My life's greatest mystery

[InvertMouse]

There are no ghosts or demons involved in this story, but I swear by the boobies that this really happened.

 

When I was about six, my parents bought me a copy of the Doraemon game for the gameboy. I grew up in Hong Kong, so Japanese titles were easily accessible. Anyway, it was just a standard game I enjoyed for a while.

 

Like a lot of other kids, I grew up being pretty sloppy, so at some point, I lost my copy of the game. Maybe I lent it to a friend and then forgot about it. It never upset me too much.

 

Then one morning, I opened my drawer to find not one copy of the game, but three of them. If it happened to me today, I would probably freak out. For some reason, in my six to seven year old mind, I just thought, "Oh, how interesting."

 

How did it happen? I had an older brother and older sister, so did their friends lend us multiple copies of the game or something? Neither of them were gamers, though. I asked them as well as my parents, but none of them had an explanation to offer.

 

This story is not meant to be scary or anything. I highly doubt some sort of ghost can actually pick up three copies of a game and dump them into my drawer. There is probably some boring explanation that had escaped my mind at the time. Back then, I had no phone to take a picture with, either, and now, I have lost all three copies of the game.

 

All right, thanks for reading! Happy to hear any theories you might have . Please feel free to share any weird stories you have here as well .

[Flutterz]

I think this video explains how it could have happened pretty well

The obvious explanation is that one simply became two and then three

[Fiddle]

Someone was probably screwing with you. This may seem unlikely, given the trouble it would take to acquire three copies of the same game, but it is for this reason that the difficulty or apparent nonsensicality of carrying out troll-like activities is directly proportional to their effectiveness.

[Nosebleed]

I had a more unfortunate version of this happen to me where all my PS2 Tomb Raider games suddenly disappeared. It was really weird because I put all my games in the same place and for 3 individual games of the same series to disappear without trace was just weird.

Not only that but I discovered they were gone when i decided to revisit Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness, the only game in the series I never beat, because I finally read online how to beat the level I was stuck on for years, but the game was nowhere to be found.

To this day I have never found them. I remember calling every single person I might have lent games to and none of them had them (I was pretty sure I never lent them to begin with).

I'm still pretty salty about it since Tomb Raider is a very nostalgic series for me (have been playing it since I was 6 years old and still have all the PS1 games) and now I don't have every single game anymore and it was something I was really proud of.

[mjriedstra]

I have no idea how three games ended up in your drawer, but as you say, there's probably some logical explanation. I'll add my own little story just for kicks.

 

When I was about seven years old, I was terrified of the dark. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and want a drink, but be too scared to get out of bed. One night when I had awoken and had been sitting at the edge of my bed for about five minutes, unwilling to take the first step, a radio turned on in the room next to mine.

 

It was my aunt's room. She was staying with us while she went to university. But in the night, listening to her radio play, I remembered that she had gone home for the summer. Nobody was in the room.

 

After about twenty minutes of being stuck halfway between horror and curiosity, I worked up every ounce of courage in my body and went into her room. I turned on the light and looked around.

 

There was nothing strange in the room. The radio was playing happily. It had a mechanical switch that had been in the off position and had been flipped to the on position. I turned it off and went back to my bed. It took me hours to fall back asleep.

 

In the morning, and to this day, I was sure that I hadn't dreamed it. But rationally, it being a dream seems the most plausible explanation. It's also possible that the switch had been accidentally flicked to part way between on and off and a small tremor had shaken it back to on.

 

I still think about it once in a while.

[Keisuke]

Back then, I had no phone to take a picture with, either, and now, I have lost all three copies of the game.

 

Check your drawer again. You now have nine.

 

[monkeysrumble]

Damn creepy pastas. Now I won't be able to sleep. 

[Nashetania]

It's mystery, but not scary, so it should be fine 

[Eclipsed]

Then one morning, I opened my drawer to find not one copy of the game, but three of them. If it happened to me today, I would probably freak out. For some reason, in my six to seven year old mind, I just thought, "Oh, how interesting."

When I was a kid and had a tooth pulled, my parents told me to put the tooth under my pillow so the toothfairy would come overnight and give me money.

 

If that happened to me today, I'd probably be somewhat freaked out, but $$$

[Mr Poltroon]

We have quite a bit of electronic machinery at home. It is for this reason than none in this household get particularly surprised by this type of event anymore, but it's still somewhat spooky.

 

I have a DVD player that always turns itself on and off a 8:00 AM. I have no idea why. Maybe it's some sort of mysterious setting that does it.

My younger sister's TV likes to turn itself on now and then. Which is terrible depending on the volume it's at. According to my father, it's, somehow, the wires that make it happen.

Nothing beats that old coffee machine that made coffee by itself one day.

