Is there a number that seems to "follow you"?

2:00am

No.My favorite number is 5 but it doesn't follow me.

HA!

*taps dora on the shoulder*
What's that behind you?
ahhhhhhhhhhhhh..... a giant number five!!!!!!
run!!!!!!!!!!

ARRRGGGHHHH!!!
No wait! I like the number 5! It's cute and tiny! I'm not scared...it's not like a 30 digits number is after me,right?

WOW! Looks like 5 is my "personality number"---
Your personality number 5 represents the first impression that you're likely to make on people upon first meeting.
Positive: traveler, clever, adaptable, freedom loving, intellectual, quick to learn, crisis oriented, flexible and literary.
Negative: vulgar, wanderer, irritable, wasteful and a tendency to addictions

Nope.

doraaaaaaaaaa!!!!!
PI!

PI?

I'm not so clever.Really.The irritable vulgar wanderer side is stronger today maybe!

Not really. These are all my housenumbers where I've lived. Who can see a connection, except: below 100, above 100, below 100, above 100, etc.?
25, 327, 8, 164, 90, 572, 20, 110, 72, 134, 4.

Your life seems to have the typical highs and lows.

420

21 & 22

Do you know why? What form(s) do these numbers take?

I don't think so.

not that I can think of

22 is the number of letters in the hebrew alphabet, paths of the kaballah, and cards in the major arcana of the tarot. Bottle caps are 21 pointed stars. That's also the gymatria reduction of 777. I haven't kept track where they show up, but all over, prices, quantities, graphics control settings, etc.
This is your survey; What's your story in all of this?

that number used to be 911. for some stange reason, right after the tradedy, very offten every time i looked at a ditial watch, i noticed that it was 9:11. Or maybe it was just that i noticed it more then. But now, that is long gone.

This is one of those "the van is always at the corner" situations. Much like the streetlamp phenomenon we discussed in this survey:

http://surveycentral.org/survey/10269.html

There's a name for this kind of delusion. It is called "confirmation bias". There is a nice little explanation about it here:

http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

theres not one following me although I do tend to buy the same things alot the same total price comes up alot but to have a number follow me, no.

Do you use that number in lotterys or anything

For some reason I am acutely aware of the number 904 -- see explanation section. Just "one of those things", I guess.

very interesting....

No, I don't really play the lotteries. Maybe I should and then I'll win $904,000,000. Yay!

Did you read the "confirmation bias" link? It is very interesting. Part of the human condition I suppose. I liked the part where they were talking about scientists designing their experiments and such. The Skeptic's Dictionary site that is from is pretty good. I found it when I was looking for ammunition to back up my position in a discussion here:

http://surveycentral.org/survey/12078.html

Hey, it wouldn't hurt to try a few times if that number pops up around you alot.

Maybe I'll take your advice -- I'll let you know!

3
21
159
420

1274 and 919

2-12-15-23 10-15-2

work it out

36

No, I don't think so.

333 its ever so lucky think its your moms pantie size

27

371

I just wanna say good luck, we're all counting on you.

Many, many numbers are haunting me.

prime numbers under twenty.
3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19.

7

But not 11 ?

You know, I've actually given this survey quite a bit of thought in the past couple of months, and thought I would update you on my experience. I decided to do a little experiment with myself. Around the time that you did this survey, I suppose I had noticed this. I've been living in the same apartment for about a year and a half. It seemed that every time I looked out my kitchen window, the number 22 bus went by, heading south. So I decided to use that and analyse the situation in the context of this confirmation bias I was talking about. So, let's look at the situation. The first thing one might ask is "How often does this bus go by?" Quite frequently actually. They run from 5:30 AM to 1:00 AM. Before 3:00 PM there are 5 every hour, after 6:00 PM there are 4 an hour. Between 3:00 PM and 6:00 PM there are 10 every hour! Why do I notice the southbound ones in particular. The intersection I see from my kitchen window gives me a view of the southbound traffic stopped at the light. The northbound traffic doesn't come into view until it enters the intersection. These busses have air brakes, so when the bus stops, I can often hear the air brakes, which probably subconsciously encourages me to look out the window. Then of course, there is the tendency to remember the "hits" and forget the misses. If I look out the window and see the bus, I think of this survey and "confirmation bias". If I look out the window and just see the snow on the mountains or the people running around shopping, it never occurs to me that I didn't see the bus.

But the experiment allowed me to feel the sense how confirmation bias works. If it wasn't for the fact that I analysed the situation from a rational perspective, I could have quite easily convinced myself that those busses were just appearing every time I looked out the window.

Did you ever consider that parallel explanations can exist?

**

For what, the bus? I'm not sure what you mean.

Yes, that the #22 bus appears by both mundane and supernatural laws of cause and effect simultaneously, neither being a mutually exclusive reason.

Please elaborate...

