[thechat] rationality is not enough (was: New Year's Resolution)

[Madhu Menon]

At 11:25 PM 03-01-03, javier velasco wrote:
>these are just two episodes that exemplify conectedness, thought
>transmission or telepathy, something constantly rejected by traditional
>science and rationality. there are lots of things like this that happen
>in life that are not explained by rationality.

Actually, all of the above can be explained fairly simply. It's too late in
the night for me to do it now. Tomorrow, for sure.

If two people (especially two who know each other so well) are in the same
place in the same circumstances, it's quite likely that you both think of
the same thing. Also, you're probably just falling for confirmation bias
[1] by remembering the events where you both thought of the same thing and
forgetting/ ignoring all the times you *weren't* thinking of the same
thing. Improbable events do happen; just not too frequently. For instance,
a one-in-a-million chance event may seem next to impossible, but in a large
enough sample (say, the population of India), they happen more often that
you might think. India's population is 1 billion plus. That means that a
one-in-a-million chance event happens a thousand times a day. :)

(Pop quiz: If you toss a coin ten times in the air and it comes up heads,
does the probability of tails coming up on the eleventh toss go up or down?
Answer: Neither. It remains exactly the same - 50%)

Regards,

Madhu

[1] http://www.skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

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