Universe optimises for coincidences
I called a friend to tell her a phenomenal line from the song Tu Jhoom, which I’d listened to a few days ago. She was startled and said the exact same line had stuck with her the day before—and she had wanted to tell me about it.
Spooky coincidence.
Do you ever feel like there are more coincidences happening than there should be?
I mean, in a universe built on determinism, why would atoms decide to arrange themselves in a way that makes two people say the same word at the same time? Or call each other at the same moment? There’s no reason for them to align like that.
Unlike what Yuval Noah Harari says about randomness and human narrative-making, sometimes I feel like the universe is actively optimizing for coincidences. And there are far too many of them.
Don’t you read stories and wonder, how can this even happen? What are the odds?
How, in the universe, is this possible?
Look at the World Cup final between France and Argentina. The number of coincidences in that match -- Mbappé’s hat-trick comeback, Messi finishing his storybook career arc with a win was beyond anything a sportswriter could have scripted.
It felt written.
Will writers ever be able to craft stories more surprising than the ones the universe writes on its own?
A few days ago, I was reading Peter Lynch’s One Up On Wall Street.
Quick context:
Peter Lynch, the legendary portfolio manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund, delivered an astonishing 29% CAGR for 13 consecutive years—one of the best track records in mutual fund history. He was known for his relentless work ethic
In the late 1980s, Lynch finally decided to take a rare vacation and went to Ireland with his family. And as the universe would have it, just as he began his holiday, the stock market crashed. The Dow Jones dropped 22.6% in a single day, the largest one-day crash in U.S. history. The day came to be known as Black Monday.
And this was not a one-off event. In subsequent holiday’s that Peter took, history would repeat itself.
Reporters used to line up asking Peter for his next vacation plan.
“When Tansen sang, it rained; when Peter took a holiday, the stock market crashed."
The universe loves dramatic coincidence.