In one (more existential) universe, the #22 follows you simply because you empower that belief, in the other, all those facts follow you for the reason you expect.
I was just hearing charles mingus, just seconds after (trying to) visiting a 'mingus realty' site which I spotted in my bookmarks while researching saddam speeches. This synchronicity is with me every minute. On one hand, the mingus song happened because it was on the DJ's play list for a jazz show, but on the other hand, it showed up because I was expecting to hear it after thinking about him. I've had some hot seat durations when not a molecule evades my expectation and distinguishing between the creator and perceiver of my personal universe was impossible. In that reality, you are one with the on the spot decision that the bus brakes will squeal, and the history of the garage or habits of the driver have nothing to do with it. Somehow though, my mind always wanted things that could be simultaneously explained by newtonian laws of cause and effect histories. In recent years though, that creator/perceiver mind has thrown in new planes of sensory data, and not been so particular about following common physics for those object events of the material realm.

On some level, I suppose I could buy that. I've been developing an interest in a variety of skeptic websites lately. Although I'm not ready to enlist myself into their version of reality, I find it interesting to get a better understanding of the psychological mechanisms that encourage belief. This is where I got into that thing with Occam's razor recently.

A comprehensive knowledge of all universes does make the study of their convergence more fascinating.

I think a "comprehensive knowledge of all universes" is probably well beyond the range of my feeble abilities, but I'm willing to take a crack at it.

Well, I can't make the same claim myself either, but I do pay attention to a couple/few, which I also formally study in a workgroup.

I like this one:

http://skepdic.com/contents.html

and this one is good too. Updated every week, and there's a million dollar prize that hasn't been claimed yet. Maybe you should look into that:

http://www.randi.org/

Almost everything I do has that parallel newtonian universe explanation. My telekesis would probably entertain them, but I've only done that once. Oh, there's the spot where I reversed magnetic north in my living room. I not that into the paranormal. Things working out well, not strange, is more my concern. 'Bombs not killing people' is the sort of strangeness I could go for these days.

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed on that one. I haven't lost hope that the whole thing could be avoided.

I heard last night that even Bush's dad thinks it would be a mistake. I'm hoping that the administration is just trying to set up PR so they can bow out of a mistake gracefully. Even so, their billion dollar plans to rebuild with our VP's recent corp is questionable. If the locals wanted it, would own it, and could buy it with oil, that would be one thing, but I suspect it more resembles total colonialism and outside ownership of all resources, with perhaps a cut for a few select that can gather local support or surrender.

You lost me after the first couple of sentences. Billion dollar plans? VP's recent corp? locals? I have no idea what all this means. I've been following the story a little, but you're being too cryptic for me...

If I can believe all the news snippets which pass my way, VP, Dick Cheney, was also just VP of Haliburton which had a large stake in Iraq oil in recent years and now just won a $900 million contract to rebuild Iraq 'after the war' (a phrase I wish the news would stop using, like it's a foregone conclusion). Cheney currently has a million dollar annuity from Haliburton. Is that a bit less cryptic?

Don't you guys have laws against conflict of interest? We've got a whole bureaucracy just to deal with that.

Oh yeah, I forgot. I think we did once have laws to govern that sort of thing. Radio frequencies were once a public trust leased to broadcasters with some requirement for public service. But they opted ot outright sell them, just as they are trying to outright sell and privatize every other resource. For that matter, monopolies seem to a concern of the past too. Nothing prohibits a company from owning every media outlet in New York if they can afford it. America is being sold to the highest bidder. If there's something that can't be bought, we create sanctions or send in an army. I just got off the phone with my beloved bro, and am quite despairing about the human condition now. I was trying to make an arguement that the war is about killing for oil, and found he'd already concluded the same, and it still seemed reasonable. He likened it to his video sniper game. I think much of the world has gone mad, or at least dead asleep to anything that counts.

Scary isn't it? Living in a cave, eating nuts and berries is looking more appealing all the time...

Alas, circumstances seem to require instead that we actively ensure that living in a cave, eating nuts and berries, beyond the reach of profiteers is not illegal. If you contrast our lives to those of a century ago, it already has become illegal in numerous ways.

It's only illegal if you get caught.

I've been caught before, trying exactly that, caught just before I started.

I don't want to sound like a freak but i just am so confused as to why i see the number 420 everywhere.i mean everywhere. bff's bday,social,time am&pm,buses,car,pencils,dates,places,money,ive even for the last 4 years been having the same dream that i die on april 20th, at 4:20 and the address was 420 mt. clinton pike. its really wierd. most bad things happen those days or time, one day i was walking downtown and a woman dressed in all black was walking in front of me im a people watcher so as i walked i watched she seemd odd. she was walking as if she was trying not to be seen idk wierd but anyways i saw her reach into her pocket and then she pulled her hand back out didnt see her pull anything out. but as she walked a piece of folded notepad paper fell out of her pocket. i picked it up and when i looked up to say miss she was no where. not joking. gave me goose bumps. but i hoped it was nothin important but i opened it and the wierdest thing it was written in black ink across the paper 420 thats it nothin else i still have it pinned on my board. and ive been googleing things like this and have not found a awnser to my self beliefs. please if ur going to comment me as if im crazy or stupid dont know time. i really want to know what is going on. thanks.
_haunted of 420_
-E.