Memories of the 28th Century

Now and then I notice masses of humans acting or speaking in unusual ways, asking the same question, looking for the same obscure piece of information, or whatever. Once in a while these trends can be explained by something that appeared in the popular press or on TV or whatever, but most of the time there is no apparent connection. And sometimes such minor trends can be explained by the phase of the Moon; the correlation between the Moon and emotional state has been known for millennia. But that doesn’t come near to explaining all such minor trends. It is possible that I have missed some of the causes for such events, but they remain mysteries to me.

As Al Capone said, “once may be happenstance; twice could be a coincidence, but three time show a definite trend,” and there have been even more than three examples of peculiar changes in activities, speech, or something that were taken up by many people ate once.
Now, just to be sure you understand, I am not claiming that any kind of astrology, much what shows up in newspaper is anything other than a minor con game. I am claiming that things happen in patterns that have causes that are not apparent. One of the misfortunes about being human is that one tends to look for patterns in things, and humans do find interesting correlations. Whether the correlations are actual or just apparent is questionable, and that doesn’t just apply to personality types; many scientific experiments are about as reliable as phrenology. But,

Perhaps I shouldn’t have even mentioned astrology, because there are several other possibilities that should be considered. For example, a shift to a different branch of the Multiverse would have a similar effect, and now that the Many Worlds Interpretation has been proven we should use that an explanation more often.

Regardless of the reason, how could it be tested? There have been a few attempts to test astrology, but the methods wouldn’t test anything from what I can tell. The Many Worlds Interpretation has been proven, but whether that explains why three people in ten minutes ask the same question, a question that hadn’t come up before or since. The biggest problem would be isolating such events, but without isolation we can’t possibly know what things have had effect on them.

Then there was the time when I explained that the easiest way to handle someone that you can’t understand at all is to simply nod in agreement and listen carefully, hoping that you’ll figure out what the person is talking about, and five minutes later one such came along, and the person to whom I had commented used the exact method that I suggested. A few minutes later a similar event illustrated another comment. One explanation is that there are a limited number of different things that humans can do or say, so the same things are bound to come up again and again. That isn’t a completely satisfactory explanation, but it does fit.

What think ye? Is it astrology or coincidence or simply that we are constrained by cause and effect and the constraints on human behavior? Or is it something else? I know that when people misbehave on the dark of the Moon it is part of an innate reaction that is related to sexual excitement or lack thereof, and the same with the full Moon. But what about those other times?

I probably will extend this at some time.