The Nature of Coincidence and Superstition

Before you start thinking that this is a post about a dream I had, be assured that I’m trying to illustrate a point. I know that dream stories are never as interesting as the dreamer thinks they are, simply due to the fact that it never really happened. If you’re the one who had the dream, it may have been a fascinating and wonderful experience for you, but to the listener (or reader), you might as well be making up some random shit. (“I had a dream that a hamburger was eating me!”)

That being said, a dream I had, and the subsequent events of the next day, made me think about the nature of coincidence and superstition. The dream unfolds as follows:

I’m at work. At some point during the work day, I get a company-wide e-mail that is, to my surprise, a notification about my own resignation. Like someone mistakenly thought that I had quit my job and was notifying everyone in the company of the sad news. Everyone starts planning a good-bye lunch and stuff, while I’m running around trying to tell them all that I hadn’t really quit. Then I woke up. (I know what you’re thinking. I’m perfectly happy with my job, that’s not what this is about. We’re not doing Freudian analysis here.)

The next day when I actually went to work, I tried to log in to my computer and it wouldn’t accept my password. After a few attempts to make sure I didn’t mistype it, I thought to myself, “Hey, maybe they thought I quit and locked out my account.” Turns out the network was just down briefly.

These events reminded me of a guest lecture that I attended in university by science writer Simon Singh. He told a similar story, which I paraphrase here:

One time I had a dream about my grandmother, who was sick at the time. I was a child in the dream and I saw my grandmother getting into a car. It was raining and dark. The car slowly drove away and I watched my grandmother turn around and wave at me through the rear window. I waved back and the car disappeared into the distance. And it felt like we were saying good-bye. That’s when the phone rang and woke me up. I picked up the phone and… (pause for dramatic effect)… it was my boss telling me I was late for work.

Everyone in the audience had a good laugh. The point that Dr. Singh was trying to make, and that I’m trying to pass on, is that you never hear a story like that. What you do hear are stories about people who, the day after an earthquake, say that they had a dream that predicted the disaster. Or, after a car accident, they’ll claim that they had a “feeling” before getting into the car and knew that something bad was going to happen. When you really think about it though, in a city with millions of people, it’s not unlikely that there is at least one person having a dream about an earthquake every night. And there must be someone having a bad feeling about getting into a car every minute of the day. There’s nothing special about the person who happened to be right when the earthquake or car accident really does occur, other than the fact that they just happened to be right.

If I was a superstitious person, my dream might have caused me to be a little worried that I’ll get fired or something. The way to defy superstition is just to give it a moment’s thought. Coincidences happen, and there’s isn’t always a need to search for a deeper underlying cause.