very lucky so see ya hi you can practice
speaking backwards so when your words
are reversed they're intelligible but
here's something else that is weird the
digits in the speed of light are exactly
the same as the latitude of the Great
Pyramid of Giza and as the anagram
genius has revealed all the world's a
stage but if you rearrange the letters
in the meaning of life it becomes the
engine of a film or more pessimistically
the fine game of knell
what does all of this mean are these
just coincidences or are greater powers
at work why is it so easy for us to find
hidden messages why can a mere
coincidence
give us chills and why is it so fun when
you reverse Neil Armstrong saying small
step for man you can hear what sounds
like man will spacewalk
Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President
John F Kennedy and in this interview he
defends the fair play for Cuba committee
of which he was a member the fact that I
did live for a time in the Soviet Union
gives me excellent qualifications to
repudiate charges that Cuba and the fair
play for Cuba committee is communist
control now listen to what it sounds
like when we reverse him sane and the
fair play for Cuba will be a present is
that a coincidence or a subconscious
confession hidden within his own words
it's a coincidence for crying out loud
if anybody says and the fair play for
Cuba and then reverses it it sounds the
same this app by the way is called
virtual recorder it's a really easy way
to quickly reverse your own speech
Matthew Hudson in the seven laws of
magical thinking points out that if you
record yourself saying ooh you sniff
turkey back and then reverse it it
sounds a bit like happy birthday to you
kind of if a work can be spelled the
same forward and backward it's a
palindrome but if a word or phrase
sounds the same whether spoken forward
or rewound it is a phonetic palindrome
for example say yes reversed
pretty cool but check out this poem by
Karsten Johansson when I wonder why
what's never bends never been so we
would lie when you say yes you know we
all love you what's never bends never
been so he'll we're nowhere now I wonder
what was never been that prevents the
people aw you wouldn't we say yes see
movie all that we were snicker Venson
that prevents the well we're no way on
oh by the way some people can speak in
Reverse on the fly it is really cool to
see them in action watch guys lean back
after this video it's linked down in the
description and it's full of pretty cool
coincidence videos apophenia is the
perception of connections or patterns
and information one type of apophenia is
pareidolia the scene or hearing of
things that weren't meant to be there
for instance hearing your name being
called or your phone ringing in the
sound of running water or hearing
English words in a non-english song or
seeing faces that weren't purposefully
placed there our brains are good at this
kind of work
probably because being hyper attentive
to patterns and faces can save your life
if there's ambiguity as to whether that
thing hiding in the shadows is a threat
or just a shadow it's advantageous to
err on the side of threat organisms with
a healthy sense of apophenia live longer
long enough to have kids and raise them
and naturally become the norm we connect
with faces so well Hudson relates a
story of a friend who draws faces on
things she doesn't want to lose like her
bags
she says the faces make her less likely
to forget about them if you like it you
should have put a ring on it if you like
not losing it you should have drawn a
face on it
we are so good at teasing out patterns
and faces from random noise
actual random sequences don't always
feel random to us originally Apple's
iTunes shuffle feature generated
complaints from users they said that
similar songs or songs from the same
artist appeared in a string which of
course is to be expected from randomness
but it didn't feel random enough so
Apple introduced a smart shuffle that
avoided totally random sequences that
nonetheless didn't seem random to our
pattern loving brains as Steve Jobs
explained we are making it less random
to make it feel more random our
impressive ability to imagine patterns
also expresses itself when it comes to
connecting songs and moving images this
dancing Spider Man animation will
famously sync up with any music you play
try it what kind of black magic is going
on here well as it turns out most of it
is in our heads radio lab reported that
Michigan State University explains that
the major movements of dancing
animations like this one or this one
move at typical song tempos but also
contain like most dance various other
different related rhythms of movement
allowing them to seemingly fit many
different tempos selection bias helps a
lot too we fall prey to this when we
reject all the times the animation
doesn't really
focusing instead on the more surprising
times when it does the bizarre pyramid
coincidence mentioned earlier is a lot
less bizarre when you consider the fact
that we got to control where we placed
the decimal point and that a number of
degrees this precise isn't necessary to
locate the pyramid by the fourth decimal
we're only talking about a matter of a
few meters so it's easy to make the rest
fit the speed of light exactly and have
still picked a point on the pyramid
confirmation bias also comes into play
here if you really want two things to
synch up they will we often look for
evidence that supports what we already
believed while marginalizing things
against it as Marshall McLuhan said I
wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't have
believed it these biases also help
explain the seemingly mind-blowing
coincidence that famous movies and
famous albums can line up one of the
most popular states that if you start
playing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the
Moon at the same time as The Wizard of
