I hear you there, it's not even just used in woo.. sometimes people will also use it to mean that someone is guilty, by coincidence, even without evidence, as they do not believe in there being such a thing as coincidence. I've mostly seen this play out in TV shows, but I've seen people make simliar arguments in real life. "There are no coincidences, so that person mush actually have been guilty of the crime!" Etc, etc.
How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?
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I hear you there, it's not even just used in woo.. sometimes people will also use it to mean that someone is guilty, by coincidence, even without evidence, as they do not believe in there being such a thing as coincidence. I've mostly seen this play out in TV shows, but I've seen people make simliar arguments in real life. "There are no coincidences, so that person mush actually have been guilty of the crime!" Etc, etc.
Teapots Happen
Student
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heh. I came searching this board out today, specifically to see how the topic of 'synchronicity' was handled here.
And of course, the very top post in the forum when I arrived was this one … what a coincidence!
(And then as I was wondering if I really wanted to out myself as a potential nutcase to a hive of hardened disbelievers, my registration captcha code was "crazies goodman" ... hmmm, "crazy is good, man?" lol ...)
OK, now to bare my soft underbelly for the knives ...
I am 32 years old. I was raised Catholic, became an atheist in 9th grade, and in college got heavily into atheist/skeptic/humanist activism, and basically made atheism into my major (philosophy/religious studies/rhetoric).
Today, I still do not have belief in any God or gods, and I still consider myself a skeptic.
But I believe in synchronicity.
Yes, I am well aware of confirmation bias, the law of hugeariffic numbers, etc. Yes, I know how many "things happen" every day, most of which we don't notice.
And I am open to synchronicity being caused, or made possible, by "purely material" means … but I think the universe is incredibly more interconnected and complex than the simplistic, reductionist billiard-ball physics model - so much moreso that it is indistinguishable from "magic" (like Clarke's hypothetical alien technology).
I think that synchronicity is a consequence of this complexity and interconnectedness - an effect made possible by the artificiality of the boundaries we define things by - between mind and matter, present and past, etc. (I don't want to get into all that here, but you know the kinda stuff I mean - frontier physics of the sort that the New Agers love to parade about.)
Now, I didn’t go from “all spirituality & weird beliefs are a crutch for the weak-minded” to belief in synchronicity just by thinking about it, of course. It had to wallop me in the head.
So here’s what happened.
First, my skepticism ate itself.
I had laboriously created a incredible deconstruction machine capable of shredding any belief system I came across. Eventually, like Frankenstein’s monster, it turned on me – and I found out that I had no better claim to objectivity and Truth than those I had so loved to tear apart. Basically I came to realize that reason alone was insufficient as a guide for living, and that pretending that it was (and that I was an Objective Rational Agent) left me in no better a position than anyone else. (I don’t want to get too deeply into this here – just mentioning it as a part of my experience/history.)
This was a problem I was struggling with quite actively when the next thing happened:
I had a mystical experience.
If you’re not familiar with the term, dig into it some before reading on (just google “mystical experience” – or even seek out the essay titled “Can an Atheist Have a Religious Experience“) – it is a specific kind of experience that happens in similar ways across times and cultures, although the means of getting there and the modes of interpreting the experience vary considerably.
For me, the means of getting there involved a small dose of LSD and a 10-mile nature hike in some of the most stunning scenery in the United States.
Yes, I was ‘on drugs’ when I experienced the “oneness of all things” and became convinced that that “everything was good/god.” Yes, I was also under the influence of profound natural beauty and a mind reeling about, seeking some meaning, some way of knowing Truth. Yes, I understand why many of you are grinning a bit already, seeing just how easy it will be to mockingly debunk this tale.
Hey, I was skeptical, too.
As I came down from the acid trip, whipping through a redwood forest in a rental car at speeds that would have certainly resulted in a crash under sober conditions, I pondered the “take away” lessons that were sticking with me as I slowly returned to a more baseline state of mind.
