What is "duplicate mourning" that makes many families scared? Science provides an explanation

There are still many people who believe that "double mourning" is a mysterious phenomenon in real life and that families who are unfortunate enough to suffer from it can only rely on magicians. However, from a scientific perspective, this curtain is gradually being revealed.

Perhaps all of us have accidentally heard somewhere about the extremely scary phenomenon of double mourning, but does it really exist and how scary would it be to be buried in mourning? According to ancient records, this is the phenomenon of a family member dying, then other family members also dying within a short period of time.

A lecturer in the Department of Physics at Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine, Ho Chi Minh City had explanations on this issue.

Folk beliefs haunt people

According to folk beliefs, the phenomenon of double mourning is the phenomenon of a family having a family member die at the same time, falling into the murderous life (Dan, Than, Snake, Pig), then one after another of that person's relatives. also pass away until the number of people who have died is 3, 5, 7 or 9 people.

For example, a family shared the following: Their family had an older brother who passed away right at the hour of the Tiger, on the day of the Tiger. Less than 49 days passed before the mother passed away. A year later his youngest brother also died in an accident. The family was horrified and when they went to see a fortune teller, they said they had a "misfortune".

Folk also believe that the source of this disaster was the "underworld" rebellion, so the only way to resolve it was to lock up the "insects" (lock up the dead). And each family, when sending the dead to the place where the dead are locked up, will be given an amulet to wear for three years to avoid disaster. In fact, most families who have recently passed away go to see the dead, and wear or post these types of charms at home.

The coincidence creates panic

From the point of view of statistics, coincidence is simply a coincidence. Coincidences between random events happen more often than ordinary people like us imagine.

Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena, published in 1996 in the US, in the Coincidence section emphasized: "Coincidences appear frequently in everyday life. They make us happy, confused and surprised. They are disturbing and frightening... They can change our lives; the places we work; and the people we live with; and many of the fundamental features of everyday life seem to be based coincident".

So what is the nature of coincidence? That is the law of large numbers in probability theory and statistics. This law is simply stated as follows: With a large enough sample, any strange phenomenon can occur.

In 1953, mathematician Littlewood said that a phenomenon considered so rare that it was surprising had a probability of 1/1,000,000 (one in a million). For example, winning the lottery with the highest prize when drawing with 6 numbers is a surprising phenomenon, because the probability is exactly the same. However, if the results are recorded every day, with a population of nearly 90 million people like our country today, the phenomenon considered surprisingly rare also happens 90 times a day, or more than 30,000 times a year. throughout Vietnam. Even if it only happens monthly, the result is 1,000 times a year. As for 7 billion people on the planet, that "rare" event will happen every day!

What about even rarer phenomena? For example, an American woman won a special lottery twice in New Jersey within four months. If each winner only buys one ticket, the probability of that happening is only 1 in 17 trillion. So why did it happen?

The answer is still the law of large numbers. For one person, the probability is only 1 in 17 trillion. But with 300 million Americans within 120 days, the probability of winning the double jackpot is only 1 in 30, a number that is quite large to happen many times in life.

With other coincidence phenomena, the occurrence is even more frequent. How many people do we need for two of them to have the same birthday? A year has 365 days, so we can think of 366 people. However, Scientific American magazine calculated and gave the answer as 23 people. We might be surprised, but calculations show that just 23 people are enough for the probability of that coincidence to be greater than 0.5 - a number that ensures it will happen rather than not. And the coincidence of the weather between two consecutive days (the prediction "tomorrow's weather will be the same as today") has such a high probability that it occurs 70 times out of 100, which is a probability of 0.7. - a very large number statistically.

Returning to the coincidence of funerals, the writer does not give the exact probability of the coincidence between the "close" date and time according to folk beliefs. But with a national population of nearly 90 million people, with a period of up to 1,000 days (nearly 3 years), according to the law of large numbers, it is certainly such a large number that "coincidences" happen a lot. enough to frighten many families. However, please calm down, it's just a coincidence.

The important thing is psychological comfort

Is it possible that after a loved one dies, families can avoid repeated mourning if they organize prayers?

Prayer is only a psychological factor. Thanks to prayer activities (such as locking up "vong"), frightened people will calm down, making them calmer in all situations. And also partly because the soul has relaxed again, the psychology is comfortable, the progression of diseases that can lead to death will also be better. According to medical knowledge, depending on the disease, psychological factors can affect from 9 to 40% of the total number of patients. Medicine believes that faith can help people be physically and mentally healthier, so...

However, the popular belief that "worship is sacred, abstinence is good" should be understood according to the correct perspective of modern psychology, not according to the metaphysical views from thousands of years ago, when understanding Human knowledge is still very primitive and ignorant.

Correct understanding from a scientific perspective will overcome the illusory fear of "duplicate funerals". And that is the best way to have a comfortable mentality to deal with all situations that may occur in "impermanent" life.

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