23 enigma

The number 23 appears in the practice of numerology.

Discordianism

The "23 Enigma" is the Discordian belief that all events are connected to the number 23, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter. It can be seen in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus! trilogy (there called the "23/17 phenomenon"), Wilson's Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (there called "The Law of 23s" and "The 23 Enigma"), Arthur Koestler's Challenge of Chance, as well as the Principia Discordia. In these works, 23 is considered either lucky, unlucky, sacred to the goddess Eris, sinister, sacred to the unholy gods of the Cthulhu Mythos, or strange. Discordians regard this as a corollary of the Law of Fives. As with most numerological claims, the 23 enigma can be viewed as an example of apophenia, selection bias, and confirmation bias. In interviews, Wilson has acknowledged the self-fulfilling nature of the 23 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 Newcombe, 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."

— Robert Anton Wilson sees the clustering illusion eveywhere, not just 23, Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything, Sounds True, December 2001.

In the Illuminatus! Trilogy, he expresses the same view: that one can find a numerological significance to anything, provided "sufficient cleverness."

Film references

• The 1998 German film 23 starring August Diehl tells the story of computer hackers coming in contact with secret societies based on the number 23.

• 23 is one of the numbers that appear in the Valenzetti equation in the Lost TV series.

• The 2007 film The Number 23 starring Jim Carrey is the story of a man becoming obsessed with the number 23 after he reads a book of the same title that seems to be about his life. Jim Carrey named his production company JC23.

External links

• Beckham in his prime number
• Portal about the 23