Human brain sem wired to notice patterns. This presents evolutionary benefits, but this attribute can deceive us in a world overloaded with data. Start with the anecdote person and show the impact on data analysis.
Back on June 18th, I was traveling the west side of Vancouver and noticed the street name “Trutch.” I remember thinking this was a strange name. Just a few days later, Tyler Cowen linked to an article in the Vancouver newspaper and discussed the fact that the street had just been renamed.
Trutch Street in Vancouver is now šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəmstreet. Not everything is happy
Give the Fun: Many residents of the very recent street known as Trutch said ThePport would change the name. But they are concerned about practical meanings on the street. The only name is spelled in a language other than English.
Article Author: Last updated June 18, 2025 by Dan Humano published June 17, 2025
That’s an even more messy name!
Note that the name change happened correctly around the time I was observing the street. That sems are quite an astonishing coincidence. But that’s not all. Last Monday we stayed at our Calgary hotel one night before we got home. The next morning I woke up and checked out the marginal revolution. This is the first post I’ve seen:
Calgary sums up with fluoride and the facts of Quebec that day
That’s even more coincidence. It’s as if Tyler knew my travel plans and intentionally posted material related to my location. Of course, that’s nosiness, he didn’t even know I was on vacation. But you can see how a superstitious person feels like it means coincidence. What are the odds?
Perhaps you think that coincidence is not so meaningful in a world where billions of events occur every day. However, much of our research on science and social sciences assumes the assumption that coincidence makes sense. In physics at least, scientists often claim a very unusual and accidental “five sigma events.” This means five or more standard deviations from the predicted value. However, in many areas there are many one-week tests of signatures, with only two standard deviations from the null hypothesis. In other words, random matches with only odds of 20 to 1 are considered very meaningful.
In a recent Econlog post, Kevin Corcoran said this.
In 2007, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote an interesting article advocating that he presented “ignoring data.” The idea was pretty simple – say you have a sub-sub theory that explains how the world works. New research is published using data that is not accessible in a theoretical framework. How should I answer?
One response is to abandon the theory in favour of new data. Another response is to leave your theory alone, and as Yudkowsky puts it, “attacks the experiment – condemning references to inconsistencies, defective designs, or conflicts of interest.” But A is the third possibility – simply ignoring the data. . . .
If multiple studies and experiments establish the theory and support it, then there should not be much truly attractive appraisals of rebuttal data.
At first glance, it may sound unscientific. But in reality, it proves that the “rebuttal” given the theory is merely a coincidence of a garden varieties that occurs even in a day.
Even a variety of smart experts (and me) are sometimes derived by coincidence. One recent example of WORSST is an example of a discussion about the origins of Covid. Running through history, pandemics often start in major cities in southern China. There, a large population is close to the wildlife market. This is how the first SARS epidemic began in November 2002. Covid Pandemic (SARS-2) SEM launched in almost identical ways in the wildlife market in one of the largest cities in southern China.
Safely, many experts have embraced the completely unfounded theory that Covid was born out of lab leaks, among the scholars of half a dozen largest metropolitan areas in southern China. It’s one of the weakest coincidences I’ve ever seen, but many people still consider it to provide support for lab leakage theory. In contrast, the animal market hypothesis is based on a few orders of chance that is unlikely to occur randomly.
There are millions of streets around the world. The fact that Tyler noticed Celerin Street in Vancouver just before he posted an article about the street is a very surprising coincidence. And what happens to Tyler’s post only 10 days later is even more surprising coincidence, as I was passing through this. In contrast, the entire lab leakage theory is based on something that is merely an interesting Malmo match, just like it spins twice in a row when throwing a six-sided die.