Primary among them was “intuition can be trusted – and should be trusted.”
This was a hard pill to swallow – because “intuition” has always seemed like a sneaky way of saying “faith” – and “faith” to me had always been little more than “believing what you know ain’t true.” My rational mind didn’t want to hear about it, but the experience I had just had left me with such a deep, firm belief in intuition that I couldn’t simply push it out of my mind.
So I found myself deeply conflicted, trying to reconcile what I had experienced and believed during my mystical experience with my lifelong habit of doubting and dismissing everything and anything of that nature.
The mystical experience happened on the last day of my vacation in California. The next night I was back home in Minneapolis, still trying to make sense of what I had experienced, and still trying to make sense of the idea that I should/could follow intuition.
And it was then that I experienced “synchronicity.”
I went to a thrift store with a few friends, and as I went through the store I felt plugged in to that mystical headspace that gave more credence to intuition than reason, as I enjoyed scouring through the random items seeking out something special.
Oddly, I found myself drawn into the “housewares” section, which I usually just skipped. An old vintage aluminum teapot up on the top shelf caught my eye. I found myself strangely taken with it, although it was missing the basket for tea leaves, and I did not drink tea or collect things like it.
I put it into our shared cart, assuming it was a passing fancy and I'd weed it out before we left.
But when the time came to sort through the items I’d picked up, I was still powerfully attracted to the teapot. It bothered me a bit, because I didn’t understand why. I even talked about it to my friends, saying,
“I don’t know why I like this so much … I just feel like I want it in my house.”
Finally, I just decided to buy it, since I had vowed to follow my intuition after my mystical experience … and my intuition seemed deadset on this stupid teapot. (Besides, it was less than a dollar!)
So I took it home with me.
And for the next week or so, I tried to get something magical out of that teapot to justify my intuitive attraction to it. I looked it up online, thinking maybe it was somehow valuable or rare or special. I brewed instant tea in it and drank it. I showed it to people who came over, thinking perhaps it would mean something to someone.
But nothing came from it, and after several days the teapot wound up sitting in my kitchen almost forgotten. I mostly put it out of my mind, feeling a bit foolish for investing energy into a fool’s errand, for buying into a drug-based belief in magical meaning and faith.
Then I bought my house.
I had been renting the place for eight years, and had found out that winter that it was going to be sold – I could either buy it myself, or move out. This had been a huge dilemma for me – as a young punk rocker, I’d never considered myself the home owner type - and the notion of that kind of debt scared the hell out of me.
But … this was one of the things that I had been reassured about, during my mystical experience – I had been deeply convinced that it was OK to buy the house, to change into someone that I had never thought I’d be, to let go of the ideas of myself that had defined me as a younger man. When I’d left for California, I was still on the fence – when I returned, I was committed to buying the house, thanks to the same experience that had left me pondering intuition as a guide to navigating reality.
So I signed the paperwork, and became the proud owner of a large new debt and a small old house.
That same night, it occurred to me that I had never explored the crawlspace under the back stairs.
This was very strange – not only had I lived there for years, but I had been an incredibly active “urban explorer” for that entire time – defining myself heavily by my exploration of underground, off limits, and forgotten places. Tunnels, caves, attics, pipechases … and of course, crawlspaces. I couldn’t visit a friend in an old apartment building without trying to get into the basement’s off limit spaces … yet I had never even tried to explore the hidden space under my own house.
So I decided it was time – it would help cement my ownership of the house somehow, perhaps …
I dug out a flashlight and a dust mask, and opened up the crawlspace access panel, while my friend/roommate/fellow explorer Mark took photos (thinking it might make for a humorous “mission” on my exploration website).
The floor of the crawlspace was dirt, with an old plastic sheet laid over it. As I slid over it, I felt a hard bump against my thigh – something solid was underneath me in the soil. So I pulled back the plastic a bit, and snaked my arm beneath it, finding something rough buried down there, with a rounded surface coming through to the surface.
