How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

[JoeTheJuggler]

I've worked with people who have severe and persistent mental illnesses, and actually, I do think they perceive a reality that others generally do not-- but it's the reality perceived by those who have to live with lifelong illnesses which are horribly stigmatized by our society.

So the CIA really is trying to read the thoughts of that one patient? And this other patient really did have sex with Jesus and is carrying her baby (even though our "modern science" says she's not even pregnant at all)?

No, they are deluded. They are not perceiving "a reality". Their pattern recognitions circuits are fouled up somehow, and they're seeing patterns where none exist.

I agree it's heartbreaking. It feels as real to them as any serious problem does to anyone, but it doesn't mean that their delusions are actual perceptions of "a reality".

I also agree that mental illness is at least sometimes socially stigmatized, but that too doesn't argue that the delusions of the mentally ill are actual perceptions of reality.

 

[Belz...]

Yes, but here is what you and others here are missing: If you throw one die 20 times, there are 3,656,158,440,062,976 (3.7 quadrillion) permutations. However, only six of those permutations involve obtaining the same number (all 1's, all 2's, all 3's, all 4's, all 5's, or all 6's) on each throw. So obtaining the same number on 20 consecutive throws is inherently extremely unlikely.

Only because you are determining in advance which combinations are "special". It's only about interpretation.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I don't know, and neither do you. (I am happy for you that you think you do, however! Enjoy it!)

Yes, I do. I've seen paranoid schizophrenics, in particular, whose delusions are so acute (and easily proven to be false beyond any doubt) that they can't function or hope to lead anything like a normal happy life. (In the cases I've had experience with, they were incapable of living on their own.) But thanks to Haldol, the delusional thinking, the hallucinations and paranoia, can be controlled well enough that they can live independently, get a job, and have a good shot at happy and productive lives.

This intervention was thanks to people who do recognize that we can spot delusional thinking and decide that it is delusional.

 

[Belz...]

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.

In TV shows and movies it's usually spoken in a way that makes the investigator look witty and sly, but in reality it's just a dumb thing to say.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Only because you are determining in advance which combinations are "special". It's only about interpretation.

Exactly. It's much like the game of seeing how many "elevens" you can come up with related to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The rules are arbitrary.

If you can say what events are "special" or meaningful ahead of time, then we could calculate their probability. In the case of flipping a coin, I earlier offered several examples of outcomes that might look like a pattern. I asked Rodney if these count as "meaningful" or "special". If they do, then the pool is much much larger. If we then consider how many trials we're considering (a very large number consisting of anyone anywhere who has ever flipped a coin over and over), then the law of truly large numbers tells us that such outcomes are expected.

I play on-line poker a lot. The games go very fast. Lots of players insist that the hands are scripted--they claim you see a lot more unusual hands (a straight flush running into 4 of a kind, for example) than you would expect from randomly dealt cards. I checked into it, and the site I play on uses a true random number generator. [ETA: and it's "further randomized"--rather another layer of unpredictability is added-- due to the fact that all the thousands of games being played simultaneously use the same random number generator, so which number your game gets depends on the exact timing your game asks for the next random number.] The fact is, when you play on line, you can easily play a couple of hands in a minute's time. In the course of one hour, you'll see a LOT more hands than you would see in a whole evening's worth of real-life play. So, when you consider the number of hands played, you actually would expect to see those unusual-looking hands with some regularity.

When someone makes that claim, I usually try to get them to define it first. Do you see more straights than you would expect? In that case, let's count how many hands until the next straight comes up. (They're usually surprised that they're not so frequent.)

 

[Belz...]

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).

Well put.

 

[Belz...]

That's not the way synchronicity works. Coincidences come out of the blue, rather than being predicted.

Ok, so how can you tell if it's a coincidence or not ?

 

[HeyLeroy]

What's been lost in all the clutter is:

Sorry for disappearing for so long. Thanks for looking into this, guys. I guess I don't have a very good understanding of probability.

Welcome to the forums, Marshmallow, and welcome to critical thinking.

Understanding that you might've been mistaken, and learning to look at things with a skeptical eye, are skills that will serve you well.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Ok, so how can you tell if it's a coincidence or not ?

Yes, that's the question I was after when I asked him to define "synchronicity". I sort of got distracted that the definition given was "acausal" when the things we've talked about, the outcome of 20 rolls of a die, the result of dealing 5 cards, and so on, all had clear causes (rolling the die, dealing the cards, etc.). I really should have asked for an operational definition of what would be an example of synchronicity in the outcome of flipping a coin 20 times.

Is the pattern HTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHT count as special? (After all, it's a discernible pattern, and as with all other combinations of 20 tosses it's just as unlikely as an outcome of all heads or all tails.)

