A few years ago I was interviewing someone for my book on textiles. With some embarrassment she asked whether I might know a journalist neighbor of hers, despite knowing that 1) there are a zillion journalists 2) we lived a continent apart. Although we'd since lost touch, her journalist neighbor had been the matron of honor at my wedding.
Fantastic story. For many years, traveling the world, we kept bumping into New Yorkers. In the course of conversation, we would find that they went to Far Rockaway High School, where my wife went. Happened in Israel, in France, several places around the U.S. A few others I've forgotten.
> “Have you ever witnessed a total solar eclipse? Usually when I give a lecture, only a couple of people in an audience of several hundred people raise their hands when I ask that question. A few others respond tentatively, saying, ‘I think I saw one.’ That’s like a woman saying, ‘I think I once gave birth.’”
See also: spiritual experiences. For people who have personally felt God's hand in their lives, it is an unmistakable and distinctive thing, which people who have not simply aren't equipped to fully comprehend. Miracles are very real. Anyone who's experienced one *knows* that, and anyone who hasn't does not have the necessary basis by which to claim that they're not.
I came to report mine, and it more properly belongs under your comment. About 25 years ago I had reluctantly agreed to act in a play with my church drama group. Almost right after rehearsals started, I developed a scaly patch on the bridge of my nose; it didn't hurt and really was only noticeable under stage makeup. So I went to a dermatologist friend of mine, and he diagnosed it as a seborrheic keratosis, common and benign. For reasons I still don't understand, he wanted to see if I had any on my back (I did), but immediately after I took off my shirt he said, "Oh my. How long have you had this? I don't like this, I don't like its color and I don't like its shape." I of course had no idea what he was talking about, as it was a mole I was vaguely aware of but couldn't see even in a mirror. He scooped it off, it was a malignant melanoma, I went later for a wide excision, and here I am 25 years later. If any of those things hadn't happened -- the play, the scaly patch, my dermatologist's still unexplained OCD -- that cancer would have killed me 23-24 years ago.
He had developed a fairly mild case of shingles, but wasn’t sure what it was. I was pregnant and planning to visit my parents at the time (I lived in a distant state), and they were nervous about the situation. Dad was unable to see his doctor so he made an appointment with the newly built VA clinic in their town (he was a WWII vet). The doctor there diagnosed him and then talked him into returning for a follow up physical.
He was later diagnosed at that clinic with aggressive prostate cancer — I believe a 7 or 8 on the Gleason scale. The PSA test was new at the time, if I remember correctly.
Dad underwent surgery. He lived another 35 years, finally leaving us at the advanced age of 95.
I've written about how my developing AFIB saved a friend's husband from an undiagnosed, deadly bladder cancer. I got AFIB and bought an early device for taking EKGs on my cellphone. I showed it to my friend, whose MD/husband knew he was experiencing AFIB but was never doing so when he would visit the doctor--so he couldn't get treated. She saw my device, quickly bought him one. He was able to prove he had AFIB and went for a lab workup so he could get an ablation. In the course of the bloodwork, they noticed the cancer, which they caught just in time.
I witnessed a total solar eclipse on a tennis court in Nairobi, Kenya. I've forgotten the year, but I believe it was between 1990 and 1995. It was amazing, especially the birds going silent and the multiple images of the crescent sun projected on the ground from pinholes between tree leaves. But all I could think was "when will it get light enough for us to start playing tennis again?" Talk about a selfish response to a magical phenomenon! And I have seen two partial eclipses since then. Totality is worth the extra ticket price. It also stops tennis games on unlighted courts.
I wish I had personal examples of stunning coincidences, but I've passed a horribly boring life.
I didn't see an eclipse in Kenya, but I saw something that struck me as almost as dramatic. I went to the game reserve at Masai Mara. At night, far, far, from any artificial lighting, I saw more stars than I have ever seen before. Having never been south of the equator before, I was seeing constellations and objects that I had only read about--the Southern Cross, the Magellanic Clouds, etc. Then I turned northward and was dumbstruck. There was Orion--familar to me throughout my lifetime. But here, Orion was upside-down. His sword was pointing upward instead of downward. I stood there for a while, rotating the earth and the universe about in my mind until I could comprehend why it looked that way from this point on earth.
I have observed the same phenomenon in several different African countries south of the equator and in New Zealand. It can be disconcerting to look north from the southern hemisphere. And yes, the night sky when seen far from artificial lighting can be mind-blowing. I love it!