It didn’t take long before I dug it out and pulled it from beneath the plastic to find … the exact same teapot I had just purchased, with dirt and white aluminum corrosion pouring from its spout.
(photo of the teapots at actionsquad.org/images/teapot11.jpg)
My mind reeled in the aftermath, as the import of this coincidence slowly sunk in.
Now, you can try to explain this all away however you’d like, but for me, the message was, and remains, clear:
My “mystical insight” regarding intuition was valid. The universe – even if purely causal and material, is indeed interconnected, complex, and mysterious enough to be indistinguishable from ‘magic’ ...
Reality is ‘magical.’ ‘Synchronicity’ is real.
And teapots happen.
It would be irrational for me to deny it.
YMMV. I suspect that it will.
And of course, the very top post in the forum when I arrived was this one … what a coincidence!
(And then as I was wondering if I really wanted to out myself as a potential nutcase to a hive of hardened disbelievers, my registration captcha code was "crazies goodman" ... hmmm, "crazy is good, man?" lol ...)
OK, now to bare my soft underbelly for the knives ...
I am 32 years old. I was raised Catholic, became an atheist in 9th grade, and in college got heavily into atheist/skeptic/humanist activism, and basically made atheism into my major (philosophy/religious studies/rhetoric).
Today, I still do not have belief in any God or gods, and I still consider myself a skeptic.
But I believe in synchronicity.
Yes, I am well aware of confirmation bias, the law of hugeariffic numbers, etc. Yes, I know how many "things happen" every day, most of which we don't notice.
And I am open to synchronicity being caused, or made possible, by "purely material" means … but I think the universe is incredibly more interconnected and complex than the simplistic, reductionist billiard-ball physics model - so much moreso that it is indistinguishable from "magic" (like Clarke's hypothetical alien technology).
I think that synchronicity is a consequence of this complexity and interconnectedness - an effect made possible by the artificiality of the boundaries we define things by - between mind and matter, present and past, etc. (I don't want to get into all that here, but you know the kinda stuff I mean - frontier physics of the sort that the New Agers love to parade about.)
Now, I didn’t go from “all spirituality & weird beliefs are a crutch for the weak-minded” to belief in synchronicity just by thinking about it, of course. It had to wallop me in the head.
So here’s what happened.
First, my skepticism ate itself.
I had laboriously created a incredible deconstruction machine capable of shredding any belief system I came across. Eventually, like Frankenstein’s monster, it turned on me – and I found out that I had no better claim to objectivity and Truth than those I had so loved to tear apart. Basically I came to realize that reason alone was insufficient as a guide for living, and that pretending that it was (and that I was an Objective Rational Agent) left me in no better a position than anyone else. (I don’t want to get too deeply into this here – just mentioning it as a part of my experience/history.)
This was a problem I was struggling with quite actively when the next thing happened:
I had a mystical experience.
If you’re not familiar with the term, dig into it some before reading on (just google “mystical experience” – or even seek out the essay titled “Can an Atheist Have a Religious Experience“) – it is a specific kind of experience that happens in similar ways across times and cultures, although the means of getting there and the modes of interpreting the experience vary considerably.
For me, the means of getting there involved a small dose of LSD and a 10-mile nature hike in some of the most stunning scenery in the United States.
Yes, I was ‘on drugs’ when I experienced the “oneness of all things” and became convinced that that “everything was good/god.” Yes, I was also under the influence of profound natural beauty and a mind reeling about, seeking some meaning, some way of knowing Truth. Yes, I understand why many of you are grinning a bit already, seeing just how easy it will be to mockingly debunk this tale.
Hey, I was skeptical, too.
As I came down from the acid trip, whipping through a redwood forest in a rental car at speeds that would have certainly resulted in a crash under sober conditions, I pondered the “take away” lessons that were sticking with me as I slowly returned to a more baseline state of mind.
