Toss a coin

I enter the room with 999 people already there. I’m number 1000. After a short briefing from a jury member, everybody flips a coin. An ordinary one pound coin, usually forgotten in a winter jacket. Roughly half of the participants get heads, other half – tails, that was only to be expected. I’m a lucky one. I got heads! I passed the first stage. After nine consecutive coin flips, there were only two – and I was one of them.

He stood very still giving nothing away, lips tightly closed. We locked eyes. Tension hits the air. The moment of truth, the unraveling time is about to come. We both got 9 heads in a row until this moment. This round could decide the winner. He tosses, I follow. The coins are up in the air. My coin lands smoothly in my palm – heads, he shows tails. Ten times in a row. Just think how miraculous it is. I got heads ten times in a row. Not someone else, but me. An urge to feel special overfills my inflated ego and nevertheless, I’m not special.

I don’t have any magical power. I should not be grateful to a superstitious belief either. This was a stroke of pure luck. Take 1000 people, give them each a fair coin and on average half of them get heads. Half these 500 people again, then repeat it 8 more times and more likely you get 1. In this case that one person turned out to be me, that doesn’t make me special. This example struck me when I was watching a video of Neil Degrasse Tyson about Cognitive Biases. It is natural to assume that there is something special about you when an outcome of low probability occurs in your life. I casually walk down the street, the same street I walk every day, as I suddenly find a £10 note. Is there something different about me today? If not, then an unforeseen lottery win will definitely convince me I am the chosen one. Personally, I have a great deal to overcome a desire to attribute these achievements to the strong will of my character and the right consequence of choices I made in the morning to bring me to this point of space and time.