The posterior probability of any event that has already happened is one. It is simply a misuse of statistical probabilities to create a sense of “specialness” over an event that has happened. If one had to use probabilities, the question that is being posed is more along the lines of “What are the odds that you could have predicted this event?”
To take a very simple control example: take a pack of cards and deal out four hands of thirteen cards, something that is done thousands of times a day by bridge players. When everybody picks up their cards, there is rarely any expressions of amazement, but the odds of that particular deal, however “normal” it appears are about 1 in 61 billion – but there it is, fantastic! (The calculation is 4!13 × 13!4 / 52!).
If someone predicted the deal, we would rightly be amazed (or rather suspect cheating) but the simple existence creates no sense of wonder at all.
The general concept of probabilities rely on simple, repeatable processes where can establish physical behaviour across very long runs or across large populations. There is no real way that we can establish the parameters of any odds where we do not have this e.g. For the existence of a universe; for the existence of life; for the existence of humanity.
I think that one can have sense of wonder about the world without needing to think that it is all highly improbable – because virtually everything is when one tries to calculate probabilities after the event.
Of course. Which is why Dr. Hand said what he did about rainbows. It also brings to mind the fact that "improbable event" is a highly anthropomorphic concept. In flipping coins, we find HHHHHHHHHH to be extremely improbable. HTTHTHTTHH is equally improbable, but doesn't strike us as an improbable event. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" had a recurring plot device on this whole idea. There was a machine; you would set its dial for some precise probability; and the device would take you to whichever event in the history of the universe had that precise probability of having occurred.
I couldn't quite decide whether to post this or not as discussing the detailed workings of a fictional “Infinite Improbability Drive” is both picky and nerdy. However, on the off chance that you might be interested, here goes:
You write that “There was a machine; you would set its dial for some precise probability; and the device would take you to whichever event in the history of the universe had that precise probability of having occurred.” but that is not really how it is explained in the book/series.
Here is what they say: “The principle is that as its drive reaches infinite improbability, the ship passes simultaneously through every conceivable and inconceivable point in every conceivable and inconceivable universe (in other words, when one activates the Infinite Improbability Drive, the ship is literally everywhere at once). It is then possible to decide at which point you actually want to be when improbability levels decrease.”
Douglas Adams references quantum theory where we cannot predict the actual position of a sub-atomic particle only the probabilities of being in a particular place to justify this.
Apologies if this is being too pedantic, it is a fault of mine.
I LOVE your response. I was recalling that section from decades-old memory. I thought I had it about right, but your precise explanation is even better--and quite welcome here. Picky and nerdy is what we do best here. :) There have been times that I happily consumed volumes on quantum theory--translated for laymen such as I. Adams's books were remarkable for the physics and for the economics (and for lots of other things).
I’m reminded of the line from “Hamlet”: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
My personal experience with unexplained coincidences is very personal. My father’s oldest brother was killed in WWII on May 10, their mother’s birthday. Twenty years later, their mother died on October 20, her dead son’s birthday. Seventy years after his brother died, my father died on May 10, his brother’s date of death and their mother’s birthday.
I drove about 8 hours down to a state park in southern Missouri to witness the totality of the recent solar eclipse. It was just as described here. It was amazing to me that even at 90% or so of the moon's occlusion of the sun, when only a sliver of sun could be seen (through the special glasses of course), there was still full daylight. Even just before the moment of totality, there was plenty of light, although it was dimming, like at dusk. And then BOOM totality, which lasted something like four minutes.
It felt like a miracle. I am so grateful that I got to witness this, and thank God the skies were completely clear. It makes me want to travel whatever distance needed to see the next one, although there is always the possibility of cloudy skies, which would mean not witnessing the absolutely fantastic corona, which you can behold without eye protection.
What a wonderful essay! Thanks for sharing this with us. I have seen this so many times in medicine and in life. I suspect that what we call impossible, or miraculous, is often simply something we aren't willing to see or accept. And as you so clearly illustrate, far more common than we think.
My mother was born in 1931 and served in the Israeli air force after the War of Independence. Once, in the mid 1950’s, she was at a party on the air force base, but had to leave early to drive back to her job teaching school the next morning. The base commander told her not to worry, and that he would send a pilot to fly her back down the coast in the morning. The flight happened, my mother got to her classroom, and the incident was forgotten.