Primary among them was “intuition can be trusted – and should be trusted.”
This was a hard pill to swallow – because “intuition” has always seemed like a sneaky way of saying “faith” – and “faith” to me had always been little more than “believing what you know ain’t true.” My rational mind didn’t want to hear about it, but the experience I had just had left me with such a deep, firm belief in intuition that I couldn’t simply push it out of my mind.
So I found myself deeply conflicted, trying to reconcile what I had experienced and believed during my mystical experience with my lifelong habit of doubting and dismissing everything and anything of that nature.
The mystical experience happened on the last day of my vacation in California. The next night I was back home in Minneapolis, still trying to make sense of what I had experienced, and still trying to make sense of the idea that I should/could follow intuition.
And it was then that I experienced “synchronicity.”
I went to a thrift store with a few friends, and as I went through the store I felt plugged in to that mystical headspace that gave more credence to intuition than reason, as I enjoyed scouring through the random items seeking out something special.
Oddly, I found myself drawn into the “housewares” section, which I usually just skipped. An old vintage aluminum teapot up on the top shelf caught my eye. I found myself strangely taken with it, although it was missing the basket for tea leaves, and I did not drink tea or collect things like it.
I put it into our shared cart, assuming it was a passing fancy and I'd weed it out before we left.
But when the time came to sort through the items I’d picked up, I was still powerfully attracted to the teapot. It bothered me a bit, because I didn’t understand why. I even talked about it to my friends, saying,
“I don’t know why I like this so much … I just feel like I want it in my house.”
Finally, I just decided to buy it, since I had vowed to follow my intuition after my mystical experience … and my intuition seemed deadset on this stupid teapot. (Besides, it was less than a dollar!)
So I took it home with me.
And for the next week or so, I tried to get something magical out of that teapot to justify my intuitive attraction to it. I looked it up online, thinking maybe it was somehow valuable or rare or special. I brewed instant tea in it and drank it. I showed it to people who came over, thinking perhaps it would mean something to someone.
But nothing came from it, and after several days the teapot wound up sitting in my kitchen almost forgotten. I mostly put it out of my mind, feeling a bit foolish for investing energy into a fool’s errand, for buying into a drug-based belief in magical meaning and faith.
Then I bought my house.
I had been renting the place for eight years, and had found out that winter that it was going to be sold – I could either buy it myself, or move out. This had been a huge dilemma for me – as a young punk rocker, I’d never considered myself the home owner type - and the notion of that kind of debt scared the hell out of me.
But … this was one of the things that I had been reassured about, during my mystical experience – I had been deeply convinced that it was OK to buy the house, to change into someone that I had never thought I’d be, to let go of the ideas of myself that had defined me as a younger man. When I’d left for California, I was still on the fence – when I returned, I was committed to buying the house, thanks to the same experience that had left me pondering intuition as a guide to navigating reality.
So I signed the paperwork, and became the proud owner of a large new debt and a small old house.
That same night, it occurred to me that I had never explored the crawlspace under the back stairs.
This was very strange – not only had I lived there for years, but I had been an incredibly active “urban explorer” for that entire time – defining myself heavily by my exploration of underground, off limits, and forgotten places. Tunnels, caves, attics, pipechases … and of course, crawlspaces. I couldn’t visit a friend in an old apartment building without trying to get into the basement’s off limit spaces … yet I had never even tried to explore the hidden space under my own house.
So I decided it was time – it would help cement my ownership of the house somehow, perhaps …
I dug out a flashlight and a dust mask, and opened up the crawlspace access panel, while my friend/roommate/fellow explorer Mark took photos (thinking it might make for a humorous “mission” on my exploration website).
