How to explain this? Is this a Premonition of Death?

[rodedendron]

Hello dear reader,

I have a question, I was reading the following experience of a chemist named Barbara who says this was a premontion of death:
"
In 1982 I started collaborating with a colleague in another department, a well-respected and popular researcher and we published our first paper in that year. One afternoon in early February in 1983 I was chatting with Pat* in his office about research and life in general. He told me he was flying to a meeting abroad the next morning.

That evening at about 9 pm I was sitting at home in front of my fire about to read a book when I had a very strong image of Pat dying of a heart attack. I found this very disturbing but tried to put it out of my mind. However, the following day on my return from lunch a colleague informed me that Pat had had a heart attack on the flight to Paris that morning and had died. He was 53. "

How can this be explained?

Kind regards,
Rodedendron

[skbuncks]

Coincidences, they happen

skb

[Trinoc]

How can this be explained?

Lots of people die of heart attacks (more than any other cause, I think). Lots of people have thoughts about all sorts of things, including about other people having heart attacks. By chance, some of these will match up to real events. Some people who make the match will report the fact to others. This is how myths of premonitions start.

If you think that something someone imagined was an amazing coincidence when it actually happened, just think how many other thoughts they had over the same period that were forgotten because they came to nothing.

[MischiefMonkey]

How many times do you have a 'strong image' about things that don't come true?

I had a strong image of my new bathroom radiator falling off the wall last night. Probably brought on by the stress of installing the b*stard heavy thing. Guess what? It is still there

When one of my dogs was missing, I had horrifically vivid images of his little body dead and mangled beside the railway He was found - safe & sound - in the woods far away from the railway.

We often get thoughts, often strong images. We tend to forget those that don't 'come true' but assign meaning to those that seem to have predicted an event.

Looking at my examples, perhaps Pat had a life style which put him at risk of a heart attack, and certainly a heart attack in one's 50s is not a particularly unusual occurrence for a man. As a colleague, Barbara may have been aware of his potential for a heart attack and so it played on her mind.

Nothing particularly phenomenal there

[Matt]

Hello dear reader,

I have a question, I was reading the following experience of a chemist named Barbara who says this was a premontion of death:
"
In 1982 I started collaborating with a colleague in another department, a well-respected and popular researcher and we published our first paper in that year. One afternoon in early February in 1983 I was chatting with Pat* in his office about research and life in general. He told me he was flying to a meeting abroad the next morning.

That evening at about 9 pm I was sitting at home in front of my fire about to read a book when I had a very strong image of Pat dying of a heart attack. I found this very disturbing but tried to put it out of my mind. However, the following day on my return from lunch a colleague informed me that Pat had had a heart attack on the flight to Paris that morning and had died. He was 53. "

How can this be explained?

Kind regards,
Rodedendron

How can what be explained? That when the prediction came true by coincidence she failed to put it out of her mind just like all those millions of uneasy feelings people have every day which don't come true. It's because she read signifgicance into it. Our memories select what appears to be significant. This is as a result of evolutionary pressures. But things can seem far more significant than they actually are. I remember as a child my Dad having to rush round to my Nan's house after he'd had a very vivid dream of her dying. She lived for another 20 odd years well into her ninties.

Now if you'd said that in 2008 exactly 1 million UK residents had such uneasy feelings. With our UK population of 60 million that's less than 1 uneasy feelings per person per lifetime. If in 200,000 cases the subject of the uneasy feeling was dead within a week, compared to the expected 100, then I'd sit up and take notice.

What if I did the research and found that in 2008 exactly 1 million UK residents had such uneasy feelings and in 100 cases the subject of the uneasy feeling was dead within the week which is well withing the range of what chance alone would predict with 5,000 per million dying each year. That wouldn't surpise anyone, one little bit except for those 100 people who'd feel that the odds against it were astronomical, yet hundreds of people win the lottery jackpot each year against even more insurmountable odds.

I'm sure you don't really need me to explain why those 100 people end up being convinced that there's a link and I'm sure you don't need me to explain why the other 999,900 people put it to the back of their mind and never think about it again.

