How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

[shandyjan]

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.

Maybe the teapot was a gift that someone hated...and hid it there not wanting to throw it away completely. So, far from being a good thing, it was a repeat of bad taste someone buying that teapot!

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'm sure it's been mentioned, but Confirmation Bias plays a role in these things too. In my story, I can't remember how many times I've been to Hannibal but didn't run into my brother right when I parked the car (or at all).

That sheriff who survived being struck by lightning multiple times is an often repeated story, simply because it's such a low probability event. It's easy to consider that somehow more significant than to consider how many billion people have NOT had that experience, and get a rough idea of the fact that we really should expect someone to survive several lightning strikes at one time or another.

 

[Rodney]

So you had a false memory of the order of events, then later you learned it was a false memory, but you've never had a false memory? Am I missing something here?

Yes. By "false memory" I am referring to an event that never happened, not one that happened but at another time. Further, when I have juxtaposed events in time, it's been understandable; for example, talking to someone at a social event and initially misremembering that it was another social event. In those cases, however, I wasn't 100% sure of the date, only that the conversation happened.

You're the second person I've talked to today who claims never to have had a false memory.

Synchronicity.

Of course, you have no way of knowing which of your memories may be false.

I have confirmed many things that I remembered having happened, with no misses thus far. Also, how far do you want to push this? For example, if there is no other evidence, but ten bank employees identify a man as a bank robber with no one providing him an alibi, should he be acquitted on the basis that the memories of the ten employees may be false?

 

[Rodney]

So if something with ten million to one odds happens to a person who shrugs it off as a coincidence, it is a coincidence, but if someone is profoundly affected by the same ten million to one event it is synchrosity?

This makes it pretty subjective, does it not?

Norm

Good point. Upon reflection, I would say that, if the odds of a particular sequence of events occurring to anyone are off the charts, it would be a synchronicity, even if the person shrugs it off as just a coincidence.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Yes. By "false memory" I am referring to an event that never happened

I don't buy it. Part of the memory of an event is the sequence of events. (In fact, wrt coincidence, the "event" in question is pretty much defined as the relationship of two or more events.)

A false memory is simply any memory that seems correct to you but is actually false. You might be sure of some minor detail that isn't true. You might have filled in gaps in your knowledge or mixed up a couple of events or the sequence of events.

Here's an example of a false memory experienced by Bush:

“Well, I was sitting in a schoolhouse in Florida… and my Chief of Staff – well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. And something was wrong with the plane…”

Of course he couldn't possibly have seen the first plane hit the building. That wasn't on TV until the next day at the earliest. (We did all have the horror of seeing the second plane crash into the tower on live TV.)

I have confirmed many things that I remembered having happened, with no misses thus far. Also, how far do you want to push this?

Far enough to point out that the studies that show how plastic memory is are much better than your personal experience that tells you that your memory is infallible (except for the sequence of events!)

 

[Prometheus]

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.

Fair enough. I misread your post. My apologies.

However, I believe I have demonstrated that in fact my reasoning is better than merely calling you a liar or insane. OTOH, you have merely dismissed my arguments with a handwave, putting scare quotes around the word reasoning as if to suggest I'm my points are somehow irrational, and claiming they're no better than mere name calling, yet you have not bothered to point out any error in reasoning anywhere in anything I've said. That's pretty ironic, don't you think?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Good point. Upon reflection, I would say that, if the odds of a particular sequence of events occurring to anyone are off the charts, it would be a synchronicity, even if the person shrugs it off as just a coincidence.

Then what distinguishes one improbable event from another? How do you separate a mere coincidence from synchronicity?

I've already pointed out that any combination of 20 coin flips are equally unlikely. Why do you claim that some would be examples of synchronicity and others not?

 

[fromdownunder]

Good point. Upon reflection, I would say that, if the odds of a particular sequence of events occurring to anyone are off the charts, it would be a synchronicity, even if the person shrugs it off as just a coincidence.

OK, let's take what you said as a definition. On (probably) New Years Eve in 1948, a particular sperm and a particular egg "got it together", and through various events after that date led to me posting on this particular internet forum over 60 years later.

The odds of these events happening (not only me - everything that has occured since 1948, including PCs) that allowed me to make this post right now, 61 years later probably cannot even be calculated - they must be Trillions to One at best.

Yet here is this post sitting here for everybody to see. That a particular series of events happened since 1948 which lead to this Trillians to One odds post is not synchrosity. Unless you believe that everything is synchrosity. In which case, a cause would be nice.

