Pavlonian coincidence | Seth’s Weblog

There are two sorts of coincidences.

The primary is the one which we regularly discuss. It’s the make-believe magic of two issues occurring that we didn’t count on to happen. Whenever you and your long-lost school roommate find yourself randomly sharing adjoining bowling lanes whenever you’re 72–that’s a coincidence. When the world professional on the obscure Discs of Tron videogame finds a pristine instance deserted on the finish of a driveway close to his mother’s home… We invent all types of causes for these occasions, however they’re merely random.

The opposite variety issues way more. That is after we get two unrelated incidents confused as a result of they occurred close by in time. When you have been ingesting your first ever kombucha whenever you heard that your cat died, it may be that sooner or later, seeing a can of kombucha prompts you to be unhappy. The occasions are co-incident.

As our lives pace up and the variety of inputs will increase, it’s simpler than ever to have occasions in proximity immediate instincts or expectations which are unrelated to what they really created.

That’s one motive why entrepreneurs work so laborious to have their merchandise or advertisements present up in occasions of our lives after we’re more likely to affiliate them with emotions that result in consumption. It’s not a random coincidence, it’s merely an incident that was deliberate upfront.

Ring a bell?