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Theres no such thing as coincidence, or: The apparent targeting of 2 out of the 3 French Train heros  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in us
Douglas Bader






chaos0xomega wrote:
Fair, but it was good enough to illustrate that the % chance of an occurrence like this gets you a smaller number than most people can comprehend. Even if you add in some factors to inflate it up, you're still looking at a fraction of a percentage.


Except it isn't that unlikely because you're using bad math to justify your numbers. For example, why focus so narrowly on stabbing? Would you still think it's an unlikely coincidence if the guy had been shot instead of stabbed? Similarly, would you still think there's something suspicious if the other guy's old high school had been targeted instead of his current college? The specific events you're talking about might be pretty unlikely, but that's like claiming my car accident looks suspicious because what are the odds of it happening on that exact road out of all the miles of road in the US?

What you actually need to consider is the probability that at least two of the three people involved in one incident might be at least distantly involved (where "involved" is defined as "could be mentioned in a news story about the event") in other violent incidents. And that probability is a lot higher given that violent incidents are common in the US.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba




The Great State of New Jersey

 Peregrine wrote:
chaos0xomega wrote:
Fair, but it was good enough to illustrate that the % chance of an occurrence like this gets you a smaller number than most people can comprehend. Even if you add in some factors to inflate it up, you're still looking at a fraction of a percentage.


Except it isn't that unlikely because you're using bad math to justify your numbers. For example, why focus so narrowly on stabbing? Would you still think it's an unlikely coincidence if the guy had been shot instead of stabbed? Similarly, would you still think there's something suspicious if the other guy's old high school had been targeted instead of his current college? The specific events you're talking about might be pretty unlikely, but that's like claiming my car accident looks suspicious because what are the odds of it happening on that exact road out of all the miles of road in the US?

What you actually need to consider is the probability that at least two of the three people involved in one incident might be at least distantly involved (where "involved" is defined as "could be mentioned in a news story about the event") in other violent incidents. And that probability is a lot higher given that violent incidents are common in the US.


Terrorist attacks on a train aren't that common. Neither are school shootings. In fact, both of these are rather decisively rare occurrences. Bar stabbings, if thats what this was, are not exactly common occurrences, but they're not exactly rare either, so they could be said to be some degree of common or uncommon. For an individual to be involved in a terrorist incident on a train, and shortly thereafter be involved in (or connected to) a shooting isn't entirely likely. For two individuals to be involved in a terrorist incident on a train, and then shortly thereafter, within a week of one another, be independently involved in two separate violent incidents is even more unlikely. Also keep in mind that the initial incident (terrorist attack) was in France, which as some of you have seemingly implied, is a less violent place than the US (I think thats debatable personally, but thats neither here nor there). Most Americans, as well as Europeans, are unlikely to be involved in a violent incident involving weapons to begin with, I believe in the US its something like 1 in 250 Americans will be the victim of a violent crime in their *lifetime* and in western europe that statistic is noticably lower. What we have here are 2 individuals who experience a 1 in 250 lifetime occurrence overseas (actually lower than that but too lazy to look it up) and then about a month later experience another 1 in 250 lifetime occurrence each, apparently entirely independently of one another.

I hate to bring in a logical fallacy, but arguing that there couldn't possibly be any connection between these events is almost like arguing that George Zimmerman keeps happening to be involved in police incidents usually featuring some variation of the phrase 'assault with a weapon' is only a coincidence and has nothing to do with the fact that he's an overly aggressive short-tempered loose cannon with access to firearms.

Out of curiosity, for those of you that don't believe that there could possibly be any connection or foul play, etc. involved, what would you say if, in one weeks time, the third of the trio was also involved in a similar sort of incident? Still a coincidence?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/10/08 20:02:11


CoALabaer wrote:
Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





CL VI Store in at the Cyber Center of Excellence

I think you're in tinfoil hat territory to be honest.

Of course there COULD be a connection. And it COULD have to do with the Illuminati and the Reptile Men.

COULD, without even the tiniest bit of fact to base your theory on, is worthless.


Every time a terrorist dies a Paratrooper gets his wings. 
   