Norm

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

OK, let's take what you said as a definition. On (probably) New Years Eve in 1948, a particular sperm and a particular egg "got it together", and through various events after that date led to me posting on this particular internet forum over 60 years later.

The odds of these events happening (not only me - everything that has occured since 1948, including PCs) that allowed me to make this post right now, 61 years later probably cannot even be calculated - they must be Trillions to One at best.

Yet here is this post sitting here for everybody to see. That a particular series of events happened since 1948 which lead to this Trillians to One odds post is not synchrosity. Unless you believe that everything is synchrosity. In which case, a cause would be nice.

Well said, again.

 

[Rodney]

I don't buy it. Part of the memory of an event is the sequence of events. (In fact, wrt coincidence, the "event" in question is pretty much defined as the relationship of two or more events.)

A false memory is simply any memory that seems correct to you but is actually false. You might be sure of some minor detail that isn't true. You might have filled in gaps in your knowledge or mixed up a couple of events or the sequence of events.

If that's the way you want to define a false memory, fine. The key point I'm making is that I have yet to uncover even one time where I was convinced an event happened, but it didn't happen at all.

Here's an example of a false memory experienced by Bush:

Of course he couldn't possibly have seen the first plane hit the building. That wasn't on TV until the next day at the earliest. (We did all have the horror of seeing the second plane crash into the tower on live TV.)

That's really weak. Bush is simply talking off the top of his head about "seeing" the first plane hit, when, in fact, someone told him about it. I'm quite confident if he reviewed the events of 9/11, he would quickly realize that he misspoke.

Far enough to point out that the studies that show how plastic memory is are much better than your personal experience that tells you that your memory is infallible (except for the sequence of events!)

I never said my memory is infallible, only that every time I've researched a long-ago event that I remember happening, it happened.

 

[Rodney]

OK, let's take what you said as a definition. On (probably) New Years Eve in 1948, a particular sperm and a particular egg "got it together", and through various events after that date led to me posting on this particular internet forum over 60 years later.

The odds of these events happening (not only me - everything that has occured since 1948, including PCs) that allowed me to make this post right now, 61 years later probably cannot even be calculated - they must be Trillions to One at best.

Yet here is this post sitting here for everybody to see. That a particular series of events happened since 1948 which lead to this Trillians to One odds post is not synchrosity. Unless you believe that everything is synchrosity. In which case, a cause would be nice.

Norm

The problem with your example is that it wasn't at all improbable that some sperm and some egg would get together on New Years Eve in 1948 -- in fact, it was inevitable. But was it inevitable that Teapots Happen would feel compelled to buy a teapot one week and then find that same style teapot under his house the next week?

Regarding a cause of synchronicity, I think it indicates a non-random force, but that force is still not understood.

 

[Teapots Happen]

Check out the work by Michael Persinger. Anyone can have such an experience, if you bring a sufficiently strong magnetic field into close proximity with the right temporal lobe of the brain

Ha - by a coincidence, I just wrote "Persinger is full of it." two days ago, regarding an NPR article ... I'll just quote my friend's response: "Yeah Persinger is full of it. The thing is, when I eat a carrot, my brain lights up. Does that mean the carrot isn't real? Does it mean the carrot isn't real if I can stimulate a part of my brain and then feel like I am eating a carrot?"

Also, read the article - and others - his helmet doesn't really seem to work. (But if you want evidence that mystical states can be induced, check out the Johns Hopkins magic mushroom studies I mentioned way up thread.)

If they happen with such frequency, by what criteria would they be considered "weird"?

heh, well when they seem to indicate underlying connections or patterns that I don't understand, or don't believe in, of course. 'Weird' is pretty subjective - to a Taoist, there would be very little surprise in synchronicity - it is simply how the world works.

But I was long steeped in reductionist materialism, and so when the universe seems a lot more interconnected and interactive than a randomly-generated billiard ball math problem, I tend to react with some kind of "whoa."

You had, in fact, a number of experiences upon which you collectively imposed a pattern. You have chosen to interpret your 'discovery' of that pattern as "a mystical experience".

c) such memories can easily be triggered by subsequent encounters with components of the original experience (in your case, a teapot; in mine, snakes)

Hmm, again, it seems clear that you are reading my story wrong, and misudnerstanding what a "mystical experience" is.

