How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

[StanBearclaw]

Anyone else have any (de)formative experiences with hallucinogens? I had a bad trip on Salvia (of all things) that had me really screwed up for a couple months.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

So again, I ask, how would you ever test the hypothesis that there is such a thing as synchronicity?

Well, since there is no such thing as synchronicity, I don't think you can.

However, you would at least have to define what it means and what it requires.

For example, if you predicted that you could throw a die 20 times and get all heads, you could test that prediction.

If you simply wait until something that seems like synchronicity happens and then ask what are the odds of that happening, you're just committing the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy (and, as I've pointed out, I could do the exact same thing with ANY outcome).

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I've already been through this, but let's simplify: If you flip a coin 10 times, it would be surprising if you didn't obtain at least 2 heads and tails. The odds of getting all heads or tails, or even nine heads or tails, is slim, as the probability of a 10-0 mix or a 9-1 mix totals only 2.15%. In your world, though, a 10-0 mix or a 9-1 mix wouldn't faze you. In fact, you evidently wouldn't be fazed by a coin being flipped 1000 times with a 1000-0 or 999-1 mix.

Not if that anecdote were taken from the sum total of everything that all humans on the entire planet do. And that's what reporting such an event after the fact is. In fact, the law of truly large numbers tells us that very unusual and improbable events are expected to happen all the time--especially when you consider all the people on the planet and everything they could possible do (and you don't define ahead of time which of these unusual or improbable events you will find significant).

However, if you say, "I'll get all heads in the next 20 coin tosses" and proceed to do just that, I would find that significant.

If Mildred Ames from Upper Teaneck, NJ reports that in 1953, she flipped a coin 20 times and got all heads, it would not impress me in the least. You, however, would report it as an example of synchronicity.

 

[quarky]

Teapot, you had me pretty excited when you mentioned lsd, and I read your whole tale.
Frankly, I was disapointed with the teapots. I would hold out for something stronger, or try a bigger dose and report back.

What about the state of mental quiet, and the realization that it is the default awareness of all creatures simultaneously? In the shared background state, everything happens in the same moment?

Is this what acid and synchronicity have come to? Teapots?
Is it too late to mention that there was a hand-written note, to you, in the teapot you dug up? If so, I'll hang in there with you.

 

[fromdownunder]

Thanks for asking - because it WAS a very meaningful experience for me. it solidified my fragile, nascent belief in a universe that is 'indistinguishable from magical,' in which intuition can be a useful, and even rational guide to follow.

The teapots were an anchor that helped me make a very difficult paradigm shift, away from my deeply-entrenched reductionist, fundamentalist rationalism. Without such concrete 'evidence' in favor of the perspective that I'd found while on acid, it is almost certain that I would have quickly slid back into my previous outlook, in which everything was meaningless, and all coincidences were "mere."

Now when a coincidence happens - I notice. I laugh out loud, with deep, genuine pleasure - because it seems like maybe, just maybe - the universe is winking at me, and laughing along. And it feels good to laugh like that ... much, much better than the cynical snickering that I'd specialized in before.

Even without holding any specific beliefs, even though still an atheist ... being open to the possibility of meaningfulness in this world really is a gift that I am grateful for.

<ugh there's much more to be said than that I guess, but that's the gist of it and I gotta stop typing before my GF beats me.>

OK, I am comfortable with that explanation, thanks.

Things happen that make us think. I am fine with that. Just keep thinking, and stick to the middle ground. Extremism in any form (and I truly think you tried too hard to take an extreme view with your "deeply-entrenched reductionist, fundamentalist rationalism") can lead to equally bad conclusions.

So, have fun, enjoy life, and stay rational.

Norm

 

[Dogdoctor]

Once I was camping out with my parents on the mountain in the middle of the island I lived on. Well not really camping but staying in cabins up there without electricity. I decided this is boring and told my folks I was going to hitchhike back home and did. I had to walk several miles in addition to getting several rides and the last mile from the main road up to my house. Walking along I was tired and beginning to second guess myself. I was thinking "what the heck am I going to do now, with no car and no money?" Right at that precise moment while hanging my head and looking dejectedly at the ground I found a five dollar bill. I was suddenly much happier since that was enough for a case of beer and a pack of cigarettes. I get home and call some friends with cars but none of them are home so once again I am sad but right then there is a knock on the door. One of my friends happened to be driving by and heard the music from my room and knew my family was supposed to be gone. PARTY TIME!!!

