How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

[Rodney]

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

The article starts okay, but goes absurdly astray here:

"With 6 billion people having an average of 250 dream themes each per night (Hines, 50, though I don't think I've ever had more than 5 or 6 dream themes a night), there should be about 30,000 to 1.5 million people a day who have dreams that seem clairvoyant. The number is actually likely to be larger, since we tend to dream about things that legitimately concern or worry us, and the data of dreams is usually vague or ambiguous, allowing a wide range of events to count as fulfilling our dream."

First, did it occur to Robert Carroll that it might be more realistic to exclude some of the world's population from his "calculation"? Infants, for example? Second, how many adults remember even one dream per month? For example, how many here can remember more than a handful of dreams they've had this year? Third, if someone does remember a dream, how often does s/he communicate it to anyone else? For example, on a few occasions my wife and I have communicated dreams to one another, but I never recall a single time another family member, a friend, or a work colleague has done so. Fourth, even if someone does communicate a dream to another person, would Carroll accept that as evidence? For example, If I were to inform him that I had a premonitory dream about 9/11 and told my wife about it in advance, would he count that as a hit if she swore it were true?

Speaking of 9/11, Carroll's treatment of Uri Geller's alleged coincidences on that day is a classic example of debunking a strawman. Is Geller the authority on synchronicity? Why doesn't Carroll take on some of the far more difficult-to-explain coincidences, such as the Émile Deschamps plum pudding one or the Carl Jung golden scarab one, described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity? And by take on, I don't mean mouthing platitudes about the "law of truly large numbers." The specifics of each of these coincidences would have to be examined in detail to even attempt to calculate the odds of each happening to anyone, not just Deschamps or Jung.

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.

Yes, but Snopes is well-known for debunking urban legends, and it support the woman's story that the second lottery ticket was purchased because of her dream.

 

[Careyp74]

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.

I read all of what he said, and didn't get those feelings from it. Either you are more emotionally involved, or you are not seeing what he is saying. Let me ask you this, just to be sure. Do you agree that the human mind has been known to cause inaccuracies in memory of past events? I know you have witnesses, but what are they witnesses of? That you bought a teapot, and that you found a teapot. Anything else?

 

[PixyMisa]

"Caused" does not equal "significant" does not equal "meaningful."

Then meaning is arbitrary.

(Hell, just look at Jung's definition of "synchronicity" - coincidences that are both "acausal" and "meaningful.")

By that definition, synchronicity is purely subjective. The Universe follows the laws of physics, and "synchronicity" is something you make up because you don't understand it - or don't want to understand it.

 

[Prometheus]

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.

No. I don't believe you're a liar. And I don't believe you're insane. Both are certainly possibilities, but I've seen no evidence to suggest either. And I have never implied that either is the case. I've pointed out a number of plausible ways in which you might be mistaken, all of which involve known phenomena which all humans are susceptible to, including me. My 'paradigm' does allow for your story to have occured in exactly the way that you describe--it just doesn't allow for concluding that it must have occured that way absent any hard evidence; if you understand skepticism on any level you should have no problem with that. Nor is there any reason that the events you describe must have been purely random coincidence--in fact, my previous post describes several plausible non-random ways in which parts of your story could have happened.

In short, you couldn't be more wrong about my position if you tried.

 

[Careyp74]

First, did it occur to Robert Carroll that it might be more realistic to exclude some of the world's population from his "calculation"? Infants, for example?

ok, 6.7 million, minus 14 percent would be almost 6 million.
http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_age.html

Second, how many adults remember even one dream per month? For example, how many here can remember more than a handful of dreams they've had this year?

That is a valid point

Third, if someone does remember a dream, how often does s/he communicate it to anyone else?

Not so valid. Remember, these types of dreams are only shared after they have connection to anything. Therefore, they might not have been relevant, but the mind tricks you into thinking you did dream the same thing.

Fourth, even if someone does communicate a dream to another person, would Carroll accept that as evidence? For example, If I were to inform him that I had a premonitory dream about 9/11 and told my wife about it in advance, would he count that as a hit if she swore it were true?

I bet he would, if it were in some way documented. However, did you actually... no, Did ANYONE actually do this?

Speaking of 9/11, Carroll's treatment of Uri Geller's alleged coincidences on that day is a classic example of debunking a strawman. Is Geller the authority on synchronicity?

He is giving one example, not a lonely strawman in the article.

Why doesn't Carroll take on some of the far more difficult-to-explain coincidences, such as the Émile Deschamps plum pudding one

The French writer Émile Deschamps claims in his memoirs........

or the Carl Jung golden scarab one?

does this story merit any attention to it? "I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since." So then Jung admits to never having a synchronicity event.