How do you know something is "special", and why can't you define that in advance?

 

[Rodney]

Rodney, I know I asked you to read this essay months (if not years) ago:

http://www.skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html

I suspect you haven't yet, since it explains why such an unusual-sounding event (a woman twice dreaming the winning lottery numbers) is expected when you consider how many people have dreams, how many people play the lottery, etc.

No, I've read it, but it's as unconvincing as your arguments here.

And this is taking the woman's story at face value, without suggesting that her memory might be flawed.

Why do thing she bought two tickets with the same numbers?

 

[Careyp74]

No, I've read it, but it's as unconvincing as your arguments here.

By all means, lets here the argument against what was said in the link.


I do have one thing to say. The part about the birthdays is a little off. in 50,000 people, if births were distributed evenly amongst the days of the year, you would have 137 people with your birthday. We know though that there is not an even distribution, and some days there are much higher occurrences. This would lead to a wide area of probability, depending on your birthday. This is also why there is a 50% chance that two people in a group of 23 will share a birthday.

Why do thing she bought two tickets with the same numbers?

Well, that cracks the case!

My grandfather used to do that a lot. he would forget that he already got his numbers, and played them again. If he hit the lottery, and it turned out he bought two tickets, instead of admitting that he bought them twice because he forgot, I could see him coming up with a story about how sure he was that he was going to win.

 

[Prometheus]

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 ...

It's good that you don't expect your story to change a skeptic's mind, because nothing about it rises to the level of evidence. I believe I do understand why it changed your mind because I've had similar experiences myself--before I embraced skepticism--and I used to think the way it appears that you do now. Further, not only do I agree with you that pure reason is not the only tool we use to make meaning, but it's not even one of the tools that most people ever use. Reason does not come easily to humans, and it requires constant vigilance and hard work to maintain once acquired. It took a bloody long time for a fraction of humanity to develop it at all, and most never have.

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.

I agreee with this statement, with the qualification that whatever meaning anyone does find in coincidences is placed there by the mind of the person who 'finds' it. At best, such notions may point one toward an understanding of the way his/her own mind works, but far more often than not they just lead people into delusion or confirm delusions already present.

(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 used to agree with, and be comforted by exactly this thought. Now I think it's just intellectual laziness, and I am ashamed to admit that I was taken in by it for so long.

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.

By "experimented" do you mean that you observed a pattern, induced a possible explanation, formulated a hypothesis, devised and performed a replicable way to test that hypothesis while controlling for all potentially confounding variables you can think of, and kept careful records before during and after all such activity so that others might be able to repeat and possibly falsify your conclusions? If not, perhaps you should use another term like "dabbled" or "played around with".

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 would agree with the notion that similar experiences can be had both with and without the use of drugs. I would not use the term "mystical" however, as that has a specific, religious sense that is both vague and prejudicial.

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:

Thanks, I'll check that out. I can't remember which thread it was in, but sometime in the last year someone linked to some very interesting recent research about the effects that certain drugs and meditative practices can have on the function of a brain area that is responsible our subjective delineation between "self" and "other". Apparently deliberately short circuiting the function of this area will cause people to report exactly the same kinds of feelings/experiences that are often described as "mystical". I'll have to chase that down.

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.

I'm not really concerned about this at all, and I'm perfectly happy to take you at your word that you never saw either tea pot before. I just don't see any significance beyond that it's a somwhat entertaining coincidence. Where I'm not willing to take your story at face value (and this is not to accuse you of any dishonesty at all) is in your characterization of the intuition you felt that caused you to agonize over purchasing the first teapot, and the subsequent urge to explore the crawlspace where you found the second one. Humans do tend to fill in gaps in our own memories, and we even make up completely imaginary memories from whole cloth. Almost no one is happy to admit that this can happen to them, but the science is pretty sound. The fact is, no matter who you are or how sound of mind, a substantial portion of the events in your life that you believe you remember vividly probably never actually occured--at least not in the way that you remember them. Check out Dan Dennett's Multiple Drafts Model.

Yes, but we're wired to do it for a reason.

As comforting as it would be if that were true, I really don't think it is. Our wiring is just a product of evolution, and it's just good enough to allow us to survive in the circumstances that our ancestors found themselves in, but it's full of bugs.

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.

Also true, but I don't recall ever seeing anyone, even the most hardcore skeptics suggesting otherwise. For more on our ability to discover meaning/truth without conscious reasoning, check out the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

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.

I'm not sure that's a significant difference. In my view, "meaning" is a subset of "pattern", but essentially the same sorts of processes are at work, albeit perhaps taking place in different areas of the brain.

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.

