"People love to hate on conspiracy theorists but really the opposite is just as bad. When someone is a conspiracy theorist they think some occurrence or effect is a meaningful part of something bigger. If someone is a coincidence theorist they think that occurrence or effect is either a non meaningful part of something bigger or a part of something completely unrelated and natural.

I would think that most normal people dislike things that feel like conspiracy theories because they like to think the world is natural with simple cause and effect without powerful human motives directing the flow of the world. I don't understand exactly but there seems to be some sort of inclination in most people to be adverse to conspiracy theories, not on their merits but based on the feeling they evoke. Most conspiracy theories revolve around a bunch of evil powerful people being very clever and manipulative and exerting their will on those below them, most people don't want to live in a world where this is the normal. I don't think it's only that though, I think it's something about the complex nature of the world. Admitting most conspiracy theories to be true would be admitting that there are people with levels of knowledge and influence that you couldn't comprehend.

I'm not really interested in talking about conspiracy theorists though, I'm sure the psychology behind that has been discussed to death but I think it's more interesting to discuss what most people are, rather than what they are not. Most people are coincidence theorists, they think that things just happen to align for no important reason.

I guess I should provide some examples before I try to make vague definitions and conclusions.

Ok, most of the powerful politicians seem to be pro censorship and also all the biggest and richest companies/investors (the same people who have the means to influence/bribe politicians if they wanted) seem to benefit from this. Normal people who have swallowed propaganda deem this just to be a coincidence, both groups just happen to agree on what is the morally right perspective and it happens to align with the financial interests of those who have power and they don't believe the politicians are bribed. The big corporations are pro censorship because they can control narratives and somewhat decide what 'needs' to be censored, they can push what is censored away from what harms them and towards what benefits them, censorship always harms the less powerful more as it is written by the powerful. Normal people think this is a coincidence though, they think the discussion isn't heavily distorted by corruption and bribes even though the end result is what you would expect if bribes were taken when creating policy.

Obviously in reality the truth is somewhere in-between the discussion being completely separate from financial interests and a complete artificial creation (an engineered conspiracy), my point is simply that most people lean too heavily towards everything being honest, they think too highly (in a moral sense) of the rich, because the world is nicer and simpler to exist in if you don't believe propaganda is everywhere, if you don't believe everyone is trying to sell you something and your voice is less powerful than a rich persons. It's strange, everyone knows this deep down enough to word it, they are constantly calling the rich evil, they are constantly saying our democracy is corrupt but they still cant wrap their head around the depth or complexity of it. It doesn't matter if people know something is corrupt, if they still don't understand the exact complexities of how, they will still be influenced by it. Something more complex with some level of superior knowledge can always to some success predict and influence those below it even if those below it know the people above them are trying to manipulate them. Basically anything the simple person can know about themselves and the situation, the more complex person can also know about them and the situation, it's not absolute but on average it plays out in ones favor. It's like if they know 90% of the 'cattle' will do the opposite of anything they say then they will argue for the opposite of what benefits them, basic reverse psychology but it plays out over millions of dimensions and levels and it is an ongoing competition.

Another crime of coincidence theorists is simply participating in the discussions of the powerful. Often times the ruling elites who want to influence the world don't care about what you think about a topic, they just want you to normalise talking about the topic so they can keep talking about the topic too and influence the people who can be influenced. Even if you have the wrong opinion which is contrary to their goals, the number of people you can influence against their goals pales in comparison to how many they can influence. In a sense though it's a lost game, sure, if you don't participate and talk about the topic then the topic will be less likely to be normalized in shared society and it will weaken their influence a little, but other people will still talk about it and their narrative will go unchallenged. Sometimes they don't even care about the 'conclusion' from the public discussion of something, sometimes it is just white noise to drown out the discussion of something else. You have to weigh up how likely you are to have a positive impact on peoples beliefs vs how much you simply talking about the topic in any sense aids your enemies.

I have gotten off topic, the point is people think it's just a coincidence what topics are brought into the public sphere, well... they might not think this, they think the topics surfaced organically but the end conclusion is the same, the conclusion that it's just a coincidence that normal people are currently interested in these topics and discussing these topics which happen to benefit the elites.