 

[shandyjan]

To Teapots happen So can I ask, when you first met your landlord..is there a chance you saw that teapot in the house or with him and just didnt notice it...but the heightened senses during LSD registered it when you saw the teapot for sale?

 

[Rodney]

Well, since there is no such thing as synchronicity, I don't think you can.

If you can't test for it, how do you know it doesn't exist?

However, you would at least have to define what it means and what it requires.

I cited the Merriam-Webster definition, which requires "the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality."

For example, if you predicted that you could throw a die 20 times and get all heads, you could test that prediction.

If you simply wait until something that seems like synchronicity happens and then ask what are the odds of that happening, you're just committing the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy (and, as I've pointed out, I could do the exact same thing with ANY outcome).

That's not the way synchronicity works. Coincidences come out of the blue, rather than being predicted. Again, by your logic, no matter how staggering the actual odds are of two or more events happening in a synchronous fashion, that proves nothing, and so there is no way that synchronicity can ever be demonstrated.

 

[Maia]

Making meaning is a far cry from that meaning being 'out there', independant of our experience/cognition, however. Humans do conjure meaning and recognize patterns. We're wired to do so as a result of evolution. Recognizing this is at the heart of skepticism. I'm sorry to say it, but everything about TH's story leads me to the conclusion that he has merely abandoned some part of whatever rationality he may have once had.

I think what this means is that to make meaning and to try to find pre-existing patterns of meaning (turning coincidences into synchronicity, "conjuring up" meaning, etc.,) are two different things; in a way, they may even be opposite things. It amazes me to see the sheer amount of time and energy that people can spend in attempting to sort of artificially create illusions of meaning where they don't exist; I just don't see the point. In fact, I think that it can actually be destructive, because it can keep us trapped in the process of game-playing (waiting and searching for signs, mystical events and occurrences or"proof" that God is sitting around up in heaven waiting to answer our prayers or that reading The Secret is going to draw the will of the universe to answer our needs) and take us away from the process of creating real meaning.

 

[quarky]

I think what this means is that to make meaning and to try to find pre-existing patterns of meaning (turning coincidences into synchronicity, "conjuring up" meaning, etc.,) are two different things; in a way, they may even be opposite things. It amazes me to see the sheer amount of time and energy that people can spend in attempting to sort of artificially create illusions of meaning where they don't exist; I just don't see the point. In fact, I think that it can actually be destructive, because it can keep us trapped in the process of game-playing (waiting and searching for signs, mystical events and occurrences or"proof" that God is sitting around up in heaven waiting to answer our prayers or that reading The Secret is going to draw the will of the universe to answer our needs) and take us away from the process of creating real meaning.

I hear that. I've known some folks that got ate up with numbers and numerology, and they started scanning everything for some affirmation of the mystical play that they were starring in. They would look at road signs and even billboards, playing with the significance of the didgits, and a flock of rare birds could be flying by, right behind that sign.

I get lots of synchronicity events in my mundane life. I try not to stare at them, or speak about it, because i like to pretend that its a normal thing for things to happen so colorfully. I can almost imagine all events to have that same flavor you get from freaky synchronicity coincidences.

Or is synchronicity dependant upon the normal lack of it?

 

[epepke]

There are plenty of examples of meaningful coincidences occurring, and I have experienced them myself. In one case, even a highly skeptical friend had to admit that there was probably something paranormal going on.

Do a quick web search and you'll see mountains of anecdotal evidence (I'm a newbie, so I can't post links yet). Some things are too timely and specific for me to dismiss as mere coincidence, including things I've experienced myself. How do you rationalize things that are so far outside of the laws of probability?

Note: I admit that many of these occurrences are, in fact, mere coincidences, but nowhere near all of them.

I don't explain them.