Okay. Perhaps I misunderstood part of what you were saying initially. Maybe you just had an overinflated view of reason and it's abilities in the first place, and you've come down from that a bit.

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 ...

Good. The dichotomy between reason and intuition is a false one anyway. Definitely read Blink. And here's another thread that might be of interest: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=146706

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

No, I've read it, but it's as unconvincing as your arguments here.

That's an inadequate rebuttal to the arguments made there. I guess you're just joking because you put a "wink" emoticon up, but I don't get the humor.

So you read it, but you choose to consider the occurrence of expected improbably events to be somehow special. Why?

Why do thing she bought two tickets with the same numbers?

That she claims she bought the second ticket because she dreamed those numbers doesn't prove that her memory wasn't flawed. For all I know, she routinely buys additional tickets with the same number. (Plenty of people do just that.)

At any rate, as I said, you can even ignore the possibility that she's not telling the story exactly as it happened, and there is still nothing so remarkable about such an occurrence given the large numbers involved and the failure to define what constitute a "remarkable" event in advance.

Would it have been remarkable, for example, if she bought a lottery ticket, then dreamed that she won the lottery (no numbers in the dream at all), and then bought an additional ticket the next day, and then won the lottery?

What if her husband had the dream rather than her? What if rather than a dream, she opened a fortune cookie that said "Riches are soon to come your way?" What if that advice had come from an astologer based on her "chart"?

Do you have any data on how many people have these kinds of occurrences which fail to coincide with winning the lottery?

 

[Maia]

So the CIA really is trying to read the thoughts of that one patient? And this other patient really did have sex with Jesus and is carrying her baby (even though our "modern science" says she's not even pregnant at all)?

No, they are deluded. They are not perceiving "a reality". Their pattern recognitions circuits are fouled up somehow, and they're seeing patterns where none exist.

I agree it's heartbreaking. It feels as real to them as any serious problem does to anyone, but it doesn't mean that their delusions are actual perceptions of "a reality".

I also agree that mental illness is at least sometimes socially stigmatized, but that too doesn't argue that the delusions of the mentally ill are actual perceptions of reality.

Oh! No. That's not what I meant. What people with SPMI's perceive that others generally do not is that there's profound value in the smallest things that are so easy to take for granted, such as the opportunity to have a working and reasonably healthy brain. This is why the sometimes profound longing for "normalcy" is so poignant. Of course, that was the class where I explained that "normal" is a setting on a washing machine.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

No, I've read it, but it's as unconvincing as your arguments here.


Why do thing she bought two tickets with the same numbers?

Because she's stupid ignorant, and thinks it would increase her chances of winning ?

 

[Teapots Happen]

I would not use the term "mystical" however, as that has a specific, religious sense that is both vague and prejudicial.

Actually, as used in "mystical experience" the term does not have a vague or necessarily religious meaning.

Where I'm not willing to take your story at face value (and this is not to accuse you of any dishonesty at all) is in your characterization of the intuition you felt that caused you to agonize over purchasing the first teapot, and the subsequent urge to explore the crawlspace where you found the second one.

Would your opinion of the situation change at all if you could somehow KNOW that my recollections were true?

And if so - could this be the real reason you find yourself not taking my story at face value at those specific points? Interesting.

At the least, perhaps you can further understand why this effected me as it did, being certain as I am of all the main elements of the story (while you, as an outsider, are able to doubt any part of it you want) ...

Anyway, it will not convince you, but yes, I am quite certain that the reason I chose to buy the first teapot was, explicitly, because the mystical experience had led me to believe in intuition.

Three friends witnessed me trying to justify why I wanted it - and I literally did say aloud something along the lines of "I don't know why i want this - maybe the connotations or the design are just pleasing to me, don't know, I just feel like I want this in my house."

And I finally decided to go along with the urge to get the teapot after I remembered that I was supposed to be trying to follow my intuition (after my mystical experience).

And I don't know what you doubt about my subsequent urge to explore the crawlspace ... I had never done it, I decided to do so the day I bought my house. No thoughts about teapots or intuition or California - just a sudden urge to "explore" the space, which I followed up on. Not much to doubt there?

 

[Prometheus]

Actually, as used in "mystical experience" the term does not have a vague or necessarily religious meaning.

Perhaps you are very specific and non religious in the way you use those two words together. That doesn't mean everyone else is. However, unless I missed it you have not defined what you mean by the term but suggested we go look it up. Well, I did so, and I got dozens of different definitions mostly from within a variety of different religious traditions. My objection stands.

Would your opinion of the situation change at all if you could somehow KNOW that my recollections were true?

