11:11

[Mehdi]

Your experience?

[luco]

I'm confused.. Are we talking about carnaval here? A new extreme volume training programme? A bible passage? Or the phenomena where your mind makes you recognise certain numbers more than others? I'm guessing the last, but please tell me if I'm wrong.

I used to think I always saw numbers that 'made sense' in some way when I looked at a digital clock (for example: whole hours, 11:11, 12:12, 12:21, 12:34, etc.). I think this is just the human mind trying to make sense of everything. I probably just looked at the clock every 3 minutes around a certain time, subconsciously.

If you mean something completely different, my post doesn't make any sense and you can ignore it .

[Persian]

I'm guessing this has something to do with either remembrance day or the make a wish at 11:11 thing. If your talking about the latter, I think it's the same thing as making a wish on your birthday.

[nburge]

No direct experience but read through my grandpa's memoirs earlier this year after he died. He wasn't old enough to have fought in the first world war, but his father was (who I never met) and had some harrowing stories in there of the things that occured during WW1. His father was gassed by the Germans and repatriated to England but had served for 3 and a half years on the front line in the trenches before that. Part of the British Expeditionary Force sent over at the start of the war to defend France and Belgium, and stayed on through all the major battles like Ypres and the Somme. Must have seen some horrible things, not least his brother in law who was fighting with him shot dead - he was tall and his head stuck above the trench line as an easy target for a sniper. He was also forced to attend a court martial and execution for desertion - apparently for two lads that had just got drunk on leave in a french town, and forgot to come back to the front line - they were both shot in front of him and he got pretty cut up about it by all counts. I'm sure these things would stay with you forever....

So if you're talking about remembrance day - it will have more meaning to me this year than any other. I think it's important that we recall these horrors (committed by both sides as the accounts above show, on themselves and their enemies) especially as our connection to those generations that fought becomes ever more remote. We should also be thankful that, in Europe at least, we have avoided many of these conflicts and have had a period of relative peace and tranquility.

[ArthurNijkamp]

I think it has something to do with the topic of the following post:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2009/02/1111/

Personally, I have to agree with Luco. Most of these things seem like a coincidence and can be brought back to the desire of a human being to make sense of everything.

Having read the post again I do have to agree that there are some arguments on the other side as well. I am still a skeptic on topics that relate to consciousness such as the law of attraction and the secret. However, I do think that there is a lot of hidden ground concerning these kind of topics and that is why I try to keep an open mind...

I do liked your answer and post too Nburge

[atypical1]

Personally, I have to agree with Luco. Most of these things seem like a coincidence and can be brought back to the desire of a human being to make sense of everything.

I'm a statistician (at least part time...) and I believe in randomness. I think that many, many people need order and can't wrap their heads around the random nature of the universe so they come up with ways of creating order where there is none. Obviously there are some laws that exist (gravity for example) but so much of what goes on is pure coincidence.

There's actually a law regarding the number 1 and how often it appears. It's been a while but I'll try to dig some information on it later. A good book to read is "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules OurLives." Great book but a little deep in the maths at times if you're a casual reader.

That was a very touching and deeply moving story nburge. Thanks for sharing that.

james

[luco]

I think it has something to do with the topic of the following post:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2009/02/1111/

I guess I'm one of those 'hard-nosed skeptics' he's talking about. Everything after the first part made me smell incense (it's not a dirty word, children) and kind of reminded me of the Peter Pan 'Believe' principle. Darn it, if only I could enter the doorway to the other existence..

[nburge]

Ok - sorry - on the same page now. Two thoughts about the actual topic at hand:
1) he references Yuri Geller early on in the piece as a supporter - every time I've ever seen this guy on a programme he comes across as a complete charlatan
2) I checked the clock as I read it - 22:30 - didn't add up to 11

I don't see why people spend time making these things up.

[itsbruce]

I'm a statistician (at least part time...) and I believe in randomness. I think that many, many people need order and can't wrap their heads around the random nature of the universe so they come up with ways of creating order where there is none. Obviously there are some laws that exist (gravity for example) but so much of what goes on is pure coincidence.

In a nutshell! Probability is not intuitive, at least not for most people; they tend to make much of the simple coincidences that happen in everybody's lives and don't place them in their context.

Somebody has a dream in which a person dies. A week later, someone close to them dies; most people would find that a significant and disturbing experience. But I've had dreams which involved death and nobody close to me died in the following weeks or months; I'd bet I'm not the only person who's had such a dream with no significance at all. If everybody had just one death dream in their whole lives, there'd be a lot of people out there having dreams that they could "connect" to somebody's real death. Randomness.

[itsbruce]

I don't see why people spend time making these things up.

At least some of the time, because they want to find some meaning, something special in their life. Creating meaning out of randomness can make them feel less insignificant. Realism and scepticism don't offer much comfort when the universe is making you feel small (not least because they tell you "Well, you are small. Live with it." ).