I've had things happen in my life that I couldn't explain. So I don't.

I realize that many nominal skeptics get this wrong, but skepticism is about questioning things without good evidence. Your friend must not be a very good skeptic if he says "it's probably paranormal." I seriously doubt that he has a good idea how to estimate the probability. It's like saying that a UFO must be an alien spacecraft because it's unidentified.

 

[Prometheus]

I think what this means is that to make meaning and to try to find pre-existing patterns of meaning (turning coincidences into synchronicity, "conjuring up" meaning, etc.,) are two different things; in a way, they may even be opposite things. It amazes me to see the sheer amount of time and energy that people can spend in attempting to sort of artificially create illusions of meaning where they don't exist; I just don't see the point. In fact, I think that it can actually be destructive, because it can keep us trapped in the process of game-playing (waiting and searching for signs, mystical events and occurrences or"proof" that God is sitting around up in heaven waiting to answer our prayers or that reading The Secret is going to draw the will of the universe to answer our needs) and take us away from the process of creating real meaning.

I'm a little confused about what you're trying to say. In my view, 'making meaning' is exactly what we do when we 'find pre-existing patterns of meaning', because those pre-existing patterns do not exist outside our own minds--or at least whatever meaning we assign to them doesn't. If we recognize a face in a pile of rocks, the actual arrangement of rocks exists, but the face doesn't--we made that up.

Pattern recognition is something that we're wired to do automatically, and it's wonderful that we're so good at it. But it's also a dual-edged sword, so to speak, and if we really want to know what's going on we have to be constantly on the look out for situations in which this abiliity trips us up. Stories like TH's are just that--stories. They can be quite entertaining, and of course our lives are enriched if we enjoy them when they happen, but there's just no need to posit any sort of universal will or external meaning in order to get the benefits of enjoying a good story, and doing so just makes it that much harder to keep our propensity of self-delusion in check.

 

[Teapots Happen]

OK, I am comfortable with that explanation, thanks.

Things happen that make us think. I am fine with that. Just keep thinking, and stick to the middle ground. Extremism in any form (and I truly think you tried too hard to take an extreme view with your "deeply-entrenched reductionist, fundamentalist rationalism") can lead to equally bad conclusions.

So, have fun, enjoy life, and stay rational.

Thanks, I'll try, on all counts ... I agree that the middle ground is where it's at with this (although I am sympathetic to both those who deny meaningfulness of all coincidences and those who find meaning everywhere) ...

 

[quarky]

Thanks, I'll try, on all counts ... I agree that the middle ground is where it's at with this (although I am sympathetic to both those who deny meaningfulness of all coincidences and those who find meaning everywhere) ...

Oh no. We may have to get competitive in our humility.

I don't like the middle ground, in some soul-full way, in anyone but me.
I want all sorts of crazy damaged fools and weird hats that I'm not wearing, so I'll be sure to recognize where I shouldn't be.

I'm drawn to defend the underdog position. That's my team, for whatever sick reason. Here, I mostly defend the same woo I assault in my personal world, where I'm surrounded by anti-scientists.


I love the unmentionable, non-identifiable, magic quality of perception and consciousness. Its so precious, I shouldn't even hint at it. Feels right to pretend its not there. That's what I would want me to do if I was it.

 

[AdinDraco]

Re: the whole teapots thing. One thing that I have paying attention to since hearing about it on the SGU is how fallable memory is. Finding the second teapot and connecting it to the first may have brought to mind any number of little "significant" details that never happened or happened differently to how you remember them. With a anecdote approx 3 years old, it almost certainly didn't happen exactly the way you think it did. (Ps it's been shown that certainty is no indicator of accuacy - if you think you remember exactly what you were doing when 911/JFK/Challenger happened, you're probably wrong on most of the details) (PPs, no you are NOT lying, and I include myself in being so fallable).

 

[Careyp74]

Not if that anecdote were taken from the sum total of everything that all humans on the entire planet do. And that's what reporting such an event after the fact is. In fact, the law of truly large numbers tells us that very unusual and improbable events are expected to happen all the time--especially when you consider all the people on the planet and everything they could possible do (and you don't define ahead of time which of these unusual or improbable events you will find significant).

