Jeopardy winner predicts winning dollar amount

Magical Realist

Magical Realist

Valued Senior Member
"Guessing a correct answer to a question on Jeopardy! is one thing, but accurately predicting your winning total? That must take some kind of magic power. Yet, that is precisely what contestant Katie Sekelsky did when she secured her third win in a row this week.

Sekelsky, a graphic designer from Kent, Ohio, won the Tuesday, June 15 episode with a winning total of $19,201, a number she had prophesied just days earlier:

“The night before my first @Jeopardy taping, I was alone in the hotel, trying to calm down and “visualizing” a win,” she tweeted on Wednesday. “I sketched myself at a podium, with a winning-type dollar amount. And that winning-type dollar amount was $19,201. This is real.”

For any potential doubters, Sekelsky attached a photo of the sketch and confirmed that she had sent the drawing to several people before taping the episode in question. “THERE ARE RECEIPTS,” she stated emphatically. She also explained that the drawing didn’t influence her wagering on the show and that she was just betting what she needed to to win."

https://www.tvinsider.com/1002660/j...k4hPpMzWT0_Kc9pHGGRjeW3iId6nkmJY_o7pglT4JA3OM


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I can't decide if this is evidence of precognition or of synchronicity. The fact that it surprised even her suggests the latter. Synchronicity happens when you aren't looking for it. Surprise and wonderment seem to be crucial elements in its happening.
 
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Synchronicities (or “meaningful coincidences”) seem to be more prevalent than we give them credit. Like, have you ever thought of a past friend you lost touch with and then out of (what seems to be) nowhere, they text you? That would be an example, but this precise “numerical synchronicity” seems a bit more out of the ordinary realm of coincidences, no?
Pretty cool, either way!
 
wegs said:
Synchronicities (or “meaningful coincidences”) seem to be more prevalent than we give them credit. Like, have you ever thought of a past friend you lost touch with and then out of (what seems to be) nowhere, they text you? That would be an example, but this precise “numerical synchronicity” seems a bit more out of the ordinary realm of coincidences, no?
Pretty cool, either way!
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This particular one is really incredible. What's so odd about synchronicities is their seeming total meaninglessness and whimsicality, like God or the Universe was winking at you. Maybe the meaning is to get you to trust the universe more. In any case, it is a truly remarkable case!
 
Magical Realist said:
This particular one is really incredible. What's so odd about synchronicities is their seeming total meaninglessness and whimsicality, like God or the Universe was winking at you. Maybe the meaning is to get you to trust the universe more. In any case, it is a truly remarkable case!
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It really is incredible. Wonder what Carl Jung would think? ;)
 
wegs said:
It really is incredible. Wonder what Carl Jung would think? ;)
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“Synchronistic phenomena prove the simultaneous occurrence of meaningful equivalences in heterogeneous, causally unrelated processes; in other words, they prove that a content perceived by an observer can, at the same time, be represented by an outside event, without any causal connection. From this it follows either that the psyche cannot be localized in space, or that space is relative to the psyche. The same applies to the temporal determination of the psyche and the psychic relativity of time. I do not need to emphasize that the verification of these findings must have far-reaching consequences.”
― C.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
 
Here's another amazing synchronicity relayed by PSI researcher Dean Radin. Radin posits that manifesting strong intention can act like a gravitational force to draw together people and places and events. That certainly seems to be so in his case.


 
wegs said:
Synchronicities (or “meaningful coincidences”) seem to be more prevalent than we give them credit. Like, have you ever thought of a past friend you lost touch with and then out of (what seems to be) nowhere, they text you? That would be an example, but this precise “numerical synchronicity” seems a bit more out of the ordinary realm of coincidences, no?
Pretty cool, either way!
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It has more to do with the fact that human's don't naturally deal with probabilities very well and usually chose to attribute a rare occurrence to magic or ESP of some sort.