45 years later, my mother was flying to Israel to see her family. She sat next to an “old” man and they got to talking. Eventually she learned that he had been a pilot in the Israeli air force and out of the blue, she told him her story. His face got very grave, and after she was done, he asked if she remembered the name of the pilot. She laughed and said no. The old man asked “was it xxx?”. My mother was stunned. “Yes, that was his name. How did you know?” “I was the pilot,” the old man said.
An interesting tangent from this one assumes purposely tantalizing collection is *why* the human mind is notoriously poor at estimating the true probability of rare events. I reject out of hand the notion of inadequacy of the hardware, inasmuch as the human brain is spectacularly good at predictive Newtonian mechanics -- you have only to admire the stunning skill of the MLB shortstop or the Olympic gymnast to see that. Integrating Newton's equations of motion to millisecond accuracy *in real time* is a feat of calculation that dwarfs the mere extrapolation of reasonably well understood probabilities of individual events to more complex and rarer composite events. We all grok the probability of getting heads on a coin flip -- the probability of getting exactly 50,000 heads on 100,000 flips (which is extremely small) should be child's play for the brain to intuit correctly.
So why then? If the human brain is physically capable of an accurate estimate of the odds of rare composite events, why doesn't it actually do it? If we reject the hypothesis that it can't, we are left with the hypothesis that it won't, and with the inference that it is likely to be adaptive -- there might be some strange advantage derived from this wonkiness that causes tribes of humans who exhibit it to prosper more than their more Vulcan neighbors.
What could that be? The only thing that comes to mind is that overoptimism and overpessimism might be adaptive for a social species in ways they are not for the individual. If I believe in miracles (meaning I am overoptimistic of a good outcome) then I will attempt things for which the expected payoff is negative. Sounds dumb. But! I am a member of a social species, and the expected *group* payoff for my family of my overoptimism may well be positive. Gee, Uncle Carl tried to befriend that strange new animal with the sharp teeth and got eaten. Good to know! We will avoid that animal from now on. Whether I succeed or fail in doing something unlikely -- making friends with the new predator -- my tribe benefits, and if they carry enough of my genes, that means my genes have an expected positive payoff, and will code for it (cf. Dawkins "Selfish Gene").
Same thing the other way. If I am unreasonably paranoid about an evil coincidence, I will expend unreasonable levels of effort to guard against it, and my expected individual payoff is negative. But the group payoff may well be positive. Well, Uncle Carl spent all night keeping watch in case the neighbor tribe attacked, and was so exhausted the next morning he fell down a hole and hit his head. Guess that was stupid, and we won't be repeating it. Or: I'll be damned, Uncle Carl was right about those bastards, good think he was able to wake us up in time.
In general, the group payoff for a certain fraction -- possibly the majority, or even all -- of individuals exhibiting overoptimistic or overpessimistic behavior, based on a (by design!) faulty internal perception of the odds of composite rare events, might well be positive, even when the individual payoff is necessarily negative. That is, it may be rational (at the group level) for us (at the individual level) to be a bit irrational.
(This post was approved heartily by Leonard McCoy, MD.)
This is something I often discussed with my econ students. Equilibrium theory implies that you just go straight to the optimum. In a great metaphor, one writer said it's equivalent to someone in Europe asking "How do I get to Rome?" and being handed a map of the Forum and being told "All roads lead to Rome." Plenty of economists do see the weakness in this approach. There's actually a term related to what you describe: tâtonnement--French for "groping" or "trial and error."
The "meaningful coincidence" viewpoint actually dates to the psychologist Carl Jung, who called it "synchronicity". He rolled it around in his head for two or three decades, but did not publish until the 1950s, after a long correspondence with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli convinced Jung that he would not (any more than usual!) be the subject of derision among scientists, who he respected and regarded as peers. See "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle", by Carl Gustav Jung for his treatment of "meaningful coincidences", and see "Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932-1958" by C. G. Jung (Author), Wolfgang Pauli (Author), C. A. Meier (Editor), David Roscoe (Translator) for the definitive treatment of Pauli's contributions to Jung's thought on this.
A few years ago I was interviewing someone for my book on textiles. With some embarrassment she asked whether I might know a journalist neighbor of hers, despite knowing that 1) there are a zillion journalists 2) we lived a continent apart. Although we'd since lost touch, her journalist neighbor had been the matron of honor at my wedding.
