Unusual coincidences as design patterns pointing to an intelligent influence

November 18, 2024 - Reading time: 10 minutes

Image: A cascade of coincidences related to JFK and Lincoln assassination

After publishing my book, "The Designed World of Information: Unveiling the Incredible Realm Beyond" [1], several of my colleagues asked me to briefly summarize why I believe that unusual coincidences might offer insights into understanding this world. Indeed, reading a book with over 460 pages is no easy task. So, I decided it would be useful to provide a short summary.

As I mentioned many times in the book, noticing coincidences in people's lives is not particularly unusual. It is simply the law of large numbers. Something is always happening somewhere, and given the sheer number of people, it is perfectly normal to observe coincidences. The effect of coincidences becomes intriguing when one focuses on a small sample of people chosen based on criteria unrelated to coincidences, but who are also connected by meaningful relationships. My book argues that one can build a completely unbiased statistical sample of a group of people, and a simple statistical inference applied to such a group can demonstrate how unlikely certain events are.

This line of reasoning goes far beyond the work of psychologist Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) [2], which describes life situations experienced by separate individuals to illustrate the "synchronicity" effect - when remarkable coincidences are not connected by a clear cause. Unfortunately, estimating the range of random possibilities was very difficult in cases of personal perception, especially without objectively documented, well-known historical facts.

Let me provide an example of an unusually well-documented historical coincidence: Consider the two former presidents, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), or "JFK." The numerous similarities surrounding the tragic events in their lives are widely known, with many being historically accurate, though a few have been debunked by journalists [3]. Both presidents lost children during their presidencies. Both were assassinated in the presence of their wives, by gunshots to the head, on a Friday. Their assassins were also killed before standing trial. Remarkably, both locations of the assassinations were associated with the name "Ford": Lincoln was killed in Ford's Theatre, while Kennedy met his death in a Lincoln convertible made by the Ford Motor Company. As you can see, there is a striking similarity in how both presidents were killed, where it happened, and what occurred afterward.

Clearly, both presidents were connected by meaning; Kennedy drew inspiration from Lincoln. This is the most important criterion when discussing the synchronicity effect. Although such similarities are interesting and serve as a good example of synchronicity, what is missing are quantifiable measures. I often say that the most convincing arguments related to coincidences can be made by examining numeric patterns associated with the remarkable observations that initially draw your attention.

For example, the two men who succeeded Lincoln and Kennedy as presidents were both named “Johnson” and were both Democrats. Although this is quite remarkable, it might still be considered a coincidence given the popularity of the surname at the time. If one takes an extremely conservative approach to statistical inference and assumes only five surnames across the entire USA, the probability of this occurrence would be 10%.

Here is another intriguing pattern: Both Johnsons were born exactly 100 years apart (1808 and 1908) and completed their presidencies 100 years apart as well (1869 and 1969). Continuing this pattern, we observe another striking coincidence involving the number 100: Kennedy and Lincoln became presidents exactly 100 years apart (1861 and 1961). Prior to their presidencies, both were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives 100 years apart (1846 and 1946).

It is also worth noting that some sources suggest John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, was born in 1839, while Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's assassin, was born in 1939. More recently, however, most historians have agreed that Booth was actually born on May 10, 1838. Still, the approximate 100-year difference in their birth dates is striking. We might consider this as another coincidence involving the number "100" if we allow a tolerance range of about one year for the century mark.

Here we see five coincidences involving the number 100. Can this really happen by chance? Well, randomness does not favor round numbers like 100 or 1000 - these are just human preferences. If you are programming a game where people are the players and you want to repeat the pattern of some event under different historical conditions, the first thing that comes to mind is "Let us try to use a century or a millennium to observe a new series of events and outcomes in the simulation". If we only assume a time span of only 10 years, the probability of any five years matching is 0.01%.

Let us continue and notice that all six key figures in these historic events (Lincoln, Kennedy, their assassins and their successors) have the exact same number of characters (including letters, spaces and dots) in their names:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN and JOHN F. KENNEDY - exactly 15 characters

JOHN WILKES BOOTH and LEE HARVEY OSWALD - exactly 17 characters.

ANDREW JOHNSON and LYNDON JOHNSON - exactly 14 characters.

Note that these numerical connections link the victims, their assassins, and the political figures who succeeded them after the assassinations. The probability of such triple coincidence occurring is estimated to be just 0.03% [1] for any 3 pairs of random strings representing names.