The floor of the crawlspace was dirt, with an old plastic sheet laid over it. As I slid over it, I felt a hard bump against my thigh – something solid was underneath me in the soil. So I pulled back the plastic a bit, and snaked my arm beneath it, finding something rough buried down there, with a rounded surface coming through to the surface.
It didn’t take long before I dug it out and pulled it from beneath the plastic to find … the exact same teapot I had just purchased, with dirt and white aluminum corrosion pouring from its spout.
(photo of the teapots at actionsquad.org/images/teapot11.jpg)
My mind reeled in the aftermath, as the import of this coincidence slowly sunk in.
Now, you can try to explain this all away however you’d like, but for me, the message was, and remains, clear:
My “mystical insight” regarding intuition was valid. The universe – even if purely causal and material, is indeed interconnected, complex, and mysterious enough to be indistinguishable from ‘magic’ ...
Reality is ‘magical.’ ‘Synchronicity’ is real.
And teapots happen.
It would be irrational for me to deny it.
YMMV. I suspect that it will.
Last edited:
Blackwell
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2005
- Messages
- 1,293
Hey there, TH; welcome to the forum!
Interesting story, and well written. Thanks for posting it. (Although I find it hard to believe that in eight years, you never once checked out that crawlspace...)
I like your site. Urban exploring is pretty fascinating. I wish there were locations like that near where I live in SoCal.
Interesting story, and well written. Thanks for posting it. (Although I find it hard to believe that in eight years, you never once checked out that crawlspace...)
I like your site. Urban exploring is pretty fascinating. I wish there were locations like that near where I live in SoCal.
Third Eye Open
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2008
- Messages
- 1,400
/snip ...
Reality is ‘magical.’ ‘Synchronicity’ is real.
And teapots happen.
It would be irrational for me to deny it.
YMMV. I suspect that it will.
So, to summarize:
You took some acid, bought a teapot, found the same model teapot in your attic, and now believe in magic.
Teapots Happen
Student
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2009
- Messages
- 38
Yeah - the fact I never went in there was part of the weirdness for me, looking back ... it was very, very odd, and it's easy to think that this was "for a reason" - namely, so that the teapot thing could happen.
(which is nonsensical to believe without also believing that there is some conscious intent or plan behind these things, I know ... I guess although I don't have any specific beliefs about how/why these things happen, I AM open to all kinds of possibilities perhaps being true ... )
But even if I'd opened up the hatch at some point, I would not have seen the teapot - it was literally buried, and beneath an opaque plastic sheet.
(which is nonsensical to believe without also believing that there is some conscious intent or plan behind these things, I know ... I guess although I don't have any specific beliefs about how/why these things happen, I AM open to all kinds of possibilities perhaps being true ... )
But even if I'd opened up the hatch at some point, I would not have seen the teapot - it was literally buried, and beneath an opaque plastic sheet.
Teapots Happen
Student
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- 38
heh, if you insist.
Pretty narrow-minded for a fellow with your screen name though, aintcha?
StanBearclaw
Muse
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- Messages
- 967
Before you solved the mystery of the teapot, you felt like it had some sort of major significance, right? Did you write about it at all, post about it on your livejournal...something? Anything to prove that you didn't stumble upon a coincidence, then filled in the pieces later?
Also, it seems like that's a pretty common model. I'm just eyeballing them, but it looks like of the 42 results on eBay for aluminum teapot, two of them are matches to yours.
Item 1
Item 2
Also, it seems like that's a pretty common model. I'm just eyeballing them, but it looks like of the 42 results on eBay for aluminum teapot, two of them are matches to yours.
Item 1
Item 2
Careyp74
Illuminator
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- 3,432
And to think, all those chains of events, just to have a couple of crummy teapots.
Teapots Happen
Student
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2009
- Messages
- 38
I'm not really expecting this to be "proof" for other people (thus the "YMMV") - but yes, I do have three witnesses who saw me struggle with my decision to buy it, several people who came by and witnessed me struggling to understand why I had, and a witness who was with when I found the second one buried.