My mystical experience came prior to any patterns, any teapots. (You saw snaked while tripping. I did not see teapots.) It merely set the stage, by blowing my mind and leaving me with the hypothesis "intuition can be a useful guide to navigating reality, after all."

Would you say that if it's possible to have a mystical experience that is triggered by drugs, it might also be possible to have a drug-induced illusion of a mystical experience?

"Mystical" in the phrase is subjective - it makes no claim to there actually having been a transcendental connection to the divine - just the experience of such. Which is why it doesn't matter if it was spontaneous or helped along by drugs or meditation, and the distinction is meaningless to me.

The richer the collection of events we observe, the more material we have to work with to make correlations which we can interpret as patterns, regardless of whether they're there or not.

Of course, we could easily say NO patterns exist, that the entire universe it utterly random, that any connections seen by anyone, ever, are as meaningless as the lines connecting the constellations to make pictures. Yes, the sun rises every day - but the number 21 kept coming up regularly in that number string after all, and that was just random ... in an infinite stream od randomness, there will be a whole lot of apparent structure and pattern, but it would all be false ... so where shall we draw the line, but what objective standard, when we decide what patterns are and are not real or meaningful?

I'm saying that the human mind evolved to perceive patterns to such an efficient extent that we tend to see them even where none exist. That is to say, we impose patterns on collections of events which may not be inherent in the events themselves.

Yes, I very much agree with that.

But the problem is that the data we analyze in real life - such as teapots - does not come with a label telling us whether or not it is randomly-generated data. And therefore we cannot ever simply assume that patterns perceived within said data are either "random" or "meaningful."

Yet skeptics do like to assume that any perceivable/potential pattern that does not fit neatly into the other patterns that they endorse (or, moreso, patterns that seem to actively contradict patterns they are fond of) is an artifact, an illusion.

But this is as dogmatic as explaining the unknown and mysterious away with "Jesus dunnit."

All too often, we are faced with potential patterns that seem compelling, but do not fit neatly with the patterns previously accepted as real/true. In such situations, the rational thinker does not rush to premature judgment - either in the direction of building beliefs, or of dismissing the potential pattern as "random."

And this openness to "misfit patterns" is exactly how science is able to move forward, from paradigm to paradigm through the ages. There is data on the fringes that seems to contradict the prevailing pattern. Most believers in the current paradigm ignore it, are hostile to it, or dismiss it as random noise - but some withhold condemnation, and are open to the possibility that the data that doesn't fit might be a legitimate, 'real' pattern - a piece of a puzzle still mostly submerged in ignorance, where we cannot see it.

Again, I don't expect that skeptics, deeply entrenched in paradigms that leave no room for "meaningful coincidence," will be persuaded by my experiences, or my interpretations of them. But I hope that perhaps you can understand that not everyone who DOES leave room for them is therefore an idiotic woo-woo head incapable of rational thought.

I don't think you guys are morons who just don't get it - I can truly understand why you would not ... but at the same time I also understand why people can find joyous meaning in every coincidence, see God smiling at them through the clouds, etc ... and I don't think they are screwing up their lives by doing so.

That's how they roll, that's how you roll - and this is how I roll, in between, rather envious of the certainty displayed by both sides, but unable to settle in either direction. I think it's a good balance - life is certainly more fun and pleasurable with meaning in it - and though I don't think that the point of life is to be as Correct as Possible, my longing for Truth means I can never abandon the powerful tool of Reason.

So I'll leave this topic for now with some wise, tongue-in-cheek words from Kurt Vonnegut:

“One would soon go mad if one took these coincidences too seriously ... one might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he did not thoroughly understand.”

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

If that's the way you want to define a false memory, fine. The key point I'm making is that I have yet to uncover even one time where I was convinced an event happened, but it didn't happen at all.

And if someone takes homeopathic remedies because it always seems to "work" for them, does that trump the studies that show that these things are no more effective than a placebo?

I assure you, human memory is very plastic. . . including yours.

That's really weak. Bush is simply talking off the top of his head about "seeing" the first plane hit, when, in fact, someone told him about it. I'm quite confident if he reviewed the events of 9/11, he would quickly realize that he misspoke.

Yes. he would probably realize that his memory was false. In most cases, we don't have videotape to check though, and we go about thinking that our memory is infallible because we have "yet to uncover even one time" where we had a false memory.

I never said my memory is infallible, only that every time I've researched a long-ago event that I remember happening, it happened.