This also explains why the proponents of rational enquiry are often unwelcome. They threaten people's dreams.

[ArthurNijkamp]

Seems everyone here is on the same page. Thinking about it, I do think that the post is over the top and very far-fetched. It seems like the author has watched too many Matrix-trilogy marathons.

However, the topics of the author deal with observations and subjective realities (i.e. my world actually differs from your world). At this point the topic of different subjective realities is moved from a sort of 'new age' corner into a more scientific debate. Science has already confirmed that a particle can be at multiple places at once, a phenomenon called quantum superposition. It is only placed at a certain location by observation of the human mind. If this is the case, why shouldn't it be possible for someone else to place the same particle at a different location at the same time? If observation of these small particles is proven to be subjective, and all matter is constructed out of these energy particles; why should the concept of subjective realities by impossible? This might not entirely be what the author is trying to convey, but it does show that a phenomenon such as 11:11 can be very real to some, while it appear bogus to someone else.

For me, as said before these concepts remain far-fetched. However, I already have trouble grasping that everything is eventually made out of energy and that nothing is solid (sitting at my desk writing this, everything feels very solid to me ). That, I think is the biggest problem; science might be onto something, but it just feels too unreal to acknowledge it at the moment. However, the fact that it feels unreal does not immediately prove that it is unreal. Remember, we were also convinced that the world was flat a long time ago...

Now, I'm certainly not an expert on the topic (any quantum physicists on this forum?), but I do like learning about it. I recommend anyone who wishes to know more about it from a scientific perspective (less 'new-agey') that they watch 'what the bleep do we know' and 'what the bleep - down the rabbit hole' (especially the last one).

[nburge]

There are quite a few on here with good knowledge of quantum physics - I noted a couple from a discussion on Athiesm previously. I'm a huge fan of the subject myself precisely because it all seems so counter-intuitive and difficult to understand to me. It represents a challenge. My own understanding of quantum superposition is that the particle is only confirmed at a certain location by observation - prior to that we do not know which of the two states it will be in - and by observation we are confirming its location rather than placing it there, ergo we should both independently place it in the same location if we view the same particle at the exact same moment in time. I am NOT an expert on the topic though and would be happy if someone who was can set the record straight.

I think if you want to believe ANYTHING you can close your mind to examples against and open it only to things that confirm your belief. Doesn't matter whether it's this particular 11:11 superstition, walking under ladders, religion, scientific theories etc etc - anything a person really wants to believe is very hard to prise away from them.

[itsbruce]

However, the topics of the author deal with observations and subjective realities (i.e. my world actually differs from your world). At this point the topic of different subjective realities is moved from a sort of 'new age' corner into a more scientific debate. Science has already confirmed that a particle can be at multiple places at once, a phenomenon called quantum superposition. It is only placed at a certain location by observation of the human mind. If this is the case, why shouldn't it be possible for someone else to place the same particle at a different location at the same time? If observation of these small particles is proven to be subjective, and all matter is constructed out of these energy particles; why should the concept of subjective realities by impossible? This might not entirely be what the author is trying to convey, but it does show that a phenomenon such as 11:11 can be very real to some, while it appear bogus to someone else.

If your subjective reality tells you that you are special and invulnerable, but somebody else hits you and breaks your nose, then your subjective "reality" fails and is a daydream, not something that has any basis in quantum physics. Believers in the paranormal, or in variations of mind-over-matter, often pick random examples from quantum physics to justify their arguments, completely ignoring the strict limits that it places on the transfer of information or the way the sum of quantum interactions manifests on a macro scale. Brutally, however diffuse the wave functions of the particles in the approaching fist, they collapse into a very well defined state (known to physicists as "knuckles") when they intersect with your nose.

You may, of course, choose to believe that the nose is broken only in the subjective reality of the aggressor and that a sufficiently serene target will not be harmed at all, in his or her personal reality. This is a hard one to disprove but a very risky foundation on which to base your life. In my subjective reality, people who do that are known variously known as "suckers", "victims" and "corpses".

[nburge]

Itsbruce wrote:
If your subjective reality tells you that you are special and invulnerable, but somebody else hits you and breaks your nose, then your subjective "reality" fails and is a daydream, not something that has any basis in quantum physics. Believers in the paranormal, or in variations of mind-over-matter, often pick random examples from quantum physics to justify their arguments, completely ignoring the strict limits that it places on the transfer of information or the way the sum of quantum interactions manifests on a macro scale. Brutally, however diffuse the wave functions of the particles in the approaching fist, they collapse into a very well defined state (known to physicists as "knuckles") when they intersect with your nose.

You may, of course, choose to believe that the nose is broken only in the subjective reality of the aggressor and that a sufficiently serene target will not be harmed at all, in his or her personal reality. This is a hard one to disprove but a very risky foundation on which to base your life. In my subjective reality, people who do that are known variously known as "suckers", "victims" and "corpses".

- best reply I've seen on this forum all year. Comedy gold.