If you have come here expecting some comforting spiritual bullshit that will nicely align with your pre-existing beliefs on this phenomenon, then back off because here we are all about the math, not your meth-induced (or not) delusional reality. A surprising amount of bullshit has accumulated on the Internet trying to explain this phenomenon through the word of some people’s make-believe fairytale. This is a phenomenon in mathematics that really has more to do with people and how they view numbers – numerology. As fancy a term it is, the study of numbers as a significance to real-world events has some very ambiguous theory. It thrives on a tendency of using numbers to attach meaning to anything of a significant nature in people’s lives.
to anyone who isn’t a nihilist, the appeal to numbers and other seemingly meaningless patters in nature results from the complex interaction of many cognitive and personal biases
I first started seeing 11:11 on the clock several years ago. It was then that the seed of my confirmation bias was planted. I am an innately very curious person – a very bad thing in a school system that says ignorance is a bliss. That night I had looked up 11:11 meaning on Google which you’ll later see was a very bad thing to do.
The number is interesting by itself by the 12 hour dial clock standards. It happens to be the only time of all permutations of numbers the clock can manage where a single number repeats itself through all digit places – minute and hour. Patterns of repetition or of ascension or descension increase the number’s appeal to us – for someone like us who is hardwired to see patterns in out environment for our own benefit. We see a pattern in the way a stock or cryptocurrency is behaving and decide when to call it sold, we apply a similar reasoning subconsciously on everyday numbers and then we have created numerology! Well, it may not literally be subconscious but we don’t spare much thought to it is what I’m saying. I’m sure the believers of this angelic influence of 11:11 time prompts just as often see numbers other than 11:11 repeat itself, but don’t pay just as much attention due to,
- their bias toward it brought on by previously researching its meaning
- their intrinsic liking for 11:11
Any evidence supposedly deduced from post hoc reasoning implants itslef firmly in your mind. This, in my opinion, is more likely to appeal to most people as a valid explanation to their mysteries that they’ve sought after for long. Why? Post hoc reasoning works on an set of events that have already occurred – and if there’s one thing our brains like is finding meaning in something we haven’t previously understood – up until then, i.e. Any evidence that catches attention early on in the investigation will contribute tremendously to confirmation bias as any new information coming in is constantly compared with this reference in a supposed act of skepticism. In an age of information overload, we are all falling into this trap everyday as we Google at the café while doing our homeworks or just looking up answers to why headphones never stay untangled.
Statistical anomalies become more noticed as the data set at hand gets bigger. Following what I had to say about Zipfian distributions, I’d like to say that the presence of one improbable event in a set greatly increases its occurrence again – in that set. You might have heard of the Kennedy’s curse or the Zika epidemic or people winning lotteries several times in their lifetime – all apt examples of such. With that said, we can start equating the occurrence rate of anomalies to it’s initial occurrence(s) – when and how it happened. With bigger data sets, you run the risk of such improbable events showing up and repeating itself. One reason I think for this behavior of Zipfian events is the fact that this initial occurrence, however improbable in that set, signifies how the conditions have been potentially set for its likelihood and inevitable re-occurrence. Seeing 11:11 on a clock can be no different than your class or work schedule only allowing you to see the clock at certain durations of the day – when you’re more likely to encounter this interesting number, or being at certain places with access to a clock at those times.
I spent 200 dollars on a psychic so you don’t have to – to test this theory. This was no low-key psychic, her office was perched on a fashionable multi-storey building with extravagant living spaces, as I passed through a very European dining and fireplace that could be seen divesting into the many rooms of her residence. I got to her office where I was promptly asked to take off my jacket and sit comfortably – seemingly to prime me for what is to come. She asked for my name – a very classic psychological trick to get a more transparent and comfortable ensuing conversation. Completely irrelevant as it was to her practice – of random Tarot card picking – I fancied along for my benefit, complying with her instructions. She asks presumably (as I can infer from her facial expression and doubtful tone) about a prediction she’s made, awaiting my approval. She’d asked me if someone close to my heart had recently died, right? (probably one reason people often show up to psychics, their good judgement impaired by emotions), I replied no. She followed up with similar questions until she had some improbable event from my life that had already happened to build up her final prediction.
It was obvious at this point what she’s going to leave me with is a result of what I’m willing to give away. And I wasn’t giving away anything that day because I had just lost 200 fucking dollars! After patiently quizzing me, I’d given away that I was not feeling well, emotionally. From there it was Bingo for her, the following questions were largely based on that lone fact. Any question based on an improbable event will shed better light on events correlated with that event – for its very occurrence should have consequentially set the stage for the others. As an example, a depressed person and substance abuse are greatly correlated. She eventually arrived at some spiritual prediction that my aura wasn’t clear and misguided and tried to extract a few more hundred dollars for a cleansing ritual. I was having enough of it and left soon, never to show up for her requested appointment. This psychic was somewhere near Grand and Damen, I’d taken the bus from my residence on Division St near Wicker Park to get down there.
