Post #213
Posted in Blogosphere, Thinking Critically on | 2 minutes | 4 Comments →
I just noticed that I’ve made 212 post to date on my blogs. That makes this the 213th. Why even mention it?
For a long time, this number has haunted me. I can’t explain it in any way I expect you to accept logically, but I’ve seen this arrangement of numbers time and time again over the past three years or so, albeit to a lessening degree of late it seems. I look at my score on Millipede, it ends in 213. Count the money I found in the couch, $2.13. I arrive at some address for some reason, it’s 213 such-and-such boulevard. Not always, but much more often than seems accountable by chance, and FAR more often than occurs with any other arrangement of numbers. I’m not alleging that it means anything, and I’m not alleging that it doesn’t mean anything, but it sure feels like it does. I look at the clock, and it’s 2:13, or 12:13, and it feels more like those numbers somehow saw me, somehow proactively grabbed the attention of my sight. In other words, when I say that I look at the clock and it’s 2:13, it’s not usually an arbitrary glance. It’s like I subconsciously identify the numbers prior to laying eyes upon them, if that makes sense.
I once asked somebody about it, another writer friend of mine named Jeri. Her response was something to the extent of 6 being a number represented by the need for decision, and that if you add 2+1+3 you get 6.
I’m just putting this out there in the event that anybody familiar with numerology or weird fixations on numerical arrangements might have some insight..
Brad
says...Well, I have some familiarity with mathematics, does that count?
It seems to me the following explanation is viable: Due to Benford’s Law, the number “213” could have appeared to you more than other three-digit numbers, and had an interesting enough form that it went past a tipping point and caught your attention. From there on, unconscious confirmation bias and a cognitive underestimation of Benford’s Law could have dramaticized the perception of the number.
Is this plausible?
I used to think I saw the number “23” more than usual. (And this was way before I ever heard of the “23 Enigma” or the film named “The Number 23” was developed.) Out of all two digit numbers that have high-frequency appearance in the world via Benford’s, twenty-three is prime and kind of odd-feeling compared to 12 (a dozen – too familiar), 13 (already hyped too much), or 32 (a power of two – don’t ask). Aesthetically and statistically the number 23 impressed a sense of unbecomingness and curiosity on me, until I later explained it away.
Brad
says...I don’t know the domain from which that conclusion is taken, but perhaps the same mechanics underpinning astrology are behind this case if it sounds like that tidbit is personally meaningful. It could be the concept ‘represented’ by all the simple, one-digit numbers are so general they could each apply to anyone personally – and low and behold, the digits in 213 are small enough they add to the simple, one-digit number 6.
Brad
says...I don’t know the domain from which that conclusion is taken, but perhaps the same mechanics underpinning astrology are behind this case if it sounds like that tidbit is personally meaningful. It could be the concept ‘represented’ by all the simple, one-digit numbers are so general they could each apply to anyone personally – and low and behold, the digits in 213 are small enough they add to the simple, one-digit number 6.
cl
says...Yeah, that’s what I keep telling myself too, yet the inner resistance to this idea remains puzzling :)