However, if you say, "I'll get all heads in the next 20 coin tosses" and proceed to do just that, I would find that significant.

If Mildred Ames from Upper Teaneck, NJ reports that in 1953, she flipped a coin 20 times and got all heads, it would not impress me in the least. You, however, would report it as an example of synchronicity.

I once saw a roulette wheel display (the one that shows the past 20 numbers) that had all black numbers on it. Walking a little further down, I saw one that had all red except for one black. I waited for the next number, knowing it was going to be red to push that black one off the board. Sure enough...................................... I was wrong. Black.

I worked in a casino for three years, had a lot of free time to stare at roulette wheels.

I thought there was something strange at the time, but realizing the number of roulette wheels in the casino, the amount of times I walk past them every day, and the factors of randomness involved, I would say it was pretty likely to see that scenario happen again. In fact, if I watched a roulette wheel for 5 days, and never saw a display with all black on it, I would think there is something wrong with the wheel. There are programs that show likeliness of random numbers based on that.

 

[Rodney]

(Ps it's been shown that certainty is no indicator of accuacy - if you think you remember exactly what you were doing when 911/JFK/Challenger happened, you're probably wrong on most of the details)

Evidence?

 

[Teapots Happen]

OK, there is way too much feedback for me to keep up on ... I'll answer what I can but after this, have to cut back.

As I stated originally, I do not expect my story to change a single skeptic's mind - the best I hope for is that a few of you might understand why it changed MY mind, and perhaps that pure reason is not the only tool in the toolbox we use to make meaning and sense of this reality ...

So do you consider this experience a one-time thing? Or do events like this happen all the time, and we ignore the signs?

Mostly I lean toward thinking that potentially-meaningful coincidences happen quite often, but we rarely recognize them - and when we do, our culture teaches us to always write them off as "mere random coincidence," and to never find or create meaning in them.

(Of course, to a large extent, that isn't a bad thing - but it can go too far in either direction. Where we decide to live in the continuum between the extremes is a matter of strictly personal taste and comfort.)

I've experimented with paying attention to coincidences, since the teapots. And I found that weird coincidences happen quite frequently. Some are easy to write off as "mere coincidence," others strike me as strange and potentially indicative of connections - between people, between mind and matter, etc - that are not yet understood.

Yes, I have kept record of them, but I don't think that they are any kind of "revelation" or "proof" for anyone but me.

How would you distinguish a drug-induced hallucination from a mystical experience?

I don't think such a distinction needs to be made. A mystical experience is a mystical experience regardless of whether it was attained with help from meditation or mushrooms.

I'll again suggest that folks check out the essay "Can an Atheist Have a Religious Experience" - it was written by the editor of the Australian Rationalist and it's pretty interesting. Also you might check out the Johns Hopkins studies done recently on Psilocybin and mystical experiences ... fascinating stuff:

30 percent said that the experience was the primary spiritually significant event of their lives, with approximately 70 percent rating it in their top 5. To put this into perspective, participants rated the experience alongside the birth of their first child, or the death of a parent.

The team also observed a residual benefit that the participants experienced months after the initial hallucinogenic experiments. After their drug induced mystical experience, 79 percent of subjects believed that their lives had become more satisfying; with many also believing that their overall mood and state of mind had been significantly improved. Friends, family and associates of the participants are said to have substantiated their claims in follow-up interviews conducted by the research team.

see: csp.org/psilocybin

To Teapots happen So can I ask, when you first met your landlord..is there a chance you saw that teapot in the house or with him and just didnt notice it...but the heightened senses during LSD registered it when you saw the teapot for sale?

Again, wasn't on LSD when I was at the store. But no, never saw it, because it was in an area sealed off by a board, buried, beneath a plastic sheet.

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Humans do conjure meaning and recognize patterns. We're wired to do so as a result of evolution. Recognizing this is at the heart of skepticism.

Yes, but we're wired to do it for a reason. And we have more subtle tools for pattern recognition than Logic and Double Blinded Experiments ... not all of life can be treated as a logic problem or a scientific experiment.