Yes, I understand that you're trying to change the meaning of false memory to be other than memory that is plastic and fallible.

In one of the earlier studies, they would show subjects a video of traffic at a boulevard stop. After, they would ask them a number of questions including one like, "Did the blue car come to a complete stop?" (In fact, there was no blue car.) A number of subjects would then have the memory of a blue car.

Now, how do we apply your definition of "false memory" to this event? IF the "event" in question was a blue car stopping, then it was a completely made up event. However, you might say that they remembered a real event, they just got the color wrong.

So yes, the claim of not having false memories is the claim of having an infallible memory.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The problem with your example is that it wasn't at all improbable that some sperm and some egg would get together on New Years Eve in 1948 -- in fact, it was inevitable. But was it inevitable that Teapots Happen would feel compelled to buy a teapot one week and then find that same style teapot under his house the next week?

Nonsense!

What arbitrary rule are you applying to distinguish one very highly improbable event from another? By the way, you totally missed the fact that the improbable series of events Fromdownunder described was everything that happened leading from his conception up to the moment of his making the post on the JREF forum--but you ignored all that.

Why do you call one event "inevitable" (it certainly was not), and the other not?

 

[Moochie]

Ha - by a coincidence, I just wrote "Persinger is full of it." two days ago, regarding an NPR article ... I'll just quote my friend's response: "Yeah Persinger is full of it. The thing is, when I eat a carrot, my brain lights up. Does that mean the carrot isn't real? Does it mean the carrot isn't real if I can stimulate a part of my brain and then feel like I am eating a carrot?"

Also, read the article - and others - his helmet doesn't really seem to work. (But if you want evidence that mystical states can be induced, check out the Johns Hopkins magic mushroom studies I mentioned way up thread.)



heh, well when they seem to indicate underlying connections or patterns that I don't understand, or don't believe in, of course. 'Weird' is pretty subjective - to a Taoist, there would be very little surprise in synchronicity - it is simply how the world works.

But I was long steeped in reductionist materialism, and so when the universe seems a lot more interconnected and interactive than a randomly-generated billiard ball math problem, I tend to react with some kind of "whoa."



Hmm, again, it seems clear that you are reading my story wrong, and misudnerstanding what a "mystical experience" is.

My mystical experience came prior to any patterns, any teapots. (You saw snaked while tripping. I did not see teapots.) It merely set the stage, by blowing my mind and leaving me with the hypothesis "intuition can be a useful guide to navigating reality, after all."



"Mystical" in the phrase is subjective - it makes no claim to there actually having been a transcendental connection to the divine - just the experience of such. Which is why it doesn't matter if it was spontaneous or helped along by drugs or meditation, and the distinction is meaningless to me.



Of course, we could easily say NO patterns exist, that the entire universe it utterly random, that any connections seen by anyone, ever, are as meaningless as the lines connecting the constellations to make pictures. Yes, the sun rises every day - but the number 21 kept coming up regularly in that number string after all, and that was just random ... in an infinite stream od randomness, there will be a whole lot of apparent structure and pattern, but it would all be false ... so where shall we draw the line, but what objective standard, when we decide what patterns are and are not real or meaningful?




Yes, I very much agree with that.

But the problem is that the data we analyze in real life - such as teapots - does not come with a label telling us whether or not it is randomly-generated data. And therefore we cannot ever simply assume that patterns perceived within said data are either "random" or "meaningful."

Yet skeptics do like to assume that any perceivable/potential pattern that does not fit neatly into the other patterns that they endorse (or, moreso, patterns that seem to actively contradict patterns they are fond of) is an artifact, an illusion.

But this is as dogmatic as explaining the unknown and mysterious away with "Jesus dunnit."

All too often, we are faced with potential patterns that seem compelling, but do not fit neatly with the patterns previously accepted as real/true. In such situations, the rational thinker does not rush to premature judgment - either in the direction of building beliefs, or of dismissing the potential pattern as "random."

And this openness to "misfit patterns" is exactly how science is able to move forward, from paradigm to paradigm through the ages. There is data on the fringes that seems to contradict the prevailing pattern. Most believers in the current paradigm ignore it, are hostile to it, or dismiss it as random noise - but some withhold condemnation, and are open to the possibility that the data that doesn't fit might be a legitimate, 'real' pattern - a piece of a puzzle still mostly submerged in ignorance, where we cannot see it.