Made in ca
Mekboy on Kustom Deth Kopta




now for some real facts:

https://military.id.me/news/update-video-shows-spencer-stone-stabbed-after-protecting-woman-from-six-men/?utm_source=SOV&utm_medium=facbeook&utm_campaign=ksjds

Spoiler:
In case you weren’t sure Airman First Class Spencer Stone was a hero after he stopped a terror attack in France, Stone stepped up to help another soul in need–and paid the price when he was stabbed in the chest.

The Sacramento News and Review got its hands on a surveillance tape that shows the brawl that led to Stone’s stabbing last night. The fight occurs outside Badlands, an establishment that describes itself as “Sacramento’s Premier Gay Nightclub.”

Witnesses say that the brawl began when Stone protected a woman inside the bar from six guys, all of whom he fought by himself with his bare fists. Considering that it was $1 Beer night at Badlands, it’s a safe assumption that alcohol intoxication intensified in scuffle. After being stabbed, the footage shows Stone stumble off camera to the sidewalk where he collapsed.

We can’t surmise why Stone was in that establishment or what specifically caused the fight, but we do know what didn’t play a role in this incident: Stone’s heroic acts in Paris.

“This incident is not related to terrorism in any way, and we know it’s not related to what occurred in France months ago,” Sacramento Deputy Police Chief Ken Bernard said.

Though police did not at first believe he would survive, Stone is in stable condition.

The security footage came from a liquor store across the street. You can watch it below.


the stats you should be looking for is how likely is a man prone to helping others by putting himself in danger, likely to do it a second time. Video in the link if you want to see it go down.

 
   
Made in us
Lieutenant Colonel






Please don't post bare meme pics on Dakka; they will be treated as spam. --Janthkin

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/10/09 00:16:29


 
   
Made in us
Quick-fingered Warlord Moderatus





So yea, this is pure tinfoil, seems pretty clear what happened.

3000
4000 
   
Made in us
Colonel





This Is Where the Fish Lives

Man, the OT seems to be going downhill as of late...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/10/08 22:17:37


 d-usa wrote:
"When the Internet sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending posters that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing strawmen. They're bringing spam. They're trolls. And some, I assume, are good people."
 
   
Made in us
Member of the Ethereal Council






 kronk wrote:
Lincoln was shot in Ford Theater.
JKF once shot a load into Marilyn Monroe.

Or something. Did I do that right?

JFK is weird way to spell kronk

5000pts 6000pts 3000pts
 
   
Made in us
Most Glorious Grey Seer





Everett, WA

 CptJake wrote:
I think you're in tinfoil hat territory to be honest.

Definately. I just don't see a "girls don't like me" loser and drunks in a bar fight being able to be connected. It's just a coincidence. Sorta like how Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were both shot in the head on a Friday by assassins nearly 100 years apart and were both succeeded by Southerners named Johnson who's own terms in office are considered failures leading to them both being succeeded themselves by Republicans.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/10/08 22:22:07


 
   
Made in us
Quick-fingered Warlord Moderatus





 Breotan wrote:
 CptJake wrote:
I think you're in tinfoil hat territory to be honest.

Definately. I just don't see a "girls don't like me" loser and drunks in a bar fight being able to be connected. It's just a coincidence. Sorta like how Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy were both shot in the head on a Friday by assassins nearly 100 years apart and were both succeeded by Southerners named Johnson who's own terms in office are considered failures leading to them both being succeeded themselves by Republicans.



Now talk like that is going to get the Illuminati after you.

3000
4000 
   
Made in us
Most Glorious Grey Seer





Everett, WA

The bit "A month before Lincoln was assassinated he was in Monroe, Maryland. A month before Kennedy was assassinated he was in Marilyn Monroe." is provably false, unfortunately. Marilyn Monroe died at least a year before Kennedy was assassinated.

 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





CL VI Store in at the Cyber Center of Excellence

 Breotan wrote:
The bit "A month before Lincoln was assassinated he was in Monroe, Maryland. A month before Kennedy was assassinated he was in Marilyn Monroe." is provably false, unfortunately. Marilyn Monroe died at least a year before Kennedy was assassinated.


Maybe he had some serious fetishes...

Every time a terrorist dies a Paratrooper gets his wings. 
   
Made in us
5th God of Chaos! (Ho-hum)





Curb stomping in the Eye of Terror!

Stone was defending some friends before he got stabbed???