The thing is, the average person truly can make a difference, they can influence others for the better by honestly choosing what to discuss and what they say about it. Deciding how to do this in such a fast paced world like ours requires a lot of analysis of motives of your enemies or you will unwillingly benefit them more than you benefit yourself because they know how people like you will react on average so they will choose a sequence of public topics to discuss which will turn out the most beneficial to them. There is never a good argument to follow the news cycle, it gives too much power over to your enemies. It is branded as the exact opposite of this for good reason, it is branded as knowledge and being informed but in reality it's the opposite if you are looking only within a sphere of knowledge that has already been curated by someone else or some group else. What is the solution though? even if you deny the story of the day and only interest yourself in what interests you then you are still at the mercy of secondhand influence by others or more subtle influences. I think this is the point though, you want to make their propaganda as difficult and expensive as possible to achieve, you want to make it as hard for them as possible, you will never make it impossible, you are not immune to propaganda but at least if you deny the primary influences and where they have as much control as possible there will be more opportunities for the truth to shine through. You might already know the truth slightly more than the average person though so adding to the public discussion on the current topic might truly be a net benefit to the world in terms of truth but the trouble with this is that it will corrupt you slightly, you will benefit the world but it will also make you less immune to future influences, I don't know how to articulate this well, I should ponder on it some more, basically it's just an easy trap to fall into akin to 'If I took all the power I would be morally good with it', it doesn't work like that, sometimes giving over power in pursuit of your own truth -is- the good thing to do.

Off topic again... coincidence theorists... they think it's just a coincidence everyone is talking about war tensions increasing and war tensions actually increasing, they think it's a natural progression and they don't consider that one might lead the other and they might not be at a perfect natural balance. They don't consider that there might be a level of influence (a conspiracy) for the war tensions to be talked about more which causes the war tensions to increase, the talk might not be a perfect natural consequence of the reality. This is because things come into peoples heads (such as the topic of war tensions increasing) and it is too tiring for them to second guess every thought and why it occurred, it is too tiring for every time they think about something to have to ask themselves 'am I thinking about this because it genuinely is the most interesting thing to think about right now or is it that something influenced my attention to this without my consent?'. It is hard for most people to live in a world with such complex propaganda, a world where even your own thoughts might be an external attack on what is best for you but that is the world we live in. People resort to coincidence theories to escape this reality but then again the opposite is just as detrimental, to live as if everything is a conspiracy, that everything is essentially engineered limits you from attaining what is best for you too. My point is simply that the reason conspiracy theorists are so demonized by society is intentional, it's because on average denying coincidences limits the influence of the elites, it is more beneficial for the elites for everyone to believe in coincidences and a naturally evolving landscape of society. My point is that although it is painful to accept, the default conclusion for something happening is that there should be some motive for it, but you should stay open for the possibility of this being wrong or of the motive being insignificant. On average mistrusting your enemies is the most effective pursuit on average as on average your fellow peer will over trust your enemies.

People think it's just a coincidence that mental health and peoples reliance on medication in general is getting worse alongside the ability for powerful companies to profit off it increasing. The key here is the ability to profit, of course profit would naturally increase if the issue increased but due to peoples increased free time, free money, worldwide supply chains, complex science discoveries etc., there is now an increased ability to sell something to fix that problem so they make the problem more prevalent. 'No, there is not some twisted conspiracy to make people depressed, it's just a coincidence due to natural issues in our society!'

No one is immune to propaganda and the obvious solution is knowledge is power, most people understand this but they don't quite understand the idea of curated realms of knowledge, that if you act within their news cycle that even if you learn everything about it you are still influenced by them. Even if you come to the accurate conclusion about the events, the level of distortion you had to overcome to get there has been a huge waste of your resources. Sure, overcoming distortion is a skill that should be valued but the act of doing it should not be treated as the best practice for learning to do it, the most efficient way to learn how to overcome a distorted view of reality is to learn what a distorted view of reality looks like in general or more accurately to just learn what is the right view of reality, the most efficient way to do this is to just live your life properly. People undervalue how much they should attempt to live outside time, time limitations corrupt and limit us, they provide opportunities for us to be influenced by our impulses and emotions, this is the main mechanism behind the success of the short news cycle, they force people to think about something from a lens of the current state of the world and comment on it now, then they subconsciously will be more likely to stand by what their stance was at the time of voicing it.

As an over simplistic argument, let's say that after a big war there was a big public news cycle discussion asking if war is bad, on average most people will say yes because the memory of the corpses are fresh in their minds, now on average most people will cement in their minds to some degree that this is their unchanging opinion and it was barely influenced by the times but if someone instead considered this question over a longer time period they might be able to see more complex and nuanced benefits/costs behind wars and have a greater (more truthful) opinion on whether wars are inherently bad or the complexities behind that question. The more people willing to answer a question at the same time, the more control the people who get to decide when the question is asked can have. They have insanely complex surveillance tools and understand our psyches at any given moment, they know what people will on average answer at what time and they know that simply answering it will make their answer more resolute in their minds. The more people playing into the news cycle and answering their questions, the more power they have, the more power they have, the less power you have relatively.