And by take on, I don't mean mouthing platitudes about the "law of truly large numbers." The specifics of each of these coincidences would have to be examined in detail to even attempt to calculate the odds of each happening to anyone, not just Deschamps or Jung.

right, well, let us not try then, because they are so overwelmingly ironclad facts.

Yes, but Snopes is well-known for debunking urban legends, and it support the woman's story that the second lottery ticket was purchased because of her dream.

It would be impossible for Snopes to verify that she had that dream without her documenting it. Think about it, and not throw around appeals to authority.

 

[Prometheus]

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

The order of events described by Snopes is: 1) She bought a ticket; 2) She had a dream involving a winning ticket--no mention of whether she actually saw the numbers on the first ticket in the dream; 3) She went out and bought the second ticket because of the dream--with no mention as to whether or not she was consciously aware that she was purchasing the same set of numbers on the second ticket. Even if the numbers did appear in her dream it's not all that amazing since she'd already bought a ticket with those numbers on it, and it surely can't be all that uncommon for people to purchase a lottery ticket and then dream that maybe they'll be the winner.

It would certainly be a lot more amazing if she had the dream--with the winning numbers in it--first and then deliberately bought two identical tickets because of the dream, and I've heard several people attempt to retell this story in precisely that way.

The way it's actually described on Snopes is not all that amazing at all. In fact, a while back a guy won a jackpot in my state's lottery after purchasing two identical tickets--by accident it turns out (he was buying a whole stack of tickets copying the sets of numbers he wanted from a list that he'd prepared in advance, and he accidentally copied the winning set of numbers onto two different tickets), so this woman's good luck isn't even unprecedented. In that case, there were quite a few other winners so his second ticket turned out to be a major windfall.

 

[AdinDraco]

Evidence?

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=211
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=234
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=previous-life-memories-due-to-bad-memory
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/remembering_dangerously/
http://www.today.uci.edu/iframe.php?p=/news/release_detail_iframe.asp?key=1699

Sorry, can't in the time I have at the moment find all the studies that I'm looking for...real life hassles intrude...again. (I did find more links but have to leave computer now - can't verify them)

 

[Belz...]

I do think that it was not random chance that led to the sequence of events, but I do not know - and expect I never will know - what the underlying forces or causes were.

Do you admit that it could be random chance ?

 

[Belz...]

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

Rodney ?

 

[Careyp74]

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=211
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=234
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=previous-life-memories-due-to-bad-memory
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/remembering_dangerously/
http://www.today.uci.edu/iframe.php?p=/news/release_detail_iframe.asp?key=1699

Sorry, can't in the time I have at the moment find all the studies that I'm looking for...real life hassles intrude...again. (I did find more links but have to leave computer now - can't verify them)

Nice set of links you got there. I stared at them for a long time.

 

[Roboramma]

Those sites remind me of this story:

In 1922 a Mr. John Lords was living in Hyderabad, India, when he discovered that his next door neighbor was also an American. He introduced himself and they quickly discovered that not only were they from the same small town in Nebraska, but they lived right next door to each other on the same street. After talking some more they learned that they had both moved to New Orleans after school and also lived right next door to each other and both worked for shipping companies. This was their third time being next door neighbors, even on the other side of the world.

See what I did there?

You know something like that happened to me recently, though not as extreme.
I was moving out of my apartment, and a guy came to look at it. He was with his shanghainese girlfriend. My girlfriend is Shanghainese.

As they looked at the place, we chatted. I asked him where he was from.
"Canada. How about you?"
"Really? Me too, whereabouts in canada?"
"Calgary."
"Where in calgary?"
"North-west."
"what high school did you go to?"
"(My highschool)"
"Wow."

Later it turned out that, just like me, he had moved to Calgary from Toronto when he was 8.

He was a few years older than me, though, otherwise we might have started talking about mutual friends/teachers/etc.

Aside from thinking it was funny I certainly didn't think that I'd somehow been involved in a mystical occurrence. I don't really see what any god or spiritual consciousness would want to bring two people who happened to grow up near each other together for.

 

[Careyp74]

You know something like that happened to me recently, though not as extreme.
I was moving out of my apartment, and a guy came to look at it. He was with his shanghainese girlfriend. My girlfriend is Shanghainese.

As they looked at the place, we chatted. I asked him where he was from.
"Canada. How about you?"
"Really? Me too, whereabouts in canada?"
"Calgary."
"Where in calgary?"
"North-west."
"what high school did you go to?"
"(My highschool)"
"Wow."

Later it turned out that, just like me, he had moved to Calgary from Toronto when he was 8.

He was a few years older than me, though, otherwise we might have started talking about mutual friends/teachers/etc.

Aside from thinking it was funny I certainly didn't think that I'd somehow been involved in a mystical occurrence. I don't really see what any god or spiritual consciousness would want to bring two people who happened to grow up near each other together for.

