers in his 1986 book, "Littlewood's Miscellany." He said the average person is alert for about eight hours every day, and something happens to the average person about once a second. At this rate, you will experience 1 million events every thirty-five days. This means when you say the chances of something happening are one in a million, it also means about once a month. The monthly miracle is called Littlewood's Law. ↗

— David McRaney

#delusion #psychology #statistics #experience

But I don't believe coincidences are chance events. I think they're the times we happen to see the mysterious pattern connecting everything. ↗

— Julie Gittus

#coincidences #life #life

Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics". To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile. Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life. ↗

— Paul Davies

#chance #coincidence #fine-tuning #fred-hoyle #id