Nothing in writing, sadly - but it happened to me and it changed me significantly - trust me, I went over the whole sequence carefully trying to figure out where it somehow might have been less weird than it seemed. I had a very hard time integrating this experience - it took me months to get to the point I was able/willing to write it all down (in an email to a member of my former campus atheist group, actually).
Part of that process was "well it must be a really common model" ... and yes, it IS somewhat common - but given the circumstances surrounding both my purchase of the first one and my finding of the second one, it's simply not relevant to me.
The point isn't that they were super rare and I wound up with two - it was that I was drawn to one by strange intuition, which turned out to be the same as the one that had been buried under my house all along.
Timing and context - especially subjective context - is impossible to factor into a calculation of the probability (which is how many skeptics prefer to examine coincidences) but it is nonetheless vital to the personal experience and interpretation of such events, in my opinion.
Careyp74
Illuminator
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I would say that he shouldn't have to answer that question on this thread, since it really doesn't have anything to do with the argument.
If someone throws out 20 sixes, I WOULD SAY THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE DICE.
There I said it. Now let me tell you why it doesn't matter.
Many of the arguments about chance use the dice, penny, or slot machine comparison wrongly, as explained in the previous posts that you are replying to. That is the point. Not whether or not 20 6's are going to come out.
Careyp74
Illuminator
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- 3,432
Man, it must be difficult to take a step back for a second and think about whether or not this all could just be a coincidence, since it happened to you, and you don't want to be a let down to the mystical forces that drove you to that teapot.
cyborg
deus ex machina
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- Messages
- 4,981
I think there's a pretty strong psychological disinclination towards thinking of an emotionally signiciant event as not having an emotionally driven reason behind it; hence one tends to ampromorphise the physics of the situation as if the physical laws of the universe had conspired to allow the event to occur just for you.
No one goes around thinking, "that was an entirely unremarkable and emotionally neutral purchase of a chocolate bar, presumably there is a deep seated reason why the universe allowed that purchase to be so regular."
No one goes around thinking, "that was an entirely unremarkable and emotionally neutral purchase of a chocolate bar, presumably there is a deep seated reason why the universe allowed that purchase to be so regular."
Last edited:
StanBearclaw
Muse
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2009
- Messages
- 967
Well, I doubt you'll be able to convince people here it's anything but a coincidence. That said, it's still a neat story and should earn a spot on one of the pages the OP posted. It beats the pants off this one:
http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/143960.html
ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
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Creepy her not being dead and all.
ponderingturtle
Orthogonal Vector
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I am reminded of the test done on the apolo missions to test psychic powers. It turns out that one of the participants had something like a 1 in 10,000 chance of the results he achieved. Yep it was incredibly unlikely he would miss that many of them by pure chance, so this is good evidence for psychic powers.
Dr H
Muse
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This sort of coincidence probably occurs much more frequently than you realize. You just don't tend to notice it as often when the word is "the" or "car", as you would if the word happened to be "sesquipedalian" or "fandangle."
StanBearclaw
Muse
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The rabbit hole goes deeper, my friend. I think I'm starting to become convinced. Check out what I just found:
http://ofscarabs.blogspot.com/2009/03/three-maxes.html
Careyp74
Illuminator
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woah, right after texting my wife telling her our dog, MAX, did good today (didn't poop inside) I logged back on here and found out that Teapot's name is Max, and read the story of the Three Maxs. Oh, and I have tea in my pocket from taking it out of the cafeteria so that I can enjoy it tonight.
StanBearclaw
Muse
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I'm FREAKIN out, man!
Careyp74
Illuminator
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Part of the problem is that the brain can easily play these tricks on you. In one experiment many people were shown videos of things, and when asked questions about it, gave details that didn't happen. When shown this, they went over and over in their head, and swore the film was doctored for the second time. They could even picture what they described happening in the film, but, it didn't really happen.