Yeah, way to perpetuate the North-west Toronto Shanghainese (um, wouldn't that just be Chinese?) dating renting in Calgary stereotype, dude.

 

[KingMerv00]

This will sound snarky. It isn't meant to be.

At best, the teapot story basically shows that you and the former owner of your house shop at the same store and both decided to buy a teapot.

 

[Rodney]

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=211
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=234
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=previous-life-memories-due-to-bad-memory
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/remembering_dangerously/
http://www.today.uci.edu/iframe.php?p=/news/release_detail_iframe.asp?key=1699

Sorry, can't in the time I have at the moment find all the studies that I'm looking for...real life hassles intrude...again. (I did find more links but have to leave computer now - can't verify them)

Thanks, but I don't think any of these links prove your claim, which was: ". . . it's been shown that certainty is no indicator of accuracy - if you think you remember exactly what you were doing when 911/JFK/Challenger happened, you're probably wrong on most of the details."

I believe that memory varies considerably from person to person and situation to situation. With the aid of the Internet, I have tested my recollection of long-ago events on a number of occasions. While I have not always been right, there are some pretty interesting hits. For example, for many years I had a distinct memory from my New England childhood of my family just sitting down for dinner when our china cabinet shook slightly. My parents said that we must have had a minor earthquake. A couple of years ago, I decided to see if I could pin down if and when that took place,and so I went to the US Geological Service website. They list just about every earthquake that has been felt by man during the last 100 years or more and I found one -- and only one -- that fit perfectly. It occurred when I was just five years old. Why did I remember it? Because, I believe, minor as it was, it was the only earthquake I ever experienced until I was in my 30's, and it made a lasting impression.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Speaking of 9/11, Carroll's treatment of Uri Geller's alleged coincidences on that day is a classic example of debunking a strawman. Is Geller the authority on synchronicity?

Nonsense. The Geller 9/11 stuff is just an example of the exact same thing you've been pushing: post-hoc analysis of something that is supposed to be significant or meaningful except the rules for determining what is significant or meaningful are completely arbitrary.

This is why you can't answer ahead of time what constitutes an example of synchronicity and what is merely coincidence.

This stuff is similar to cold reading in one way: since a "hit" is not defined, an educated guess (something that is really high probability) can be made to look like something that is low probability. Again, with the example of dealing out 5 cards, the probability of getting 5 cards is 1:1. The probability of getting ANY particular combination of 5 cards is less than 1:2.5 million. If there are, say 250,000 card combinations that could be deemed significant or meaningful, the odds are more like 1:10 of getting a significant or meaningful hand. If you further don't define how many trials to run (that is, the number of trials is open ended and you can simply ignore any outcomes that aren't significant or meaningful), then it becomes an even less impressive event to deal out a significant or meaningful hand.

Given enough chances, we would be more surprised NOT to see any such 5 card combinations come up.

So again, if a low probability outcome is actually something that is expected to happen (by chance alone), then why call it significant or meaningful? What makes something "synchronicity" if we can indeed explain such outcomes?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I believe that memory varies considerably from person to person and situation to situation. With the aid of the Internet, I have tested my recollection of long-ago events on a number of occasions. While I have not always been right, there are some pretty interesting hits. For example,

Actually the studies show that you can have accurate memories of some events, but that inaccurate memories can seem just as valid to the individual. In other words, your anecdote of a verifiably accurate memory doesn't mean that your memory is infallible.

That is, while the accuracy of memory might vary considerably from person to person, it can also vary considerably even for any given individual. Example of reliable and accurate memories is no proof that that person's memory isn't as plastic and subject to confabulation and other errors.

I grew up as one of 10 siblings, so I've had plenty of chances to compare memories of events from long ago. We seldom all agree on any account (in ways that are mutually impossible--meaning that at least one person has it wrong).

 

[Teapots Happen]

I'm still trying to figure out how you explain the sequence of events. To me, there are two basic possibilities here: (1) Finding the teapot under your house was a coincidence with no additional meaning; (2) Finding the teapot under your house was a synchronicity with significant additional meaning. You seem to be suggesting that there is a third possibility, but I can't figure out what that is.

Hmm, woke up this morning with this on my mind, and realized I'd let the thread's discussion of "meaning creation" slant my mind away from the sense of the word that which most of ya'll want to discuss.

OK, so let's leave aside subjective meaning-creation.

Do I think that the teapot co-incidence meant something, or that it was purely random?

The former. As I originally wrote:

Synchronicity – most simply, the belief that some coincidences are not mere coincidences.

That some coincidences are meaningful.

I believe that this was one of them.

Now that's where it gets somewhat tricky, of course ... because WHAT could it mean?

It’s hard to explain why, since I don’t find evidence for any given theory in this synchronicity ... I don’t believe it reveals the actions of gods or ghosts any more than I believe that it can be written off as a random coincidence.