Can we vote for this guy for President?

Live Ork, Be Ork. or D'Ork!


 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Honestly, if we're gonna connect the shooting in Oregon with a bar-room stabbing, then we may as well connect BOTH of those with the killing of Chris Kyle at a shooting range.


Damn, I need to buy stock in the company that owns Reynold's Wrap.
   
Made in au
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





We live in a world with 7 billion people in it. Every so often one unlikely event (like stopping a terror attack) and the another (like getting stabbed in a bar fight) will happen to someone.

And we can produce all manner of crazy probabilities when we pretend the second event is the only possible extraordinary event, and just multiply one by the other. But lots of very unlucky things could have happened, like some other form of lethal attack (shot, bludgeoned etc), or a workplace accident, or car crash. All of which could have triggered the same conspiracy theorising.

So you actually need to restate it as 'what are the odds that someone would be a hero in one extraordinary event, and then end up suffering misfortune a short time later?' Which doesn't sound that incredible.

And then you need to consider the alternative, that a terror group who'd had their highly public attack stopped by the heroic actions of three men, would then conspire to take down one or more of those men, and do it completely in secret. Because their previous plan for highly public terror has just been completely abandoned, because.

“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”

Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something. 
   
Made in us
Douglas Bader






chaos0xomega wrote:
Bar stabbings, if thats what this was, are not exactly common occurrences, but they're not exactly rare either, so they could be said to be some degree of common or uncommon.


But, again, why are you limiting it to bar stabbings? You would have posted the exact same "it's a coincidence" story if he had been involved in a road rage incident or a bank robbery. So you have to look at ALL violent incidents, not just the exact kind that actually happened.

Also, you can't look at just the number of bar stabbings for the country as a whole, you have to consider risk factors for different groups. A young man with a military background who spends a lot of time in bars is a lot more likely to be involved in a bar fight/stabbing/etc than a 95 year old grandmother.

For an individual to be involved in a terrorist incident on a train, and shortly thereafter be involved in (or connected to) a shooting isn't entirely likely.


But he wasn't really involved in the shooting. He wasn't there at the time and there's no plausible argument that he was in any way the target. So you can't look at the (rare) probability of being directly involved in a shooting, you have to consider the much more common probability of being directly involved OR having some small tie to the location/people/whatever that the 24/7 news cycle can use to fill a slot. For every person directly involved in the shooting there are a lot of people who are related to the victim, friends with the victim, worked at the same company once, etc. Depending on how broadly you define "involved" you're talking about orders of magnitude differences.

What we have here are 2 individuals who experience a 1 in 250 lifetime occurrence overseas (actually lower than that but too lazy to look it up) and then about a month later experience another 1 in 250 lifetime occurrence each, apparently entirely independently of one another.


Ok, let's say 1/250 is the right number. There were 500 people on the train, so the probability of any two of them having a 1/250 event is 59%. But ok, that doesn't account for the time factor. Let's assume that it's a newsworthy event if both of the second violent incidents happen within a year of the original attack, and the 1/250 lifetime risk is evenly distributed across the ~50 years (a generous estimate) the average person might live after the initial attack. Now the odds are about 1 in 1300. That's unlikely, but not win-the-lottery levels of unlikely.

But, as mentioned previously, those numbers are probably generous since one of them wasn't even involved in a second violent incident and the other seems to have a much higher than average chance of being involved in one.

I hate to bring in a logical fallacy, but arguing that there couldn't possibly be any connection between these events is almost like arguing that George Zimmerman keeps happening to be involved in police incidents usually featuring some variation of the phrase 'assault with a weapon' is only a coincidence and has nothing to do with the fact that he's an overly aggressive short-tempered loose cannon with access to firearms.


The difference here is that in Zimmerman's case we have a plausible explanation. We knew from the very beginning that he was a self-appointed vigilante, whether or not he was technically acting in self defense, and later events just confirmed his character. But what's the explanation supposed to be in this case? If the school shooting had anything to do with the train hero then why did the shooter make no apparent attempt to kill him? You're proposing an absurd scenario where someone tries to get revenge on the guy, not by killing him, but by killing some random people that just happen to go to the same school. That isn't a plausible story, it's tinfoil-hat paranoia.