Not by much. That certainty would make the story more entertaining, and would increase my estimate of just how unlikely the coincidence was, but it would not cause me to alter my assessment of any meaning to be found.

And if so - could this be the real reason you find yourself not taking my story at face value at those specific points? Interesting.

Of course, I am subject to the same sorts of hidden persuaders as anyone else, so I might be deluding myself here as well, however, my considered opinion is that the reason I am not willing to take those parts of your story at face value sans verifiable evidence is simply that the alternate explanation is simply far more plausible.

At the least, perhaps you can further understand why this effected me as it did, being certain as I am of all the main elements of the story (while you, as an outsider, are able to doubt any part of it you want) ...

As I mentioned above, I have had similar experiences and before I embraced skepticism and critical analysis, I did interpret my experiences in much the same way that you interpret yours. I have since realized that I was wrong to do so, and I have a clear understanding of why I was wrong to do so.

Anyway, it will not convince you, but yes, I am quite certain that the reason I chose to buy the first teapot was, explicitly, because the mystical experience had led me to believe in intuition.

That there may be a causal connection from one to the other, is in no way unreasonable. What is unreasonable is concluding that such is the case absent any verifiable evidence, or even a cogent argument as to some plausible hypothetical scenario which would explain how it might be.

Three friends witnessed me trying to justify why I wanted it - and I literally did say aloud something along the lines of "I don't know why i want this - maybe the connotations or the design are just pleasing to me, don't know, I just feel like I want this in my house."

And I finally decided to go along with the urge to get the teapot after I remembered that I was supposed to be trying to follow my intuition (after my mystical experience).

I don't find this at all strange, in and of itself. I watch my wife go through pretty much the same emotional contortions every time she drags me shopping, and I'm sure I even do it myself from time to time. The tea pots in question seem to have been a fairly popular design--someone upthread even pointed out that a couple of identical ones were up for sale on ebay in the last few days. Why do you suppose that design ever became popular if not, at least in part, because it happens to be aesthetically pleasing to a wide range of people? People are funny. Research into implanting false memory has shown, for instance that for some time after a strong emotional experience (like, say, a drug trip) just looking at a picture of a person you've never seen before can be enough to make you remember seeing that person do something they never actually did. Maybe at some time in your past, you had a strong, positive, emotional experience in the home of someone who had such a teapot up on a shelf, and you didn't register it's presence consciously, but a subsequent strongly positive emotional experience was enough to trigger that sub-conscious memory. Who knows? That such things can happen at all is wonderful enough without needing to ascribe any particular meaning to them, in my opinion.

And I don't know what you doubt about my subsequent urge to explore the crawlspace ... I had never done it, I decided to do so the day I bought my house. No thoughts about teapots or intuition or California - just a sudden urge to "explore" the space, which I followed up on. Not much to doubt there?

I don't doubt that you had that urge. You said yourself that it's part of your nature to want to explore such spaces. It seems completely reasonable to me that becoming the owner of your house would trigger you to want to know all about the home you'd just bought. Actually, from what you've said so far, I can't even rule out the possibility that you had explored that space before and just forgotten it--an even more common occurance than accidentally implanting a false memory. People have been known to sleep walk and do all sorts of strange things--particularly while under the influence of LSD and other such drugs. Honestly, you can't really even know with 100% certainty that you didn't personally bury the old teapot there yourself.

 

[Katopale]

Teapots Happen,

I'm pretty sure I've heard your teapot story before. Did you post it on a site called "Barbelith Underground" or another similar forum?

 

[Teapots Happen]

Hmm, maybe, but more likely someone else did. When I first posted it on my site it got BoingBoinged and was all over for a few minutes.

 

[Teapots Happen]

my considered opinion is that the reason I am not willing to take those parts of your story at face value sans verifiable evidence is simply that the alternate explanation is simply far more plausible.

Research into implanting false memory has shown, for instance that for some time after a strong emotional experience (like, say, a drug trip) just looking at a picture of a person you've never seen before can be enough to make you remember seeing that person do something they never actually did.

I can't even rule out the possibility that you had explored that space before and just forgotten it--an even more common occurance than accidentally implanting a false memory. People have been known to sleep walk and do all sorts of strange things--particularly while under the influence of LSD and other such drugs. Honestly, you can't really even know with 100% certainty that you didn't personally bury the old teapot there yourself.

Prometheus, you really might as well just stop mincing around, and simply say, "I believe that you are a liar and made the whole thing up, because that is the simplest explanation," or "Occam's Razor says you are insane," because the way you actually ARE "reasoning" is really no better.

Your paradigm simply does not allow for the possibility of things like my teapots happening the way they did in fact happen, or for interpreting the events as anything other than as a purely random coincidence, even if you did.