In my summing remarks I’d like to say all 11:11 prompts and other similar connotations to spiritual awakenings from our friends at the numerology department are the result of our infatuation to post hoc reasoning and appealing numeric patterns in everyday life, the confirmation bias that follows allowing for its repeated occurrence facilitated by the Zipfian nature of such apparently random events.
There is no coincidence. The slayers of the mystical powers of 11:11 have always been correct. As I write on this, I’m being reminded of this one time I was sitting with a friend between classes or after, not sure and his girlfriend texts him something like, “it’s 11:11, make a wish!” and I played along after briefly questioning his skepticism on it. He didn’t have much to say and I didn’t want to make things any more awkward and continued our ongoing conversation without pulling in any tangents.
Update(10/31/2017): So I got to reading this Wikipedia article on 11:11 and found a reference to an interesting post from another blog called The Skeptics Dictionary, where it claims improbable events occur more easily in larger sets – and that any reasoning performed on the improbabilities afterward – in systematic order – results in a seemingly valid explanation for its occurrence. I think this is a classic case of an invalid cause-effect pair facilitated by Zipf’s law.
cum hoc would require the reasonable prerequisite of a correlation falsely established through post hoc
The complete Latin phrase for such reasoning is post hoc ergo propter hoc which literally translates to after this, therefore because of this. While this hits closer to home with the more familiar cum hoc ergo propter hoc – where instead of asserting the validity of one event happening in reality (such as your wish coming true) to the previous occurrence of an unlikely or improbable event (seeing 11:11 on the clock or just about anywhere); you assert two statistically correlated events as being totally dependent on each other – regardless of their level of correlation – commutatively putting some two events interchangeably in systematic order – when in reality they’re not. Such as in saying your action of putting on running shoes would make you go for a run. While the two events are greatly correlated (it wouldn’t make sense to put on shoes otherwise), doing one does not fully ensure the other. But not all events are like this and while some cases of post hoc could really be the subject of cum hoc, a good deal of reasoning presented toward the 11:11 phenomenon by self-proclaimed numerology experts are post hoc. It is therefore safe to say that cum hoc would require the reasonable prerequisite of a correlation falsely established through post hoc. With the correlation made by the numerologist, the believer then becomes liable for their cum hoc – further reinforcing their belief in numerology – a virtuous cycle that works for the benefit of the numerologist!
Astrology cannot be far as they heavily rely on the believer’s life tale i.e. past events such as in the anecdote of my psychic experience presented above. The information you disclose is used to build invalid correlations – calling for a cum hoc on your part. While there’s a chance you won’t have an event in time to perform the cum hoc, astrologers are betting on the chance it otherwise happens by how good of a prediction they tell – tremendously reinforcing your belief in their misleading art. Argh!
Postscript: While my reasoning behind the 11:11 phenomenon went on to explain why they might occur, I didn’t realize until later that it missed on explaining why they occur.
The law of truly large numbers from our friends at the Skeptic’s Dictionary claimed that the occurrence of unlikely events are helped with a larger set of such supposedly random events i.e., if they were to occur in them. I however provided you with a more statistical explanation to anomalies – or unlikely events – which I usually attribute to Zipf’s law, and certain psychological factors. However, there also seems to be statistical grounds on why certain numbers – or events as in any case – might show up in the first place. In the context of numericals, a trend in the most significant digit of a number is observed where it often takes up the least value, such as 1. This was deduced empirically – and this interesting trend also extends to data – and everyday numbers – helping us make sense of why we might see more lesser value digits moving toward the most significant digit of a number – such as your clock’s time.
statistics is a first gateway to understanding the mysteries of the universe – and why your neighbor’s dog keeps barking at 3 AM
While Benford’s law and Zipf’s law seem largely empirical, they have mathematical definitions too. These definitions only go on to model trends in occurrences of certain events of interest in a set, not explain why they occur in a fully quantitative sense i.e., give mathematical prediction for its occurrence side-by-side with statistics. The domain of human understanding only extends so far and the vast complexity of such events makes them hard to quantify. Understanding why a coin might land tails requires an extensive study of physical irregularities on the coin’s surface, an ultrasound of the coin to look for metallurgical anomalies and grain flow to make draw up its mechanical properties and if you thought this was getting tough already, wait until you learn that the quantum wave functions of the individual atoms that make up the coin also contribute to its physical characteristics – extending to its physical rebound on contacting the table, or whatever surface it is tossed upon. This isn’t actually a theory, but something I’d postulated on the presumption that coins – or any physical object for that matter – lands on an infinitesmally small irregularity of its surface before spreading contact – and I thought it was safe to assume – working with such small surfaces – for all practical purposes – that they could be influenced by quantum mechanics of the constituent particles that make up that irregularity.
Someone with a life would stop at the ultrasound.
chronic overthinking 