For example there is a concept called "Dunbar's Number". It's basically the number of relationships that your brain can handle at one time. The number is about 150. For most of our time on Earth humans would have had less than 150 relationships at any one time anyway so there was no need for our brain to evolve to handle more than that.

Therefore when you think of someone out of the blue it's still likely to be 1 of 150 people. It's not like the number is 1 out of a million. There are several billion people out there but you don't know several billion. There is also probably some reason that you just thought of them. A mutual friend recently died, you went back to where you were born and got reacquainted with old friends, someone mentioned this person several weeks ago, etc.

You only remember the one time when you were thinking of them and they texted or called. All the other times when you think of someone that you rarely see...they don't call but you don't focus on that.

The human brain processes thousands of random thoughts a minute. So when one of those thoughts actually occurs at the same time as the text it seems like "magic". It isn't. We tend to attribute higher odds than the actual probabilities suggest. It would be odd if no one you were thinking about ever contacted you at that time given the large number of chances for that to happen.

It is an interesting occurrence and an interesting example to use for learning more about how probabilities are calculated.

There is also the law of very large numbers. It seems amazing when there is a 1 out of 100 million chance of someone winning the lottery. To the person who wins it seems like maybe "magic" was involved. Yet someone had to win the lottery.

We are impressed by the guy who predicted the last stock market crash. He is continually asked for his predictions about the future. However the next time the market crashes he is rarely the one who predicts that one. It's someone else.

You can ask a large room of people to guess a long sequence of numbers and as some of the people are wrong, you eliminate them and continue asking for correct guesses. Ultimately you end up with only one person who has guessed right let's say 9 times in a row. Amazing. Yet if you do it all over again there will be a different person who guesses right that many times in a row.

It's the nature of the scenario. No magic involved.
 
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I was driving down the highway once at about 45 mph (I was driving slower because there was some snow around). The highway appeared to be clear of snow and ice but suddenly I hit black ice and the car spun around (360 degrees).

I remembered to steer in the direction of the spin and I stayed in my lane and when I was going straight again the black ice ended (otherwise I would have eventually spun off the road). My adrenaline was off the charts by the end of course but the excitement was over and I continued driving to my destination.

I have a friend who is very religious and the same thing happened to him in the mountains of N.C. He is sure that "the Lord" was looking out for him that day because "I know I'm not a race car driver that can handle those conditions".

Of course both he and I know that if either of us faced that situation 10 more times, we would end up off the road for 9 of those times. Yet, he is sure the Lord was involved in his case.

For me, I'm just glad that the black ice had ended by the time I was headed straight or I would have been off the road. No Lord required.
 
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Sometimes these situations are even more likely than you might think just because of the wording but to most it still seems "unbelievable". Here I'm talking about the "Birthday Paradox".

The question is, "How many people would have to be in a room before it's more likely than not for two of them to have the same birthday?"

People say anything from several hundred to several thousand to several million. After a certain number, this particular scenario doesn't even involve probability. You have to use probability when you can't observe every possible case.

For example I might ask what is the probability that there is a pig that flies. We know that pigs don't fly but I'd still have to give a probability since I can't go and personally observe every pig on Earth.

If I ask what is the chance that someone in this room has my birthday of June 12th I'd have to use a probability because it is possible that no matter how many people were in the room, it's possible that no one else has that birthday. It's possible (but not likely) that no one else on Earth was ever born on that day. Without asking every person on Earth I'd still have to use probability.

In the Birthday Paradox however you are only asked how many people have to be in the room before it's likely that two people have the same birthday. Since a particular date isn't mentioned then you know for a certainty that two people will have the same birthday once there are more than 365 people in the room since there are only 365 days in the year. Once there are 366 people in the room some two people have to have the same birthday.

If I specify a certain day that another person has to be born on then it becomes a probability and it's much higher than the question as stated.

Therefore the answer is something like 23 (which sounds really low). That's when the probability reaches 50.1%, which is technically more likely than not.