Fantastic story. For many years, traveling the world, we kept bumping into New Yorkers. In the course of conversation, we would find that they went to Far Rockaway High School, where my wife went. Happened in Israel, in France, several places around the U.S. A few others I've forgotten.
> “Have you ever witnessed a total solar eclipse? Usually when I give a lecture, only a couple of people in an audience of several hundred people raise their hands when I ask that question. A few others respond tentatively, saying, ‘I think I saw one.’ That’s like a woman saying, ‘I think I once gave birth.’”
See also: spiritual experiences. For people who have personally felt God's hand in their lives, it is an unmistakable and distinctive thing, which people who have not simply aren't equipped to fully comprehend. Miracles are very real. Anyone who's experienced one *knows* that, and anyone who hasn't does not have the necessary basis by which to claim that they're not.
I have not experienced the hand of God, but I want to. I agree with you entirely that it would be unmistakable and transformational.
I came to report mine, and it more properly belongs under your comment. About 25 years ago I had reluctantly agreed to act in a play with my church drama group. Almost right after rehearsals started, I developed a scaly patch on the bridge of my nose; it didn't hurt and really was only noticeable under stage makeup. So I went to a dermatologist friend of mine, and he diagnosed it as a seborrheic keratosis, common and benign. For reasons I still don't understand, he wanted to see if I had any on my back (I did), but immediately after I took off my shirt he said, "Oh my. How long have you had this? I don't like this, I don't like its color and I don't like its shape." I of course had no idea what he was talking about, as it was a mole I was vaguely aware of but couldn't see even in a mirror. He scooped it off, it was a malignant melanoma, I went later for a wide excision, and here I am 25 years later. If any of those things hadn't happened -- the play, the scaly patch, my dermatologist's still unexplained OCD -- that cancer would have killed me 23-24 years ago.
I believe.
RJ, wow. Reminds me of my father’s story.
He had developed a fairly mild case of shingles, but wasn’t sure what it was. I was pregnant and planning to visit my parents at the time (I lived in a distant state), and they were nervous about the situation. Dad was unable to see his doctor so he made an appointment with the newly built VA clinic in their town (he was a WWII vet). The doctor there diagnosed him and then talked him into returning for a follow up physical.
He was later diagnosed at that clinic with aggressive prostate cancer — I believe a 7 or 8 on the Gleason scale. The PSA test was new at the time, if I remember correctly.
Dad underwent surgery. He lived another 35 years, finally leaving us at the advanced age of 95.
The Hand of God? You bet.
I've written about how my developing AFIB saved a friend's husband from an undiagnosed, deadly bladder cancer. I got AFIB and bought an early device for taking EKGs on my cellphone. I showed it to my friend, whose MD/husband knew he was experiencing AFIB but was never doing so when he would visit the doctor--so he couldn't get treated. She saw my device, quickly bought him one. He was able to prove he had AFIB and went for a lab workup so he could get an ablation. In the course of the bloodwork, they noticed the cancer, which they caught just in time.
Fascinating.
I witnessed a total solar eclipse on a tennis court in Nairobi, Kenya. I've forgotten the year, but I believe it was between 1990 and 1995. It was amazing, especially the birds going silent and the multiple images of the crescent sun projected on the ground from pinholes between tree leaves. But all I could think was "when will it get light enough for us to start playing tennis again?" Talk about a selfish response to a magical phenomenon! And I have seen two partial eclipses since then. Totality is worth the extra ticket price. It also stops tennis games on unlighted courts.
I wish I had personal examples of stunning coincidences, but I've passed a horribly boring life.
I didn't see an eclipse in Kenya, but I saw something that struck me as almost as dramatic. I went to the game reserve at Masai Mara. At night, far, far, from any artificial lighting, I saw more stars than I have ever seen before. Having never been south of the equator before, I was seeing constellations and objects that I had only read about--the Southern Cross, the Magellanic Clouds, etc. Then I turned northward and was dumbstruck. There was Orion--familar to me throughout my lifetime. But here, Orion was upside-down. His sword was pointing upward instead of downward. I stood there for a while, rotating the earth and the universe about in my mind until I could comprehend why it looked that way from this point on earth.
I have observed the same phenomenon in several different African countries south of the equator and in New Zealand. It can be disconcerting to look north from the southern hemisphere. And yes, the night sky when seen far from artificial lighting can be mind-blowing. I love it!
