Wednesday, Jan. 25
Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
The Odds Must Be Crazy: Coincidence as a root of superstition
Have you ever had the strangest thing
happen to you that just seemed to be too big of a coincidence to be, well, a
coincidence? Have you ever picked up the phone to call a friend only to
inexplicably be answering a call from them?
At this Wednesday’s Café Inquiry, skeptic
investigators Wendy Hughes and Jarrett Kaufman will explore
these and many more types of coincidences or strange phenomena which happen
every day that puzzle and confuse us.
Coincidences just seem too crazy to have
really happened by pure chance alone. But believe it or not, when you look
at the huge number of people in the world, and the absurd number of things
we do each day, it would actually be far stranger if these types of things
weren’t happening. But that doesn’t make it any less exciting when they do,
and there are a lot of coincidences that go well beyond the simple examples
given above.
That’s the focus of their blog “The
Odds Must Be Crazy.” In conjunction with the Independent Investigations
Group (IIG), the goal is to collect and entertain with these very everyday
occurrences that seem anything but ordinary. As the collection increases,
they will get a better idea of just how incredibly strange the world is in
which we live, and how people and events can connect in all sorts of
seemingly unexpected ways - even if statisticians or psychologists can
explain what’s really going on.
Wendy and Jarrett, Steering Committee
members of IIG who created the blog, will give an overview of “The Odds Must
Be Crazy,” and then open up the floor to discussion of these everyday
oddities.
Wendy is a longtime volunteer of CFI-Los
Angeles, and has been a member of IIG for at least six years. Jarrett is a
self-described washed-up actor, a know-it-all, a liberal, an atheist, a
cyber geek, a video gamer, a technology specialist, and a great deal more,
and became a Steering Member of the IIG one year after joining the
grassroots skepticism group. The IIG investigates fringe science, paranormal
and extraordinary claims from a rational, scientific viewpoint, and
disseminates factual information about such inquiries to the public.
To read the stories, and to contribute
your own coincidence story, visit
www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com
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