Ah, TTA, I remember now why I stopped bothering to reply to your posts. Your bickering, insulting attitude to anyone who contradicts your own beliefs is both counterproductive and unnecessary. You preach open-mindedness, and yet fail to even consider points of view different to your own. When unable to create a convincing argument against something, you resort to personal insults and name-calling. You even resort to the egotistical act of quoting yourself in your sig, as if it proves something. I see you haven’t changed.
I didn’t want to dissect your post originally, as I had run into the same document about a year ago, and I know that it was constructed solely as a lead-in to the final joke - Kennedy being ‘in’ Marilyn Monroe. However, as you seem to take the whole thing so seriously, I’ll go over all the points, to state my case fully.
As I said before, we can dismiss all the date-related points as figments of our number system. The number 100 is not that important in and of itself, but as it’s central to our number system, people often imbue it with special meaning where none is due.
“The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.”
So does my last name - most (North American) last names fall between four and eight letters. 25% odds are pretty good that this will have happened to some presidents.
“Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.”
Yeah, so are many presidents. This point’s really weak.
“Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.”
The stress of first ladyship must be horrible for a pregnant woman. How many other pregnant first ladies lost kids? Mostly nowadays they don’t have kids while in office.
“Lincoln had 2 sons named Robert and Edward.
Kennedy had 2 brothers named Robert and Edward.”
Weak point; if Lincoln had had a cousin named Leroy, and Kennedy’s father were named Leroy, would you consider this a coincidence? Robert and Edward are pretty common names, it’s not unusual that they might be related to people with those names.
“Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both were shot in the head.”
Random chance of both being assasinated on a Friday: ~14% probably more, because they’d tend to not make public appearences on weekends…
And the head is a pretty good place to shoot to kill. Pretty much the only other place is the chest. odds: 50%
“Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy’s secretary was named Lincoln.”
Interesting, but this alone does not make the case.
“Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners.”
Southerners make up half the country. odds: 50%
“Both successors were named Johnson.”
Yet another common name. Albeit a rarer event, but not nearly out of the realm of probability.
“Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names comprise fifteen letters.”
Being know by 3 names is not prohibitively uncommon. Nor is having a 15-letter name. By astonishing coincidence, my full name is also 15 letters long. Am I eerily connected to all this?
“Booth ran from a theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.”
Warehouses are common, theatres are also relatively so. It’s a slightly interesting parallel, but nothing to base a case on.
“Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.”
They were hated men. They killed presidents, for Ni’s sake. They may have been put to death anyway.
There are many, many, in fact probably infinite, areas in which they differed. Their wives’ names were different. They looked different. They were different heights. They had different favorite foods. They had different agendas. Their first names had different numbers of letters. This list could continue infinitely.
And with so many areas where they could have coincided, having 16 or so where they did is not at all statistically unlikely.
Statistical analysis is the core of much of modern science. Many things that seem to be coincidental are well within the range of normal random fluctuation. To give an example, what would you say the odds are that, in a group of 40 people, two would have the same birthday? Not that likely, you’ll probably say. But, in fact, the odds are roughly one in 9. That is, one out of every 9 groups of 40 people will likely have at least two people sharing a birthday. Your example of picking the same lottery numbers is roughly the same. Given 1 million possible combos (for example) and 500,000 ticket-buyers, odds are about 50% that at least two tickets will have the same number. Those tickets winning, well, the odds of that are the same as any other ticket winning - 1 in 1 million. Or do you consider the fact that anyone wins the lottery at all amazing?
“You don’t have personal experiences like most of us here do.”
What, I haven’t had coincidences? Of course I have. Everyone has. But I don’t naively attribute them to paranormal activity, or whatever. They’re just random occurences.
“Or tell me what your afraid of?”
I don’t need to be afraid of anything to disagree with you. Really, now. I just hold an opposing viewpoint.
“Coincidences operate on a different level of reasoning.”
You don’t know anything about statistical analysis, do you?
“How could you define it, and say with petty words that it’s so simple to understand?”
See above. But you seem to be taking my opposition of the Kennedy-Lincoln thing as if I were attacking you personally. I’m not.
“You remember being a child once right?”
Yes. As a child I remember believing in Santa Claus, and thinking that if I stepped on a crack it’d break my mother’s back. There are valuable lessons to be learned from children, but they must be tempered by acquired knowledge and wisdom. If you look at everything from a completely childlike perspective, then you can never truly appreciate the complexity and beauty of the Universe.