So after editing the entry, I went to look up the full plotline of The Number 23. The way wiki goes through it seems interesting, but I can see how the execution of the movie could be terrible. If it were originally a book, I would read it.
Why I’m updating this now though. At the end of the wiki, there’s a list of related movies, Pi being one of them. I’ve owned Pi for years now but have never watched it. I start reading and first thing under the plot: Max Cohen (click to enlarge)
Not sure how many people recall, if any, but in kindergarten, my best friend was Max Cohen, and we’d have sleepovers and hang out all the time (for being kids, especially). He was weird like me, but he moved away (to Minnesota)the following year because his father was a missionary. I’ve always joked about how one day I’d like to find him again. Would he remember me? I just feel like that was a silly name to bump into after reading about these situations.
I don’t think I’m obsessed (yet?) but it is extremely fascinating. Here’s Wiki on “23 Enigma”
As with most numerological claims, the enigma can be viewed as an example of apophenia, selection bias, and confirmation bias. In interviews, Wilson acknowledged the self-fulfilling nature of the enigma, implying that the real value of the Laws of Fives and Twenty-threes lies in their demonstration of the mind’s power to perceive "truth" in nearly anything.
When you start looking for something you tend to find it. This wouldn’t be like Simon Newcomb, the great astronomer, who wrote a mathematical proof that <heavier than air> flight was impossible and published it a day before the Wright brothers took off. I’m talking about people who found a pattern in nature and wrote several scientific articles and got it accepted by a large part of the scientific community before it was generally agreed that there was no such pattern, it was all just selective perception."
In the Illuminatus! Trilogy, he expresses the same view: that one can find a numerological significance to anything, provided "sufficient cleverness."
Not so much that I’m actively looking for these things, but I do take notice.