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The number 23 appears in the practice of numerology. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... 23 (twenty-three) is the natural number following 22 and preceding 24. ... Numerology is any of many systems, traditions or beliefs in a mystical or esoteric relationship between numbers and physical objects or living things. ...

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 (they're called the "23/17 phenomenon"), Wilson's Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (they're 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. Discordianism is a modern, chaos-centered religion founded circa 1958–1959 by Malaclypse the Younger with the publication of its principal text, the Principia Discordia. ... Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson or RAW (January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was a prolific American novelist, essayist, philosopher, psychologist, futurologist, anarchist, and conspiracy theory researcher. ... Robert Joseph Shea (1933 - March 10, 1994) was the co-author (with Robert Anton Wilson) of The Illuminatus! Trilogy. ... “Illuminatus” redirects here. ... Arthur Koestler (September 5, 1905, Budapest – March 3, 1983, London) was a Hungarian polymath who became a naturalized British subject. ... The Loompanics Yellow Cover combined 4th & 5th Edition Principia Discordia, (1979). ... Eris (ca. ... Cthulhu and Rlyeh The Cthulhu Mythos encompasses the shared elements, characters, settings, and themes in the works of H. P. Lovecraft and associated horror fiction writers. ... Discordianism is a modern, chaos-centered religion founded circa 1958–1959 by Malaclypse the Younger with the publication of its principal text, the Principia Discordia. ... Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. ... Selection bias is the error of distorting a statistical analysis by pre- or post-selecting the samples. ... It has been suggested that Myside bias be merged into this article or section. ...

"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 everywhere, 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."^{[citation needed]} The clustering illusion is the natural human tendency to see patterns where actually none exist. ...

Film and TV references

• The 1998 German film 23, starring August Diehl, tells the real-life story of computer hackers inspired by Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy.
• The 2007 film The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey, is the story of a man becoming obsessed with the number 23 while he reads a book of the same title that seems to be about his life. Jim Carrey named his production company JC23.

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