Out of curiosity, for those of you that don't believe that there could possibly be any connection or foul play, etc. involved, what would you say if, in one weeks time, the third of the trio was also involved in a similar sort of incident? Still a coincidence?


First you have to define "similar sort of incident".

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/10/09 02:13:01


There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
Made in us
Last Remaining Whole C'Tan






Pleasant Valley, Iowa

This is a terrible conspiracy theory, and it's posting has cheapened us all.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.

 Flinty wrote:
The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
 
   
Made in us
Boosting Space Marine Biker






I live less then ten blocks away from there. He was out clubbing at a gay bar in Sacramento's Lavender District in Midtown. There is a liquor store on the corner that caught the footage. I get cigarettes there sometimes. He got stabbed after arguing with some gangster types that also like to frequent that area.

Big dudes love to go to Midtown and drink and brawl. They do it all the time. Sometimes they get stabbed or shot in the process, this one is just high profile. There was a bar a couple of blocks away that had repeated stabbing just like this one a couple of years ago. On the patio, in the bathroom, outfront. Everywhere. Dudes were getting stabbed by gangsters every weekend for months. Sometimes even on a Tuesday.

This isn't the first time gang violence has occurred in this area. There was a shooting there a few years back in a crowd of like a hundred people, some kid got killed. There was also a group of dudes with guns that were robbing the drunks after the bars let out for a couple of months, but they were never caught. I saw a couple of young homeless guys trying to strongarm people for cash in one of the parking lots one time. That was hilarious.

It's mostly rainbows and bad EDM though. Sacramento is a very diverse place and Midtown is a main focal point for young people and the night life. Different types of people from the larger metropolitan area converge there to get a piece of the action.

Good times.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/10/09 05:43:58


   
Made in gb
Lord Commander in a Plush Chair





Beijing

If they were both stabbed in attacks then that might be odd enough to raise an eyebrow. But attacking the school someone attended is a very indirect way of attacking a person, the two events are so different it just doesn't indicate a shared purpose.
   
Made in gb
Courageous Grand Master




-

I'm pretty sure that most people have heard of this or read it, but it's always appropriate to post it when people are discussing co-incidence.

Proof that the lizard people are amongst us


" History Lesson

Have a history teacher explain this----- if they can?
Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the
White House.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Now it gets really weird.

Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.
Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in
1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in
1908.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born
in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald! , who assassinated Kennedy, was
born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Now hang on to your seat
.
Lincoln was shot at the theatre named 'Ford.'
Kennedy was shot in a car called 'Lincoln' made by
'Ford.'
Lincoln was shot in a theatre and his assassin ran and
hid in a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran
and hid in a theatre.
Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their
trials.

And here's the kicker...

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe,
Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn
Monroe."




"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

Might want to take into accoun there were four train heroes. However the fourth one was British so he doesn't count.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






New Orleans, LA

 Breotan wrote:
The bit "A month before Lincoln was assassinated he was in Monroe, Maryland. A month before Kennedy was assassinated he was in Marilyn Monroe." is provably false, unfortunately. Marilyn Monroe died at least a year before Kennedy was assassinated.


I didn't say a month before! Why are you making things up to debunk me?

Gasp!

Breton is one of the lizzard man illuminati!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Kilkrazy wrote:
Might want to take into accoun there were four train heroes. However the fourth one was British so he doesn't count.


Well, duh.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/10/09 12:17:57


DA:70S+G+M+B++I++Pw40k08+D++A++/fWD-R+T(M)DM+
 
   
Made in gb
Courageous Grand Master




-

We all know that Marilyn Munroe died before JFK was shot, but, how do we know he didn't have her ashes in an urn at his side?

Technically, that would still count as being with Marilyn.

"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd 
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka






That's a good trick, since she wasn't cremated, and is buried in Los Angeles.
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





 AndrewGPaul wrote:
That's a good trick, since she wasn't cremated, and is buried in Los Angeles.



Further proof that JFK was actually a high ranking Lich Lord, and his assassin was really a paladin of some renown who was merely using "Smite Evil" on JFK.



And besides, we all know, if you've read the biography and seen the documentary, that Lincoln was killed because the Vampires were worried about their food supplies, and he simply had to go. It didn't help at all that Lincoln was a pretty amazing vampire hunter to boot.
   
 
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