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You know Magpies being bad luck.
Black cats crossing your path.
Bad luck arriving in 3's
Sounds like you mean superstitions
...personally I'm a mug for silly superstitions but there we go 🤷
There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
Predictable.
I don't believe in any of that made-up bollocks. Typical Capricorn.
Predictable
It's late on a Sunday and I'm into my 3rd wheat beer (on holiday). The best I can do...
I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in confirmation bias.
More serious answer,
Some superstitions are just sensible. Being bad luck to walk under a ladder for instance, well it clearly will be if the window cleaner happens to drop his bucket at the point you're passing.
Some of it will be old wives' tales of varying credibility.
Some of it is confirmation bias. Like, if I scattered pepper around my garden every night in order to repel lions I'm pretty sure I can guarantee 100% efficacy. This stuff must be great!
But mostly it's things we tell small children that as grown adults we should have worked out by now.
If we're being serious...
There's absolutely no way your entire future is mapped out by 'fate'.
Life is just a series of random stuff and coincidences. You brain loves to find patterns in stuff so fate becomes a thing. It's also easy to abdicate responsibility to a greater force rather than accept its all down to you and your choices...
Embrace the chaos.
Life is just a series of random stuff and coincidences. You brain loves to find patterns in stuff so fate becomes a thing.
This is the "are there aliens?" big numbers issue again isn't it.
Like, you bump into your neighbours on holiday, or you type the word "neighbours" into a forum post just as someone says "neighbours" on TV and you go ooh, what are the odds? In isolation they're vanishingly small yet when you consider all the times it doesn't happen it's kind of surprising that it doesn't happen more. Week in, week out, people across the world win lotteries.
Back when I was into ice hockey a friend of mine noticed that whenever he bought an ice cream at a match, our team won. It became a running joke, at one game we were like 3-1 down with 5 minutes to go or something and he went "right, I'm buying a Magnum." Manchester promptly scored three times in the last few minutes before the whistle went. A mate of his who supported the visiting team was like "you bastard, that's just not playing fair!"
Of course, none of us really believed it, it was a stroke of luck and the running joke was a bit of fun. Because what's the alternative, that some sort of fate or divine force is going "shit, Mike's gone for a Magnum, the most powerful ice-cream in the world, best get Jago to get a couple of slapshots in"? And why Mike? Meanwhile on the other side of the arena a Bracknell fan is berating his wife as they lost because she washed his lucky socks on match day.
It's easy to see how, if you're so inclined, people buy into this stuff. The modern day equivalent is "we were just talking about [thing] and then a couple of days later an advert came up, Alexa / Facebook / Samsung is recording our conversations!!"
I'll just leave this here:
https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Hmm the phone listening one seems very credible to me, but it could just be confirmation bias I guess. Some very obscure/niche things I've never Googled for have come up on ads shortly after talking about them, on several occasions.
I'm not normally one for conspiracy theories but that's what they all say!
Yesterday I had “Cathkin Braes” pop in to my head at work (I was clearing up catkins and brain just went on from there), I came home and the first thread I see on here was Cathkin Braes
I then thought about starting a thread about things you think about then suddenly see, then this thread appears
*thinks about winning millions on the lottery*
That link is fascinating it’s like reading a DM headline or Leave.EU article.
I believe there are people who cluelessly sail through life and everything falls into their lap...
...our family on the other hand! 🙂
I believe there are people who cluelessly sail through life and everything falls into their lap…
Its just a numbers game, given a big enough sample size you'll find individuals who make all the wrong decisions but come out fine and also those who do everything 'right' but still find everything goes tits up....
Determinism has a scientific justification and following.
#fatenews
I like the love one : There is only one woman in the world for each man and when they meet they will be in love forever and then suddenly they fall in love with the girl 3 door up and say she is the one.
What are the odds on that given the millions of people in the world that 'the only one for you' was living three doors up the road rather than a Mumbai slum or somewhere in New York?
Fate, i tell you
Some people are just lucky, some people put themselves about more so the odds are more in their favour. Throw enough shit, some will stick kind of thing but in good way.
Of course its bad luck to break a mirror, i mean, you've just broken a mirror. How can it possibly be bad luck to put new shoes on a table though....
How can it possibly be bad luck to put new shoes on a table though….
Because horses are afraid of heights?
If something mildly bad and out of my control happens to me, I do tend to think "that's because you were grumpy with the kids" or something else I did before.
I hope it keeps me trying to do the right thing.
WorldClassAccident
Member
I like the love one : There is only one woman in the world for each man and when they meet they will be in love forever and then suddenly they fall in love with the girl 3 door up and say she is the one.What are the odds on that given the millions of people in the world that ‘the only one for you’ was living three doors up the road rather than a Mumbai slum or somewhere in New York?
Fate, i tell you
Mythical fate? Nah.