Imagine waking up from a dream to find that you had brought something back with you – clenched in both hands as real as anything, from someplace that isn’t supposed to be real.

Although you might never be able to guess how it happened or why, it would still change you.

I don’t pretend to know how these teapots happened, or why they happened.

I only know this:

They did happen.

Teapots happen.

And that’s why I’m glad I have mine – to remind me.

This is why I think that most of you are committing the same intellectual sins as the New Agers you love to mock. Jumping to the conclusion that the teapot coincidence, and all others like it, are "meaningless, random coincidences explained by the law of large numbers" is as dogmatic as leaping to God as an explanation, or ghosts, or angels, or anything else.

Of course, I DO have inklings & notions about how a coincidence like the teapots could be 'meaningful' (mostly congruent with my perspective during my mystical experience) but at present they remain vague and don't really constitute "beliefs" - for example, that consciousness interacts with reality in ways that our current scientific models cannot begin to account for, that all the boundaries we define/separate things by inevitably conceal at least as much truth as they reveal, etc ...

In short, you couldn't be more wrong about my position if you tried.

I didn't say that your position was that I'm an insane liar - I said that your "grounds for dismissal' of the story are NO BETTER than if it was.

Do you agree that the human mind has been known to cause inaccuracies in memory of past events? I know you have witnesses, but what are they witnesses of? That you bought a teapot, and that you found a teapot. Anything else?

Well what do you want? lol ... sheesh. OK, the friends at the store witnessed me being indecisive and confused about WHY I felt so drawn to the teapot (it was broken, I didn't even drink tea, I didn't collect cutesy items like that, etc). My roommate witnessed me suddenly deciding to explore the crawlspace. My exGF witnessed me have a mystical experience and then come out of it talking about following my intuition for the next several days ... this is a waste of time, though.

Because you guys aren't looking for any kind of "evidence" at all, you're simply looking for reasons to disbelieve, reasons to dismiss - easy ways you can put this aside without rocking the boat of your reductionist worldview, in which any pattern that you cannot fit into your limited understanding is automatically written off as "random."

 

[quarky]

Looks like we've sucked all the fun out of synchronicity.

I think sane people often go through a phase of exaggerating significance, or being on the look out for 'signs' in mundane events that give the feeling that the universe is communicating to you in a personal way. For that matter, it may even be true, or at least mostly harmless and fun.

Teapot seems like he's got a good head on his shoulders. My only objection is that his example isn't 'sexy' enough to make a case or be a life altering event. It would have been better if he found his initials scratched onto the teapot, at the least.

 

[fuelair]

Okay, this reminds me of what we like to call "the Nashville effect..."

Everyone I know has experienced it. Once you live here, you will run into people you know under the most bizarre and unlikely conditions imaginable (including randomly in other states in the middle of cross-country drives at truck stops in the middle of the night.) Every human being will suddenly become either someone you know or the friend of a friend.

I finally realized that there simply had to be some kind of logical explanation for this. It wasn't confirmation bias, because it literally almost never happened in the area where I'd grown up-- I could count the number of times on one hand. In Nashville, it was constant. That might be explained by the fact that the social circles were smaller, but only to a degree-- and what about the fact that the same thing would happen no matter where I went? (I'd decided that if I was ever lost in the middle of the Siberian wasteland, all I'd have to do would be to sit down and start chewing on some reindeer jerky, and my best friend from Nashville would undoubtedly stroll along in the next five minutes. No other attempts at rescue would be required.)

I think this is actually a very good example of how seemingly inexplicable coincidences can be explained, because I've realized what the logical explanation probably is. Back in Minnesota, people didn't really talk to each other. (In my childhood, it was extremely homogenous;we were a bunch of Scandinavians-- we did things like shaking hands at family reunions.) If you had anything in common with a stranger, you'd never find out. If you even knew someone walking by you on the street, you might not find out, because of the entire lack-of-eye-contact thing. When I moved to the South, it took a long time to get used to the weird way everyone was constantly hugging and smiling and using weird appellations such as "honey". However, it meant that we all got to know each other, and then we'd actually do things like start a conversation with people we didn't know in other areas and find out if we knew someone in common.

So it's either that, or the sinister influence of the Freemasons meeting in that limestone building on Broadway across from the downtown Episcopal church with the mysterious bell tower...

That last is probably it. While walking from downtown to Peabody College some 45 years ago I got ,for several days, to watch them pressure-washing the sinister influence off that building . Guess it came back with a vengeance.

 

[Elvis666]

So it's either that, or the sinister influence of the Freemasons meeting in that limestone building on Broadway across from the downtown Episcopal church with the mysterious bell tower...

O, wow, I was just in that church last Sunday! Almost impossible!