On the 23 Enigma (and how human belief works)
How chaos worshippers (with the help of Princess Leia and Michael Jordan) made 23 into something special, and what it tells us about human belief.
In the latter half of the 20th century, a group of people called the Discordians discovered something magical: the Number 23. They came to call this esoteric bit of wizardry the “23 Enigma,” and pointed out that, once you start looking for it, there are all of these strange recurrences of the number 23 in the world. A small sampler:
LeBron James and Michael Jordan, the two greatest basketball players of all time, both wear the number 23 on their jersey. David Beckham, Don Mattingly, and hockey legend Bob Nystrom also wore 23.
Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times, each parent contributes 23 chromosomes to their child, William Shakespeare was born and died on April 23, Princess Leia was held in cell AA23 in the first Star Wars, Kurt Cobain was born in 1967 (1+9+6+7=23) and died in 1994 (1+9+9+4=23), Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published in 1859 (1+8+5+9=23), September 11th adds up to 23 (9+11+2+0+0+1=23), and so on.
It is at this point that I should point out that the Discordians are worshippers of chaos, that the 23 Enigma is utter bullshit, and that this is why the Discordians love it. Simply put, when you decide something is special, you start looking out for instances of its specialness, and inevitably, you find them. The universe is immense, complex, and chaotic, and our attention can only focus on so many things at a time, so if you start looking for a pattern, you will be able to find it.
You could apply the concept to anything: there are masses of people (not all necessarily gullible or stupid) who believe in a concept called synchronicity, which is when a series of seemingly connected coincidences occur in what feels like a meaningful way. The concept is used by many as a proof of God: “Well, if the universe has no meaning, explain this unbelievable coincidence.”
This is why fundamentalist Christians see “666” everywhere, why theists find infinite instances of God’s benevolence and mercy, why atheists find infinite signs of a supposed God's cruelty and wrath. We all tend to find what we’re looking for. In reality, we are beings with an extremely finite capacity (about 120 bits per second, according to some fairly reliable research) for absorbing the nearly infinite amount of information the universe throws at us. Our minds have necessarily evolved mechanisms for selecting which bits of information are important.
The ability to separate the important information from the irrelevant information would have been very useful for literally every form of life — creatures that spend all of their time reveling in awe at the oneness of the universe make for excellent and easy snacks — which means that this ability is not only innately human, but innate in organic life itself. It is, in no small part, responsible for our very existence.
But it also means that the mechanisms that developed this selectiveness came before higher level rational thinking. So our supposedly rational minds still select the focal points of their attention using arcane, reptilian, even amoeban tools. Our pretensions at rationality are, at best, only partly true, and at worst, are totally delusional. It’s helpful to identify patterns in an environment: you could use those patterns to deduce a new way to get food, learning a sexy fellow creature’s patterns might help you to seduce them, and knowing the patterns in how certain predators or rivals attack could help you defend against them. We got really good at finding meaningful patterns, but our success rate never hit 100%: some of the patterns really were meaningless.
Tinker Bell Beliefs
This is where the 23 Enigma takes a weird twist, though: Even though the Discordians were just trying to prove a point about the randomness of consciousness and attention, they ended up making 23 special to a lot of people. You can find hundreds of little spots on the internet where people talk about the importance of 23, not realizing that the entire concept was made up by chaos worshippers trying to prove a point about selection bias. There are even two movies about people who are obsessed with the number 23, including a very bad one starring Jim Carrey.
But all the attention the Discordians brought to 23 actually made 23 kind of special special. Enough kids grew up worshipping Michael Jordan or LeBron James or Princess Leia that 23 has retained a childlike mysticism as they age — indeed, when I was working as a listicle (or, less generously, clickbait) writer, we had data showing that 23 was the most effective number of items in a list if we wanted to garner clicks. There were lots of theories as to why, but mine, that is was an instance of the esoteric “23 enigma” manifested by chaos worshippers, was the least marketable to potential advertisers.
You do not need to believe in numerology for this to work on you. If this article leaves enough of an impression on you, the next time you see the number 23, you’ll notice it. If I hadn’t drawn your attention to the trick, you might even begin to see some meaning in it, and decide it is a lucky number.
This exposes a strange quirk in how human belief works: sometimes, when you believe in something that is factually false, the way you act can actually turn the belief into something real.
The comedian Patton Oswalt does a bit about this regarding religion (listen to the full thing below) where he talks about how, if he believed that there was a giant invisible anus hovering over him that would suck him up to be devoured by shit pirahnas if he did anything bad, then it would probably make him behave really well in the real world.
Does that mean there’s an actual invisible anus? NO. But would the belief in the invisible anus influence his actions? Yes!
Beliefs, like Tinker Bell, get stronger and more real the more people believe in them. This does not mean beliefs are stupid. To Oswalt’s point — if you have to believe in the invisible anus to be kind to people… I guess go ahead and believe in the invisible anus?
The issue lies in the fact that many people don’t realize that their core beliefs, the things that guide their moral actions, are really just 23 enigmas and invisible anuses. This leads to fundamentalism and zealotry and, rather than simply guiding the individual toward moral action, their beliefs become something they use to control and destroy others. This is true of everyone who takes their beliefs too seriously, even atheists1.
Catmas vs. Dogmas
The problem is, because humans have become so heavily reliant on our meaningful patterns, suggesting that our patterns aren’t inherently meaningful makes us fall into indecision, stagnation, and depression.
The good news is that the chaos worshippers also had a solution for this.
The Discordians talk about adopting “catmas” rather than “dogmas.” A catma, they say, is a rigidly held belief that is to be abandoned the moment it stops being convenient.
The reason they promote catmas instead of dogmas is because they recognize that a human’s capacity to understand the universe is finite, and the belief systems we construct are by their nature incomplete. They also acknowledge that we need these belief systems to survive, so we can hardly abandon them.
The point then, is to never take our beliefs too seriously, to never confuse what we find special or interesting (whether that’s your lucky numbers, your astrological sign, or the hanging of bones over your door to ward off evil) with actual reality.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
-Philip K. Dick
But the fact that our beliefs aren’t 100% reflective of reality doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with them. Christianity, bless its black little heart, still has some fantastic art and music, and paganism, with its emphasis on nature and flame, is a fun excuse to go outside and roast marshmallows over ghost stories.
The universe is nearly infinite, and our capacity to understand it is extremely finite. Our options, then, are:
Deny that fact and claim that, if we don’t yet understand everything, someone does, and submit our will to them.
Fall into despair.
Just have some fucking fun in all the chaos.
It does not seem like a hard choice to me.
Maybe a topic for another article, but I’ve seen plenty of instances in which atheists side with violence, cruelty, misogyny, and imperialism because they perceive that it aligns with their viewpoints. Christopher Hitchens, the most famous atheist of recent decades, was an advocate for the Iraq War and said women couldn’t be funny.