100 euro bill (s) a.k.a. trip to Milan

So I was in Milan last weekend, catching up with my brother and friends. We went out and had some meals. So far so good, nothing worthy of a medium story, right. But guess what happened then? Both of those restaurants came back with exactly the same bill: one hundred euros. Getting a bill of exactly 100 euros once is kind of funny, you laugh, point it out and brush it off quickly as you need to check your Facebook feed for funny cat versus cucumber videos. But getting it twice in a row, in two different restaurants, lunch versus dinner, 5 versus 3 people, 10+ items on the menu, so many possible combinations. Now that is freaky!

So it made me think. What is the lesson here. It got my attention, but what is the lesson, what am I missing. Is it my glorious past of 100 country project that restaurant god is referring to. Is it some unwritten Milan restaurant rule that you don’t let your guests leave until they hit 100. Has someone in the group been secretly counting away to make sure that we hit the freaky 100. It had to planned, someone was definitely playing us. This can not be a coincidence…

Or is it. Then I remembered that I read a smart book recently that talks about logical fallacy. Key take out from it was focused on this little nugget of wisdom: “Correlation does not imply causation”. Just because two “significant” events happen in similar circumstances, it does not mean that one caused the other or that there is any link between the two.

We are drawn to extremes, things that stand out, things out of ordinary. It’s our instinct to pay attention to broken patterns, back in the day it might have been reflection of the cave lions tooth in mountain valley. Paying attention to abnormalities saves lives. The problem is that our brains are not very good at distinguishing between useful abnormalities and abnormalities that just don’t matter. If it glows, peaks, shines, breaks or otherwise stands out, we are wired to pay attention. So after reflecting on the two bill situation I’ve calmly concluded that there is no conspiracy going on. It is just a plain old coincidence. The story is, there is no story.

Sometimes, a bill is just a bill.