Again, I don't expect that skeptics, deeply entrenched in paradigms that leave no room for "meaningful coincidence," will be persuaded by my experiences, or my interpretations of them. But I hope that perhaps you can understand that not everyone who DOES leave room for them is therefore an idiotic woo-woo head incapable of rational thought.

I don't think you guys are morons who just don't get it - I can truly understand why you would not ... but at the same time I also understand why people can find joyous meaning in every coincidence, see God smiling at them through the clouds, etc ... and I don't think they are screwing up their lives by doing so.

That's how they roll, that's how you roll - and this is how I roll, in between, rather envious of the certainty displayed by both sides, but unable to settle in either direction. I think it's a good balance - life is certainly more fun and pleasurable with meaning in it - and though I don't think that the point of life is to be as Correct as Possible, my longing for Truth means I can never abandon the powerful tool of Reason.

So I'll leave this topic for now with some wise, tongue-in-cheek words from Kurt Vonnegut:

“One would soon go mad if one took these coincidences too seriously ... one might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he did not thoroughly understand.”

I think you make some good points. For me, when faced with a novel experience, I attempt to make sense of it based on what I already know. If there isn't a good "fit," then it goes into the "unresolved" basket until there is a good fit. The problem for many of us is that we find ambiguity difficult to "deal" with; it may even be very painful, so the "push" to resolve the issue is very powerful. This can lead to many wrong conclusions.


M.

 

[wolfgirl]

I was reading a book one morning in bed. My husband and I were also chatting on and off. At one point, one of us used a word, I've forgotten exactly what it was but it was something unusual like magpie, and then I read that word on the very next page. I was amazed and showed it to him, but neither of us thought it was supernatural, only weird. Of all the words you say and all the words you read in a lifetime, it only makes sense that every once in a while, they will coincide, even if they're unusual words.

I was in the shower one morning and for some reason thought of a routine I'd seen years and years earlier by Paula Poundstone where she talked about her cats watching her take a shower and how she imagined they were thinking about how awful it was for her to be in there with the water all over her and how they would tell her when she got out that they wanted to rescue her but didn't know how. Anyways, after I got out of the shower and got dressed, I went out into the living room, and not only was Paula Poundstone on the TV, not only was it the very same show, but she was doing that very routine! Again, with all the things we see and all the thoughts we have, day in and day out, it's going to happen occasionally that we see something we were just thinking about.

Coincidences happen all the time. Life is so completely filled with thoughts and words and actions on a second-by-second, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-after-day-after-day basis, that it would be weirder if we didn't occasionally have these things happen.

Nothing to see here.

 

[fuelair]

I'm sure it's been mentioned, but Confirmation Bias plays a role in these things too. In my story, I can't remember how many times I've been to Hannibal but didn't run into my brother right when I parked the car (or at all).

That sheriff who survived being struck by lightning multiple times is an often repeated story, simply because it's such a low probability event. It's easy to consider that somehow more significant than to consider how many billion people have NOT had that experience, and get a rough idea of the fact that we really should expect someone to survive several lightning strikes at one time or another.

That is also why so many people worry about school shootings or bombings - because they happen so often they are always front page news.

 

[Rodney]

Why do you call one event "inevitable" (it certainly was not), and the other not?

Because the odds of no woman conceiving on New Year's Eve 1948 was, effectively, zero. As far as fromdownunder's mother conceiving on that date, that was much less likely, but still not all that improbable. If Teapot Happens' account is accurate, on the other hand, the sequence of events was unlikely to happen to anyone.

 

[technoextreme]

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

I think this explains your coincidences.Admittedly, I might have just posted something irrelevant but there is a 5X5 that discusses that a supposed miracle/coincidence happens every day.

One woo phrase which I hate is "there are no coincidences". what, no two things ever happen at the same time?

Yeah that annoys the hell out of me. I was having problems with a liquid nitrogen tank that was purging every few hours. I was explaining to someone as to what was going on. I said,"It sounds like...", which then got cut off by the liquid nitrogen tank purging. Ooooo creepy. My mind must be reaching out to the liquid nitrogen tank in another dimension.

 

[Belz...]

You're the second person I've talked to today who claims never to have had a false memory. Of course, you have no way of knowing which of your memories may be false.

Except through evidence, of course.

A coworker of mine has had a few déjà vus in his life. He swears one of them was "prophetic", in the sense that he dreamt about the event the night before. I can't get him to accept that he simply retrofitted his memory as, I think, most of us do when first subjected to a déjà vu.