"Pancho" wrote in message
...

The trick is often a nuance in the way the question is asked. If you don't
spot the trick you may reproduce the question wrongly. In which case
people won't be able to answer.

An example might be that we have one birth day, which is often a traumatic
event, compared to the other 30,000 days in an average life.

So perhaps he was tricking you on the difference between a birthday
anniversary and the actual date of your birth.

By saying that we were "overcomplicating things" by trying to eliminate the
effect of neonatal death, he seemed to imply that what he was saying related
only to anniversaries of the date of birth. I got the impression (though I
never clarified it) that he meant "of the adults in this room now, there is
a higher chance of each person dying on the anniversary of his birth than on
any other day" and it sounded as if it was a natural-causes effect which was
outside the person's control ie not accidents while drunk at your birthday
party, and not suicide on your birthday or the "desperately staying alive
till it's my birthday" effect. And it was "so very obvious". Either a
wind-up or some very weird factor that even
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_effect doesn't mention.