I get it though, there is some level of argument that you want your ruling elites to have immense power over your peers because if they don't then another more coherent country who has more power over their plebs will be able to outcompete us but really, you should be only looking out for yourself. Whatever plays out on a huge global scale will play out regardless, you should never sacrifice yourself for the larger picture, you should never submit because you want others to submit, you should do what benefits you and on average the truth will emerge on the grandest scales as long as it is being played out on the small scales. The truth doesn't emerge when the little man has some grand idea of importance of doing what they think is wrong in order to get others to do what they think is right. There is still a level of self sacrifice involved though but it's less about sacrificing yourself for others and more about sacrificing your delusions for truths whether they are your truths or the truth.

The normal definition for the word coincidence is something along the lines of 'two unlikely events that are not connected' but in reality the word requires a little extra in its definition, at least if you want to use the word in an interesting or meaningful sense, the word requires a possible interpretation of these events being connected yet they aren't. That is an interesting thing about words, there are the strict definitions where it is ok and sensible to say something but there is also a hidden definition which can show when the word is conveying actual meaning.

For example, let's take a generic rare event of winning the lottery, you could say 'it's just a coincidence I won lotto and then the next week someone who I don't know won lotto', that is perfectly acceptable English but using the word coincidence there doesn't really convey much meaning since it can be left out and people will assume the events aren't connected anyway. To say 'it's just a coincidence I won lotto and then the next week my brother won lotto', the word coincidence here actually adds to the meaning conveyed in the sentence. It can say things like 'no, we didn't rig the lottery', it can say 'no, I don't think our family has received some divine blessing', 'no, I don't think luck is contagious' etc.

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The word 'coincidence' is only ever used to deny connection, there are two reasons for denying connection, logic such as the unlikelihood of a connection actually being real or desire, a biased hope that the possible reasons a connection could occur aren't true. Similarly, there are two forms of denying connection, you can deny all connection or deny enough to claim that the connection isn't meaningful, in this example calling the brothers both winning the lottery a coincidence has denied all connection. Well... mostly, I can still think of some connection that I didn't explicitly deny, maybe there is a hidden connection that the second brother bought slightly more tickets after learning about the first brother winning, maybe they were both heavy gamblers in the first place, this would create some connection in their winning but even with this connection the second event would still be extremely unlikely and the 'success' of it occurring would largely be independent of the first event. Even if the second brother had a 10x higher chance than the average person, he still had a 1/million chance or whatever to win and the event was still largely 'luck' and a 'coincidence'.

Let's take another example 'it is just a coincidence that my best friend has the same clothes and wore the same outfit as me today'. What connections could possibly occur that are trying to be denied by a statement like this? maybe something like 'no, we didn't go shopping together and buy the same clothes', 'no we didn't try to match our outfits'. But there are still connections that aren't denied that could have lead them to be far more likely to wear the same outfit, such as maybe they are both the same age and live in the same area so are more likely to shop at the same stores, maybe they like the same bands/media and their fashion sense is influenced by them in similar ways, maybe they have a lot of the same commitments which meant they only had freetime to go shopping on certain days and one of these certain days had a well advertised sale for this particular item, maybe they became friends as their mothers share a job and that job just got a big bonus on the same day so the mothers both decided to shout their daughters and go shopping during the same sale. My point here is that you can never deny all connection with calling something a coincidence, every person has their own idea of what makes a connection meaningful and how much of it they want to deny. My further point is that even if some or all of my possible connections were true and did increase the chance for them to wear the same outfit, people still have a personal interpretation as to whether that increased chance reduces the unlikelihood of the second event occurring given the first to an uninteresting level.

There is a slight contradiction as sometimes when people call something a coincidence they are trying to deny some sort of divine reason for it but other times people are trying to say 'there is no physical reason they both occurred, any connection if it does occur is simply divine'.

