when we roll a bunch of dice and they all end up on sixes, or any single number, we perceive it as a rare, special event. yet upon a preponderance of facts, we can also show, albeit tediously, that each possible outcome on each die is just as rare as any other. yet we cant help but wonder of cosmic intention when 'rare' things happen to us, like rolling 3 sixes, jackpotting the lottery, or even miscarrying a child. we just dont remember nor attribute significance to rolling a 1-3-5 or a 2-2-4, or even the number of times we bought a lottery ticket and thrown it away, or how common miscarriage actually is. but there is a rush to be felt when a triple-6 is rolled--this is usually an awesome thing in a typical dice game. and of course, winning a prize at the lottery is memorable--we only remember the things which matter.
so it is clearly part of the human psychology to seek answers and meanings when there almost always are none. without this awareness of memory bias, one could very easily be tempted into the theories of fate, destiny, deja vu or even synchronicity.
if we gave an infinite number of monkeys each a typewriter and have them bang at the keys, at least one would randomly bash out the entire work of Shakespeare verbatim. maybe in a string of an infinite number of random universes, ours is the one in which the elements were arranged just right, where entropy was low enough on just this region of space called Earth to qualify as life.
the fact that we are alive and made out of the very same elements which
form the deadest things in the universe goes to show how special we are. right? are we really? how can we claim we are special compared to 60kg of gasoline which contains so much more extractable energy than our own body?
not only do we think of objectively common events as rare whenever it suits us (such as winning $1000 for a betting on a random number), we also fail to see the importance of rare events whenever it doesnt suit us. it is precisely the ignorance to science that continues to chain so many of our people to the old ways of thinking--it is easier to be this way, say our human biases.
there is an entire universe out there for the scientific method to interpret but if only we could drop the psychological armor and constant need for meaning for a second we could see how things REALLY are--for its incomprehensible beauty that is beyond us.