The posterior probability of any event that has already happened is one. It is simply a misuse of statistical probabilities to create a sense of “specialness” over an event that has happened. If one had to use probabilities, the question that is being posed is more along the lines of “What are the odds that you could have predicted this event?”
To take a very simple control example: take a pack of cards and deal out four hands of thirteen cards, something that is done thousands of times a day by bridge players. When everybody picks up their cards, there is rarely any expressions of amazement, but the odds of that particular deal, however “normal” it appears are about 1 in 61 billion – but there it is, fantastic! (The calculation is 4!13 × 13!4 / 52!).
If someone predicted the deal, we would rightly be amazed (or rather suspect cheating) but the simple existence creates no sense of wonder at all.
The general concept of probabilities rely on simple, repeatable processes where can establish physical behaviour across very long runs or across large populations. There is no real way that we can establish the parameters of any odds where we do not have this e.g. For the existence of a universe; for the existence of life; for the existence of humanity.
I think that one can have sense of wonder about the world without needing to think that it is all highly improbable – because virtually everything is when one tries to calculate probabilities after the event.
Of course. Which is why Dr. Hand said what he did about rainbows. It also brings to mind the fact that "improbable event" is a highly anthropomorphic concept. In flipping coins, we find HHHHHHHHHH to be extremely improbable. HTTHTHTTHH is equally improbable, but doesn't strike us as an improbable event. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" had a recurring plot device on this whole idea. There was a machine; you would set its dial for some precise probability; and the device would take you to whichever event in the history of the universe had that precise probability of having occurred.
I couldn't quite decide whether to post this or not as discussing the detailed workings of a fictional “Infinite Improbability Drive” is both picky and nerdy. However, on the off chance that you might be interested, here goes:
You write that “There was a machine; you would set its dial for some precise probability; and the device would take you to whichever event in the history of the universe had that precise probability of having occurred.” but that is not really how it is explained in the book/series.
Here is what they say: “The principle is that as its drive reaches infinite improbability, the ship passes simultaneously through every conceivable and inconceivable point in every conceivable and inconceivable universe (in other words, when one activates the Infinite Improbability Drive, the ship is literally everywhere at once). It is then possible to decide at which point you actually want to be when improbability levels decrease.”
Douglas Adams references quantum theory where we cannot predict the actual position of a sub-atomic particle only the probabilities of being in a particular place to justify this.
Apologies if this is being too pedantic, it is a fault of mine.
I LOVE your response. I was recalling that section from decades-old memory. I thought I had it about right, but your precise explanation is even better--and quite welcome here. Picky and nerdy is what we do best here. :) There have been times that I happily consumed volumes on quantum theory--translated for laymen such as I. Adams's books were remarkable for the physics and for the economics (and for lots of other things).
I’m reminded of the line from “Hamlet”: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
My personal experience with unexplained coincidences is very personal. My father’s oldest brother was killed in WWII on May 10, their mother’s birthday. Twenty years later, their mother died on October 20, her dead son’s birthday. Seventy years after his brother died, my father died on May 10, his brother’s date of death and their mother’s birthday.
Quite a stunning sequence.
My brother won the lottery twice. I lean towards a spiritual interpretation. I wrote about it here:
https://www.pisgahsite.com/p/blessing-israel
Robert, what a fascinating collection of vignettes.
I drove about 8 hours down to a state park in southern Missouri to witness the totality of the recent solar eclipse. It was just as described here. It was amazing to me that even at 90% or so of the moon's occlusion of the sun, when only a sliver of sun could be seen (through the special glasses of course), there was still full daylight. Even just before the moment of totality, there was plenty of light, although it was dimming, like at dusk. And then BOOM totality, which lasted something like four minutes.
It felt like a miracle. I am so grateful that I got to witness this, and thank God the skies were completely clear. It makes me want to travel whatever distance needed to see the next one, although there is always the possibility of cloudy skies, which would mean not witnessing the absolutely fantastic corona, which you can behold without eye protection.
Wonderful. Since 1970, I've been meaning to see another, but life has always gotten in the way. Glad I had the one.
What a wonderful essay! Thanks for sharing this with us. I have seen this so many times in medicine and in life. I suspect that what we call impossible, or miraculous, is often simply something we aren't willing to see or accept. And as you so clearly illustrate, far more common than we think.
My mother was born in 1931 and served in the Israeli air force after the War of Independence. Once, in the mid 1950’s, she was at a party on the air force base, but had to leave early to drive back to her job teaching school the next morning. The base commander told her not to worry, and that he would send a pilot to fly her back down the coast in the morning. The flight happened, my mother got to her classroom, and the incident was forgotten.