Even if you did believe there was absolutely no causal relationship or influence whatsoever, there will always be the possible connection of divine influence even if you don't believe in it, it's always possible and cant be disproved. There is always room within the causal nature of reality where a divine entity could influence the world and this influence be so subtle that no one could ever detect a physical reason. Say some divine creator did want to bless the brothers entire family for some reason, there is room within the lottery to 'edit' the numbers that occur without anyone knowing. I don't know how lotteries pick their numbers, most probably use a physical method with so much randomness that it cant be predicted but maybe some use computer random number generation, a divine influence could alter the roll of a ball just slightly enough so it couldn't be detected to land on the numbers it wants, a human couldn't influence it in the same way as it would require an unbelievable prediction of a hundred or so balls and their exact current physics and a projection millions of interactions into the future, this insane complexity is what allows a divine influence to alter something without being caught. Similarly a divine influence could change the seed on the computer without it being detected. I just want to stress that it's not meaningful when you try to deny there being a divine reason for both events occurring as there could always be a divine reason. There is some meaning in saying something doesn't need divine connection because there is a physical connection that isn't related, but there is no meaning in saying that something doesn't need a divine connection because there is no physical connection. The lack of any physical connection between two events will always leave space for a divine entity to act.

My point isn't that divine influence happens or doesn't happen it's that no one can ever say it didn't happen. Let's say there is no real reason either of them bought the same outfit, they both just did it on a whim, it came into their heads randomly while shopping, I don't believe things just pop into peoples heads randomly but let's say you do, well now there is room for a divine influence to take ownership of that randomness. This can still happen if one had a reason and one didn't, you can say the one without a 'real' reason was actually due to the divine placing it in their head. Let's say though that they both had reasons for this outfit but the reasons were different and unconnected, that doesn't remove the room for divine influence, say one girl bought it because it was what her favourite singer wore and another bought it because it was on sale when their mother got a bonus, you can still say the divine influence caused both these reasons to occur from planning the path of time from the start. Most people wouldn't turn to a divine explanation for something like this as it's not needed, it's not THAT unlikely for them to both buy the same outfit, there is a weighing up between how unlikely two events to both occur are, how strange a connection is and how much a divine influence would have had to conspire to make them both happen. But let's say it kept happening, for 20 days in a row they kept wearing the same outfits despite there being no physical connection they can determine, no set of reasons which are connected, at some point anyone would have to say the only possible explanation for so many strange coincidences is the divine. Everyone has a different limit, some might say 3 days, some might say 20, some might say 500, eventually anyone would comprehend the sheer number of things aligning, the insane rarity of the coincidences and conclude there must be some connection they cannot comprehend.

Maybe this is a slightly poor example because in reality they would eventually confront the issue and then human psychology comes into play which can be a convenient explanation (and often a valid one) for many repetitions but there is still a point where the line up in human psychology is so astounding that people turn to the divine. Let's say two people playing paper, scissors, rock, and they really are trying to win and both players do matching moves over and over again, eventually or even quickly they get to the point where they become aware of this repetition and now their choices in moves is influenced by this repetition and second guessing what they would normally think, reverse psychology, reverse reverse psychology etc. With a few repetitions they could explain it away 'we both used reverse psychology' and deem it to be uninteresting but eventually they would reach a number of repetitions where they would think that something strange has to be going on, again, everyone has a different point, for some people it might not be until a thousand repeated moves when they start to question if there was divine intervention, under that they might think that sheer chance could be to blame 'sure, it's a 1 in a million chance for us to repeat it so often but it's only 1 in a million' but when you get to 1 in 100 trillion they are more likely to look to the divine but this is predicated on the idea that matching moves multiple times is a significant connection. Further to this though if it keeps happening and becomes even more unlikely, people start to doubt even a divine influence and start to doubt the nature of reality itself, they start to question if reality is playing some sort of joke on them, if they are dreaming or in a simulation with a bug etc. the level at which this happens to anyone varies, partially due to different tolerances for absurd things, different willingness's to accept the divine, different openness to a simulated reality but also due to different estimations of the chances. Let's say for repeated matching moves in rock paper scissors it is something like this for a normal person, up to 10 moves repeated they think nothing of it, it's unlikely but it happens, 10 to 20 moves they might think there is some psychological alignment or mindgames happening, above 20 repetitions they might think something spiritual is happening, a sign from god, after 50 repetitions they might start doubting reality or at least they should if they understood the odds 3 to the power of 50 makes it what 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or something. There are certain people who don't understand chance properly though, they would think 'anything is possible'. I wonder if in reality the chance for people to match moves is higher or lower than 1/3, I would guess it is probably higher, there is an above 1/3 chance to pick rock and then there is probably a greater than 1/3 chance to use the same move if you both just chose the same thing, I don't know, it's just an example anyway.