Oz they will eerily line up entire
communities have sprouted around the
syncing of movies and albums some of my
favorites are the Yellow Submarine
soundtrack and The Little Mermaid Lords
pure heroine and Twilight Saga Breaking
Dawn - and the end of 2001 a Space
Odyssey with Pink Floyd's echoes there
are conspiracies that these were somehow
secretly planned though in reality
they're just accidental music videos the
product of selection bias confirmation
bias and the law of near enough a
behavior of our pattern sensitive Minds
to things don't have to line up exactly
or literally for us to see a connection
this is why vague predictions are a
great way to look psychic these are also
actually unsurprising when you consider
the fact that the number of narrative
paces and rhythms we enjoy and
typically use are much smaller than the
number possible in the improbability
principle David J hand calls this the
probability lever what may be rare on
average or when considering all possible
scenarios can be less rare for specific
scenarios even if they are only
marginally different getting struck by
lightning is a proverbially unlikely
event but Walter Summerford wasn't just
struck by lightning once during his life
he was struck three times it never
killed him but four years after his
death his gravestone was also struck by
lightning what are the chances I mean
clearly Summerford was some sort of
robot built out of lightning rods or had
somehow angered Zeus right probably not
you see while for the average person the
chance of being struck by lightning is
quite low for an avid outdoor sportsman
like Summerford it's not as low the law
of truly large numbers also comes into
play here with lightning striking earth
forty to fifty times a second
billions of people for it to strike and
thousands of years of recorded history
it's actually not surprising at all that
at least once a story like summer birds
would have happened
given the truly large number of people
who visit Disneyworld
every day and the fact that they take
photos and lots of them it's actually
not surprising at all that at least once
so far a story like Alex and Donna
Bootsy NASA's has happened while sorting
through old photos before their wedding
Alex and Donna found a photo of Donna at
Disneyworld 14 years before the couple
met
but then Alex noticed something he too
had visited Disneyworld as a child and
there in the background was his father
pushing him in a stroller
sometimes coincidences can be tragic in
1864 Abraham Lincoln's son Robert
Lincoln was saved from serious injury or
possibly even death when a stranger
grabbed him by the shirt collar moments
before he plunged onto train tracks
below that stranger turned out to be
Edwin Booth one of the most famous
Shakespearean actors of the time so
famous in fact Robert recognized him and
had a letter sent thanking him for
saving his life less than a year later
Edwin booths brother John Wilkes Booth
undid the favour by assassinating
Abraham Lincoln strange as they seemed
at first
math says that given enough time and
psychology says that given enough
interest in finding them coincidences
and connections will be found even
unlikely once the coincidences between
Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy are
famous both were elected to the
presidency in a year indeed with 60
Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater
Kennedy was shot in a 1961 Lincoln
Continental four-door convertible made
by Ford
both president's last names have seven
letters and both assassins had 15
letters in their names the list goes on
as it should if you look long enough you
can find coincidences between any two
people or things or events they may seem
strange at first but tend to wind up
being in the end pretty expected for
just one example name length isn't that
wildly variable seven letter names are
pretty common Lincoln Kennedy Michael
Stevens in the famous spooky
presidential coincidences contest held
by the skeptical Inquirer
in 1992 one contestant alone found
similar lists of crazy coincidences
between 21 pairs of former presidents
given the vast amount of details in any
one of our lives it's pretty easy this
court can be exploited to almost comedic
Heights when it comes to over analyzing
of course hidden messages and signs are
often intentionally included in media
for fun or to reward attentive viewers
but unintentional extraordinary things
happen all the time it's not really that
extraordinary
there's a famous calculation that is
known as Littlewoods
law given the number of hours we are
awake every day and assuming an event
only takes about a second to occur if
you calculate the odds of something
happening to you are only one in a
million well you should expect that
thing to happen to you about once every
35 days
David J Han took this even further with
seven billion people on earth the chance
that an event with a one-in-a-million
probability of happening to each of us
won't happen today is 1 in 10 to the
3040 as persi diaconis put it the truly
unusual day would be a day where nothing
unusual happens and as always thanks for
watching
you may have noticed a lot of YouTube
channels making videos about learning
this week well that is not a coincidence
it is school of YouTube week many people
are going back to school or college
right now but across the world millions
of children won't be either because they
work to support their families or live
without a home or in areas where there
is conflict they may experience
overcrowding at school or a lack of
teaching and school supplies but luckily
we can help donations to comic relief's
school of YouTube campaign can help
disadvantaged young people all around
the world get an education it doesn't
take much to change a life you can learn
more in the description below or donate
right now and as always thanks for
helping and thanks for learning
you
[Music]