As for predicitng the exact cause of death - heart disease - the most common of all especially for a 56 year old, it doesn't really sway the odds enough for me to change my mind.

If there was something to explain beyond the fact that with so many people taking part in the lottery of life every day extraordingary coincidences are bound to happen and be widely reported then we could mutter something about there being outward signs of impending heart disease that may well have been visible to a person with a scientific background and noticed subconciously.

It might be that in this case there was a link. I won't try to prove that there wasn't. The old canard that you can't prove a negative applies. However since nothing more than an intriging anecdote suggests that there is a link I find no reason to believe in it.

Your mileage may vary. Either pick the explanation that most fits your mood or fashion sense or if you're interested in the rational evaluation of the most probable explanation then apply some critical thinking to the situation as I have just done.

[ZERO]

A lot of people worry about flying so Barbara may have been feeling uneasy about Pat's well being anyway. So it is probably not surprising that negative images appeared in Barbara's mind.
I think it is significant that Pat was in a situation that some perceive as dangerous.

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

How many times has she had such negative thoughts about him or anyone else and they haven't come true?

I agree with the posisble anxiety caused by his flying.

Regardless, these descriptions of such incidents appear to be more accurate than they probably are. People will naturally embellish to make something sound more interesting than it is. Things will be innocently slightly changed to make a more compelling story.

So a worry of something bad happened may ultimately have been made to fit a heart-attack when that did happen.

[Matt]

How many times has she had such negative thoughts about him or anyone else and they haven't come true?

I agree with the posisble anxiety caused by his flying.

Regardless, these descriptions of such incidents appear to be more accurate than they probably are. People will naturally embellish to make something sound more interesting than it is. Things will be innocently slightly changed to make a more compelling story.

So a worry of something bad happened may ultimately have been made to fit a heart-attack when that did happen.

I don't think it really matters how many other times she'd had such negative thoughts. As you can see when I ran the numbers above, if all of us only have one such premonition in a lifetime that's roughly a million such predictions a year in the UK alone. Enough to generate 100 close fullfillments a year. The only thing that suprises me is how few times we hear about it given that each UK resident is roughly four degrees of separation from each other. Each of these 100 times a year it's happening to at least a friend of a freind of a friend of a friend. How come we hear about it much less?

[skbuncks]

I see that the OP has been pretty much answered. However, I've spent the last hour digging out my copy of Tricks of the Mind and then typing out the following example of an amazing coincidence, so I'm going to post it anyway

What of downright coincidences? How can anyone explain those utterly remarkable events we hear about….
…the apparently true story of a car repairman who was out on a call in the middle of nowhere. His work finished, he was waling back to his truck to go home. S he walked past a telephone box it started ringing, and he went in to answer it. The caller knew his name, and began talking to him about a business appointment he had the next day. The repairman, confused, recognized the voice; it was his secretary. He asked her how on earth she had known to call the payphone. She answered that she had called him on his new mobile. He explained to her that in fact she had called a phone box which he had just been walking past in the middle of nowhere. She insisted that she had called his mobile, and checked the piece of paper she had his number written down on. It was then she realised her mistake; she had accidentally called his payroll number, which she had written down on the same piece of paper. The payroll number happened to be the number of the telephone box which he just happened to walking past at that time.

Derren Brown: Tricks of the Mind, part six: Anti-science, pseudo-science and bad thinking (Extraordinary coincidences and psychic phone calls)

Now this seems like one hell of a coincidence with the odds of it happening being pretty tiny. However, whatever the probability, strange events like this will happen, somewhere, to someone. Now, if the secretary in the above example were to call the payroll numbers of everyone in the company and somehow get through to them on a nearby phone, then we would have something pretty extraordinary which would be worth further examination.
Likewise with the example in the OP, if every time* ‘Barbara’ had a strong feeling or premonition of something about to happen, and it then did, we would have an extraordinary event. Outside of that its just coincidence

skb

* or any number of times significant enough to make it seem unlikely by coincidence alone

[Croydon Bob]

I don't think that anyone has suggested the possibility that the story is fictitious in the first place. Which often turns out to be the explanation for strange tales "that cannot be explained".