One can even estimate the probability that this "cascade" of tragic events surrounding Lincoln and Kennedy occurred purely by chance. The probability value must be the product of all these small probabilities, as each of these historical events is independent. From a multiverse perspective, if you imagine creating many worlds where figures like Kennedy and Lincoln are born and events unfold with similar patterns and random deviations, you would need approximately 3 ×10⁸ such worlds [4] to observe this pattern of multiple coincidences. This calculation assumes we ignore the initial coincidence - the similarity in the assassinations of Kennedy and Lincoln - which first led us to explore these numerical patterns.

One might think that we are dealing with a single, "spiky" statistical outlier. Of course, some coincidences need to be weighed against the total number of possible outcomes. However, the number of possibilities is not as large as it may seem, especially if we strictly adhere to our main criteria: events must be significant and life-changing; quantifiable in numbers, they must occur to people you already know (prior to the coincidence - this is the main principle for creating a statistically unbiased sample); and the individuals involved must be connected by a logical link.

In the book [1], I provide numerous examples of historical coincidences involving around 10 individuals from the 100 historical figures I am most familiar with. I selected these individuals not because they had experienced such coincidences, but simply because I knew about them much before I knew about their coincidences, which greatly minimizes the risk of statistical bias. To correct for additional possibilities, I scale up the probabilities of numerically-quantifiable coincidences in each case to 300 potential possibilities, which is extremely generous for most tragic events, such as those involving JFK. This additional factor cannot explain the stunningly low probability of such events occurring by pure chance.

One objection you might encounter is this: it is impossible to accurately estimate the likelihood of such coincidences due to the numerous influencing factors and the unknown shape of the underlying distribution for these events. It is true that in many scientific fields, we lack a complete understanding of all possible outcomes and the probability distributions governing the occurrence of events. In such cases, scientists make educated guesses and opt for the most conservative estimates. When they observe that, even under these estimates, certain events lack an apparent causal relationship yet appear meaningfully connected, they investigate these anomalies and attempt to explain them within existing frameworks. Dismissing such occurrences as "mere coincidences" reflects an unwillingness to explain such observations.

There are a few possible explanations, one of which is that our world could be a simulation. In such a scenario, the fates and lifelines of individuals might be predefined, though not strictly enforced. The numeric patterns we observe in coincidences could be "traces" of this grand design. Perhaps there are billions of simulations, each exploring different patterns of events to determine the optimal arrangement for advancing a civilization. I used the word "design" in the title of my book to suggest "designed information", as I believe natural laws cannot create information. The simulation hypothesis was also discussed to illustrate certain ideas, but I did not emphasize or insist on this possibility.

Does the observation of historical coincidences support the God hypothesis? I believe it does - it may be the most compelling explanation. It is plausible that the dynamic interplay of atoms, molecules, and fields originates from an informational realm, akin to Plato's world of ideas, existing independently of physical reality. The coincidences we observe are merely faint traces, often obscured by the background noise of cause-and-effect events, social behavior, and randomness. Naturally, this realm requires a conclusive explanation that avoids an infinite regression of causes - God.

Regardless of how we attempt to explain it, the significant historical synchronicities we observe strongly suggest a departure from a purely materialistic worldview and point to the presence of an intelligent agent influencing events in our world.

Dr. S. V. Chekanov (X/twitter https://x.com/svchekanov)

References and further reading

[1] Further reading: "Book The Designed World of Information: Unveiling the Incredible Realm Beyond", by Dr. Sergei V. Chekanov, Paperback: 466 pages (2024) Hardcover 406 pages, Paperback ISBN: 9798990642836; Hardcover 9798990642843, eBook ISBN 9798990642829; Book webpage: https://jwork.org/designed-world/

[2] G. Jung, "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle", Princeton University Press, 1973.

[3] D. Link, Fact check: A 1964 conspiracy theory misrepresents Lincoln and Kennedy's similarities, USA Today (June 7, 2020)Accessed: 2024-11-01.URL https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/06/fact-check-1964-lincoln-kennedy-comparisons-only-partly-accurate/5311926002/

[4] Sergei V. Chekanov, "Unusual coincidences, statistics and an intelligent influence", 2024, Preprint (submitted to a journal) https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ybdvk, DOI:https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ybdvk