But it seems to me that the question of "synchronicity's validity" is more about finding/creating meaning than it is of finding/creating patterns.

How do you reconcile your atheism with your belief that the universe has meaning?

Actually, I don't think that "the universe has meaning," out there to be found.

Rather, I now find, or create, potential meaning where I once saw the impossiblity of meaning. I now feel comfortable creating meaning, recognizing the meaningful, without worrying about vetting it with my illusionary "Objective Rationality."

Again, Reason is a powerful, amazing ability - but it's not the only tool in the toolbox, and I find it kind of sad when people try to limit themselves to it alone.

What about the state of mental quiet, and the realization that it is the default awareness of all creatures simultaneously? In the shared background state, everything happens in the same moment? Is this what acid and synchronicity have come to? Teapots.

heh. Not sure if I am understanding you correctly, but the teapots were not really the sum of the acid experience. I didn't get too much into the actual mystical experience here because it was not the topic being discussed, and because such experiences tend to be ineffable, and therefore pretty damn hard to explain.

To me, the teapots were a confirmation that the perspective I attained while on the acid had validity: acid mystical experience said trust intuition, I questioned it, intuition said buy teapot, I did, and the subsequent synchronicity confirmed that intuition was something very interesting, after all.

I now believe that it is in fact rational to pay attention to my intuition, and that there is no harm in paying attention to coincidence as well ... so far, it's pretty damn fun and interesting.

Reason is a wonderful thing and I plan to stay with it - but not to the exclusion of intuition.

I don't care whether you call it instinct, intuition, 6th sense, the subconscious, the still small voice of god, whatever - to ignore such a powerful instrument is as irrational as throwing out reason entirely. Intuition is a well-honed machine, far older than mankind, far deeper than our meager analytical abilities … yes, of course it has limitations and pitfalls, and it can to lead us into factual error, but these things are no less true of reason ... especially so when we're not fact-finding, but meaning-making ...

 

[Maia]

I'm a little confused about what you're trying to say. In my view, 'making meaning' is exactly what we do when we 'find pre-existing patterns of meaning', because those pre-existing patterns do not exist outside our own minds--or at least whatever meaning we assign to them doesn't. If we recognize a face in a pile of rocks, the actual arrangement of rocks exists, but the face doesn't--we made that up.

Pattern recognition is something that we're wired to do automatically, and it's wonderful that we're so good at it. But it's also a dual-edged sword, so to speak, and if we really want to know what's going on we have to be constantly on the look out for situations in which this abiliity trips us up. Stories like TH's are just that--stories. They can be quite entertaining, and of course our lives are enriched if we enjoy them when they happen, but there's just no need to posit any sort of universal will or external meaning in order to get the benefits of enjoying a good story, and doing so just makes it that much harder to keep our propensity of self-delusion in check.

It all depends on the meaning of the word... "meaning." Pattern recognition is about abstract meaning. But it also relates very much to the way that people will try to find emotional, personal, and spiritual meaning in attempts to convince themselves either that God is a parent figure who regularly intervenes in human affairs to fix everything, or that the stars or the cards or the numbers or the will of the universe will somehow do what they want. Where the pattern recognition comes in is that it's used as a way to attempt to prove that all of this, or any of it, is true. But it's self-delusion, all right. The making of real meaning-- meaningful meaning, you might say-- happens when we choose to do something instead of waiting around for God or the universe or the unnamed mystical powers to do it. If anything about the entire teapot incident inspired Teapots Happens to reach out to others, then the overall effect can only have been good, I guess.

 

[StanBearclaw]

I don't care whether you call it instinct, intuition, 6th sense, the subconscious, the still small voice of god, whatever - to ignore such a powerful instrument is as irrational as throwing out reason entirely. Intuition is a well-honed machine, far older than mankind, far deeper than our meager analytical abilities … yes, of course it has limitations and pitfalls, and it can to lead us into factual error, but these things are no less true of reason ... especially so when we're not fact-finding, but meaning-making ...

Good point - I used my Mommy Sense to determine that my kid has autism and it was caused by his vaccinations.