But even when you want a 99% probability that two people will have the same birthday you still only have to have 80 people in the room (or something like that, I'm not looking at the actual stats).

That still sounds low but again it's because you aren't matching a specific day beforehand. You are just looking for any two people who happen to have the same birthday and the odds for that are much higher.
 
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Magical Realist said:
This particular one is really incredible.
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Once upon a time, Donald Trump's mouthpiece said, "I think the President is doing an incredible job."

I agreed - but "incredible" does not mean "good". It's a word that is often misused by the credulous.
 
Magical Realist said:
"Guessing a correct answer to a question on Jeopardy! is one thing, but accurately predicting your winning total? That must take some kind of magic power. Yet, that is precisely what contestant Katie Sekelsky did when she secured her third win in a row this week.

Sekelsky, a graphic designer from Kent, Ohio, won the Tuesday, June 15 episode with a winning total of $19,201, a number she had prophesied just days earlier:

“The night before my first @Jeopardy taping, I was alone in the hotel, trying to calm down and “visualizing” a win,” she tweeted on Wednesday. “I sketched myself at a podium, with a winning-type dollar amount. And that winning-type dollar amount was $19,201. This is real.”

For any potential doubters, Sekelsky attached a photo of the sketch and confirmed that she had sent the drawing to several people before taping the episode in question. “THERE ARE RECEIPTS,” she stated emphatically.
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So we have her word that she made her "prediction" before the episode was taped and not after it.

And what evidence is there apart from her say-so that this is what happened?

How did she "confirm she had sent the drawing to several people before"? Why was she confirming that and not the people she sent the drawing to?

I can't decide if this is evidence of precognition or of synchronicity.
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Of course you can't. But you've already decided that you can safely rule out fraud and coincidence. But on what basis?
 
She has a sketch of herself at a podium winning $19,201. The uber cynical out there might say "I wonder if she burned the other 19,200 sketches afterward." :D



Seriously though, I think this one falls into the cat of genuine coincidence.
 
James R said:
Yes. But was it made after the episode was recorded, or before?
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The contestant is quoted as saying so explicitly:

“The night before my first Jeopardy taping, I was alone in the hotel, trying to calm down and “visualizing” a win,” she tweeted on Wednesday. “I sketched myself at a podium, with a winning-type dollar amount. And that winning-type dollar amount was $19,201. This is real.”


For any potential doubters, Sekelsky attached a photo of the sketch and confirmed that she had sent the drawing to several people before taping the episode in question. “THERE ARE RECEIPTS,” she stated emphatically. She also explained that the drawing didn’t influence her wagering on the show and that she was just betting what she needed to to win.



While she could be lying, in this case, I'm prepared to accept her at face-value.


If I doubt the veracity of a story, my first target is usually the content writers. It's easy to spin a story's facts to make it seem more newsworthy than it is. In this case, by quoting her verbatim*, they are absolved.

* yes, one would think this is redundant. What I mean is, they didn't chop the quote up into tiny bites so as to manipulative her words.
 
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DaveC426913 said:
The contestant is quoted as saying so explicitly:

“The night before my first Jeopardy taping, I was alone in the hotel, trying to calm down and “visualizing” a win,” she tweeted on Wednesday. “I sketched myself at a podium, with a winning-type dollar amount. And that winning-type dollar amount was $19,201. This is real.”


For any potential doubters, Sekelsky attached a photo of the sketch and confirmed that she had sent the drawing to several people before taping the episode in question. “THERE ARE RECEIPTS,” she stated emphatically.
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Yes, I already know what she says. Personally, I want to see the receipts, not just take her word for it that she has them. It would also be great if at least one other person would back up her story.

While she could be lying, in this case, I'm prepared to accept her at face-value.
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Why?

If I doubt the veracity of a story, my first target is usually the content writers.
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What makes you think that the content writers bothered to check that what she was saying was true, in this case?
 
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