It's probably an old phone or some sort of alarm (prank?), but I swear to goodness that during the early morning, I sometimes hear a really spooky laugh come from behind me, that's my sofa and my bedside table. If my dog hadn't been in the room when I heard it for the first time, good lord I would have shouted. After that I got used to it. "Sometimes I hear a spooky laugh come from behind me in my room, nothing strange here."

 

There's probably more stuff (like my computer turning itself off for no reason and with no warning), but as you can see, these are just a bunch of electrical glitches.

[Guest]

I think this video explains how it could have happened pretty well

The obvious explanation is that one simply became two and then three

 

Would my math teacher see this, he'd have a heart attack and proceed to resurrect in order to kill this guy's entire family.

He talks about infinity like a number. Which it is not.

 

"Some scientists say ...". I don't know what scientists he's refering to but he'd better stop refering to them as they are 100% wrong. He's most likely misinterpreting things that he does not understand.

[Zodai]

I should probably be following this thread.

[mjriedstra]

Would my math teacher see this, he'd have a heart attack and proceed to resurrect in order to kill this guy's entire family.

He talks about infinity like a number. Which it is not.

 

"Some scientists say ...". I don't know what scientists he's refering to but he'd better stop refering to them as they are 100% wrong. He's most likely misinterpreting things that he does not understand.

 

For most of the video while he is dealing with theoretical constructs only, nothing that he says is incorrect. Even the idea that there are different intensities of "infinite," and that one set can be "more infinite" than another infinite set, is correct.

 

Where it gets pretty questionable is where they try to apply it to the real world. While it's true that we don't understand everything about how the universe functions, if it were possible to turn one of something into two identical versions of the same thing, we'd have a gross violation of the law of conservation of energy, which implies very strongly that it's impossible.

 

One possible explanation is that based on what we currently know about quantum physics, on very minuscule scales of size down at around the Planck length, it's no longer possible to distinguish one point from another, even in theory. Not just because we don't have a good enough instrument to distinguish the points, but rather that fundamental aspects of the physical universe prevent those points from being distinguished. Therefore, while the concept of mapping an uncountably infinite number of points onto the surface of a sphere makes sense in the abstract as a theory, it's very likely impossible to replicate even with the most advanced possible technology that could exist in the physical universe.

 

Fun video, though. If you like that sort of thing.

[Guest]

For most of the video while he is dealing with theoretical constructs only, nothing that he says is incorrect. Even the idea that there are different intensities of "infinite," and that one set can be "more infinite" than another infinite set, is correct.

 

One possible explanation is that based on what we currently know about quantum physics, on very minuscule scales of size down at around the Planck length, it's no longer possible to distinguish one point from another, even in theory. Not just because we don't have a good enough instrument to distinguish the points, but rather that fundamental aspects of the physical universe prevent those points from being distinguished. Therefore, while the concept of mapping an uncountably infinite number of points onto the surface of a sphere makes sense in the abstract as a theory, it's very likely impossible to replicate even with the most advanced possible technology that could exist in the physical universe.

[mjriedstra]

His demonstrations are based on the sole concept that infinity = 2*infinity meaning it's possible that 1 = 2, cause ya know infinite/infinite = 1 *Please don't beleive that*.

 

I'm overall not a fan of those "educationnal videos" at all since they appear to be done by people wanting to surprise and convince an unknowledgable audience (meaning most people are ignorant about the fundamental basics of what is being told and therefore are a lot easier to fool even if it is not intentionnal, it's possible that's he's fooling himself in the process) rather than offering serious and actually true content. Even more so then they cover concepts they have no expertise in.

 

I mean, the guy didn't even mention continuity. How the fuck can he understand a single thing.

 

Mentionning mathematics here, quantic physics is something else and for now is a matter of statistics.

 

I don't think the guy in this particular video is trying to fool people who don't understand math. He didn't come up with the concept in the video. Some respected mathematicians and even physicists have done work on the concept he describes. All he did was make some drawings to make it easier to follow the argument.

 

He actually says in the video that it's possible the paradox only "exists" in theory due to a divergence between how math describes things versus how they can exist in a practical physical reality, i.e. that they can't.

 

I agree that it's a little disingenuous that he leaves the question open to the possibility that one sphere can equal two spheres if mapped and divided properly. Everything we know about physics implies that to be impossible. But it's a fun thought experiment, and a good lesson in why "proving" something on paper shouldn't trump observable reality.

 

But math and reality disagreeing also doesn't have to mean that the math is wrong. It can mean that the math is accurately describing something which probably doesn't exist in physical reality: the ability to divide a finite object into an infinite number of pieces. It's sort of a restatement of Zeno's most famous paradox, which is also disproven by observable reality every day.

 

Having derailed the thread this far, I guess I'll steer it back to InvertMouse's story by saying that the Banach-Tarski paradox probably doesn't cover Doraemon cartridges.

[InvertMouse]

Thank you for all the responses everyone !