45 years later, my mother was flying to Israel to see her family. She sat next to an “old” man and they got to talking. Eventually she learned that he had been a pilot in the Israeli air force and out of the blue, she told him her story. His face got very grave, and after she was done, he asked if she remembered the name of the pilot. She laughed and said no. The old man asked “was it xxx?”. My mother was stunned. “Yes, that was his name. How did you know?” “I was the pilot,” the old man said.
Still gives me chills.
Love the story!
An interesting tangent from this one assumes purposely tantalizing collection is *why* the human mind is notoriously poor at estimating the true probability of rare events. I reject out of hand the notion of inadequacy of the hardware, inasmuch as the human brain is spectacularly good at predictive Newtonian mechanics -- you have only to admire the stunning skill of the MLB shortstop or the Olympic gymnast to see that. Integrating Newton's equations of motion to millisecond accuracy *in real time* is a feat of calculation that dwarfs the mere extrapolation of reasonably well understood probabilities of individual events to more complex and rarer composite events. We all grok the probability of getting heads on a coin flip -- the probability of getting exactly 50,000 heads on 100,000 flips (which is extremely small) should be child's play for the brain to intuit correctly.
So why then? If the human brain is physically capable of an accurate estimate of the odds of rare composite events, why doesn't it actually do it? If we reject the hypothesis that it can't, we are left with the hypothesis that it won't, and with the inference that it is likely to be adaptive -- there might be some strange advantage derived from this wonkiness that causes tribes of humans who exhibit it to prosper more than their more Vulcan neighbors.
What could that be? The only thing that comes to mind is that overoptimism and overpessimism might be adaptive for a social species in ways they are not for the individual. If I believe in miracles (meaning I am overoptimistic of a good outcome) then I will attempt things for which the expected payoff is negative. Sounds dumb. But! I am a member of a social species, and the expected *group* payoff for my family of my overoptimism may well be positive. Gee, Uncle Carl tried to befriend that strange new animal with the sharp teeth and got eaten. Good to know! We will avoid that animal from now on. Whether I succeed or fail in doing something unlikely -- making friends with the new predator -- my tribe benefits, and if they carry enough of my genes, that means my genes have an expected positive payoff, and will code for it (cf. Dawkins "Selfish Gene").
Same thing the other way. If I am unreasonably paranoid about an evil coincidence, I will expend unreasonable levels of effort to guard against it, and my expected individual payoff is negative. But the group payoff may well be positive. Well, Uncle Carl spent all night keeping watch in case the neighbor tribe attacked, and was so exhausted the next morning he fell down a hole and hit his head. Guess that was stupid, and we won't be repeating it. Or: I'll be damned, Uncle Carl was right about those bastards, good think he was able to wake us up in time.
In general, the group payoff for a certain fraction -- possibly the majority, or even all -- of individuals exhibiting overoptimistic or overpessimistic behavior, based on a (by design!) faulty internal perception of the odds of composite rare events, might well be positive, even when the individual payoff is necessarily negative. That is, it may be rational (at the group level) for us (at the individual level) to be a bit irrational.
(This post was approved heartily by Leonard McCoy, MD.)
This is something I often discussed with my econ students. Equilibrium theory implies that you just go straight to the optimum. In a great metaphor, one writer said it's equivalent to someone in Europe asking "How do I get to Rome?" and being handed a map of the Forum and being told "All roads lead to Rome." Plenty of economists do see the weakness in this approach. There's actually a term related to what you describe: tâtonnement--French for "groping" or "trial and error."
I can't wait to hear the next story.
https://graboyes.substack.com/p/the-double-world-of-francois-brunelle :)
Thanks for all the restacks!
The "meaningful coincidence" viewpoint actually dates to the psychologist Carl Jung, who called it "synchronicity". He rolled it around in his head for two or three decades, but did not publish until the 1950s, after a long correspondence with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli convinced Jung that he would not (any more than usual!) be the subject of derision among scientists, who he respected and regarded as peers. See "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle", by Carl Gustav Jung for his treatment of "meaningful coincidences", and see "Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932-1958" by C. G. Jung (Author), Wolfgang Pauli (Author), C. A. Meier (Editor), David Roscoe (Translator) for the definitive treatment of Pauli's contributions to Jung's thought on this.