If you're desperate to settle down, but you're turning down partners expecting to meet 'the one' you're more likely to spend a lot of time alone than this perfect person to arrive in your life, and being brutally honest, of the people I know who are expecting to meet 'the one', if 'the one' did arrive, they probably wouldn't be interested in them anyway.
"All good things come to those who wait" is a lie made up by people, Bosses mostly, who want others to put up with shit, expecting better things to come soon, as if by magic.
Some stuff is practical, I wouldn't put anything that spends all day on the floor in the street on the surface I eat. I wouldn't walk under a ladder lest something falls off it etc.
Sometimes those fate is a good way of describing a potential outcome. For example, some of the kids in my Son years in school are starting to dabble with drugs, they're 14/15 and I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't say I did the same, but already you hear about the ones who are getting a bit too keen, or worse getting involved with a little bit of dealing (so they get theirs free) via the 'County Lines'. It's probably fate that these kids fates aren't good, unless something is done.
"I mean, I think you're special, but you fall within a bell curve"
😀
Fate? Nah. Life is a series of random choices that dictate who you meet and where you end up.
Superstitions? Yep. A few anyway. Saying hello to magpies I do, because my dad did/does.
Hmm the phone listening one seems very credible to me, but it could just be confirmation bias I guess.
Look at it this way.
There are many talented security professionals in the world who are actively and aggressively looking for this stuff. If (say) Alexa was permanently listening and streaming data back to Amazon, they'd be all over this like a rash and Amazon's reputation would be down the toilet. And for what? If they want to send you targeted adverts there's no shortage of other methods.
Some very obscure/niche things I’ve never Googled for have come up on ads shortly after talking about them, on several occasions.
How many times have you talked about things that haven't appeared on adverts?
Remember also, the likes of Facebook cross-reference your profile with your friends. It's a reasonable assumption that if all of your friends are into Thing then there's a good chance that you might share an interest in Thing with them.
It’s a reasonable assumption that if all of your friends are into Thing then there’s a good chance that you might share an interest in Thing with them.
I'm not really though. I just go along with them to avoid clobberin' time.
I mean, I've had it happen to me. Discussing something niche with a friend on Messenger then had FB adverts for it appear. "Holy shit, Facebook is reading my messages!"
Or, Facebook knows I've had a conversation with someone and starts sending me ads based on their interests which coincidentally they were just telling me about.
Pre sub-atomic physics, taking the Newtonian model to extremes, then Fate was a rational concept. 🙂
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
What are the odds on that given the millions of people in the world that ‘the only one for you’ was living three doors up the road rather than a Mumbai slum or somewhere in New York?
I'm sure Wreckless Eric did the Math.
Anyway, superstitions...
I'm naturally superstitious which I think is just a human thing, on a level of lucky shirt or if I wear this belt something bad will happen at work kind of thing. Weird as I'm not remotely OCD, opposite in fact but really feel all the sportsperson type superstitions of if I do something in a particular order and something good happens, it's hard not to do it again.
I know rationally this is utter total and complete bollocks, and do my best to mix things up to not pander to this sort of thinking, but it's definitely there. Worst is that I associate playing the guitar with bad things happening (probably as it tells my wife I'm at an obvious loose end), which means I hardly play. Hey ho...
I think how you view yourself has an impact. I remember readign a study that showed people who considered themelves lucky were more likley to see a 'dropped' (planted) £10 note than those who considered themselves unlucky.
Some stuff is practical, I wouldn’t put anything that spends all day on the floor in the street on the surface I eat.
I think this superstition refers to specifically new shoes as in the "look what I just bought from the shops" or "put my shopping down on this convenient table while I shut the door behind me". Never been sullied by the outdoor ground, done a test lap of the shoe shop at best.
Never understood the reasoning behind it.
It’s a reasonable assumption that if all of your friends are into Thing then there’s a good chance that you might share an interest in Thing with them.
Why am I now getting Facebook ads for flamethrowers?
Isn’t there a branch of physics that says that there is no free will as everything is is a reaction to something that happened before so in a way it is fated. Block Universe Theory, I think it’s called.
No.
"It's just fate" is the modern manifestation of human psychological reasoning that reconciles events in a spiritual or religious way, making it "God's doing", rather than accepting the chaos of the world.
Religion use this chaos to try and give order, and take control, of peoples lives. People still fall for the fraud of religion and believing in fate is a similar path of clamouring for an order that isn't there. Accept the chaos and have peace with it.
Deep, man.
My wife can often tell what I’ve been browsing from the ads that pop up on her FB page - but only if I’ve been using sites that I’ve whitelisted in Ghostery so that the Facebook scripts that run in the background are able to work. I block those scripts on most pages apart from a small number that don’t work if you do. (I don’t have a FB account and don’t use the same computer, so the router IP is the only thing in common).
Let’s face it. This sort of thing is the mainstay of quite a few religions. If the ancient Greeks believed that not even the gods could defy the fates then it seems it is something which has been long established in human psychology.