Significant connections play a role in how much people turn to the divine, if everyone thought everything in their life was significant then the only explanation could be divine. What I mean is everyday people have things which are unlikely to occur, say one day something happens to you which has a 10% chance, then the next day the same, if you think these events are connected significantly then you might ask 'what is the chance they both happened? 1%? that happens' but if you don't think they are connected then you don't multiply the chances as something had to happen on the second day, if it wasn't that particular 10% event then it would have been another 10% event, the rolls were independent. If people think everything happening everyday to them is connected in a meaningful way then they multiply these probabilities together. What I mean is like coming back to the brothers and their lottery, say brother 1 had a 1/million chance to win the lottery and brother 2 had 1/100,000 (since they bought more tickets), because these brothers are connected you say the results are connected and can ask 'what are the chances they both won the lottery a week apart?' and multiply the probabilities. However if you are comparing 1 brother winning the lottery you don't ask 'what is the probability this brother won the lottery and then this unconnected specific man won the lottery?' because that's not a meaningful connection, the question would be another way of saying 'what is the probability this man won the lottery and then a stranger won the lottery?' and that isn't much different from the 1st event on its own.

My point is that everyone has a point where they resort to the only possible explanation for a series of events that they can wrap their mind around is the divine or a fake reality and this largely depends on how many connections they can see between events. In a way I am saying that the more meaning (connection between the day to day, an overarching story) people see in their lives, the more likely they are going to believe their lives are of a divine nature.

I want to stress that there isn't really a difference between someone thinking that the connection between two events is so subtle and elaborate and there being no meaningful connection, partially this is due to the factor that if it is subtle then it doesn't increase the chances of the second event occurring a significant amount but it's also because people don't think on the elaborate level as much so they don't factor in this increased chance accurately. For example, say both girls shopped on the same day because their parents both get bonuses and took them shopping that day so this raised the chance of them buying the same clothes, they may never become consciously aware of this and not factor it into the chance of them buying the same clothes, they might think the connected event is more unlikely and thus significant than it is simply because they cant comprehend the physical reason why it wasn't that unlikely to occur.

Relating this back to the general tendencies of people either leaning towards being a conspiracy theorist or a coincidence theorist (meaning you are too far one way or the other) it can be said a few things. Conspiracy theorists are too skilled at seeing or imagining connections between events while people who tend to label things as coincidences too much are operating on too simple of a level and cant see many connections that exist. I'm not saying conspiracy theorists are thus smarter, obviously the best way to act is in-between, some things are connected in ways that we should notice and some aren't, what breaks peoples minds is when the world is over connected or under connected. Even that isn't that simple though, in one sense things being over connected and having conspiracies everywhere can lead people to think they have no control, everything is too complex but it also gives them power in a sense if they think they can understand these conspiracies then they can work with/around them. If everything is under connected, with coincidences and randomness everywhere then people can feel like nothing they do matters but in another sense they can feel like they know all there is to know so they are on an even level with others. Really it ultimately comes down to knowledge as to how people cope and whether they flourish, if they find meaning and connection where they want or even need to find meaning and connection they will flourish, if they find simplicity and chaos where they want or even need to find simplicity and chaos they will flourish.

Ner was always a coincidence theorist in the sense that she never wanted to truly consider the depths of motives (why things happened, how they were connected), mostly her own, she never really looked too deeply into why she did the things she did or ever wanted to know why I did the things I did, she thought we just did things and sometimes they aligned and sometimes we didn't. Just like now where she thinks we are falling apart and it is just a coincidence that it is the immediate easier path, the pleasurable path for her, girls don't understand that the hardest path is always the most rewarding in the long run, they don't understand that society (through its influences on our own minds) conspires to get us to take the path that goes against our own benefit, to do what is wrong for us, to keep us unhappy and struggling, to keep spending on medication and therapy, get us to work longer hours to be able to afford that next thing which might finally fill the void. No, it's just a coincidence that the paths we decide to take are less rewarding, it's just a coincidence that our lives are almost unbearably tragic, it's just the universe. Bullshit, we can be something more if people only believed, if they only wanted to take the harder path, to find out what is really happening, see and accept the 'conspiracy' and transcend it.

People will never transcend what they are until they believe they can, maybe she just isn't ready to be something more, she isn't ready for love. I guess it's not her fault, nobody at that age wants to be better, they don't even believe in the concept of better, that's largely societal"