How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

[cyborg]

Hey now, no one is saying the laws of physics are nonsense. But perhaps the "observed laws" aren't the full story?

Either you can observe it and formulate a law for it or you can't.

I really don't see why this is so hard for you to accept as a possibility ... do you really think we know it all? Or we almost do?

We know enough that the phenomena of finding a teapot and attaching an emotional significance to the event is not enough to seriously consider the possibility that a completely different causal mechanism operates in the universe.

Some of you seem deeply, deeply uncomfortable with the unknown and mysterious, have you noticed that?

No.

Perhaps that reality is more complex than our understanding of it is?

Reality is highly complex. It is however a mistake to assume complexity requires a complex answer when simplicity on a large scale is sufficient.

Or wait - those just negations of faith-based conclusions that you guys hold, aren't they?

No, they're mathematical observations and hence hold true irrespective of phsyical reality.

Reductionist rationalism is, indeed, a very powerful and useful tool. But it is not the only tool in the box.

Indeed. In the toolbox of sonic screwdrivers one may also place a flint knife. It is claiming that the flint knife is a superior tool because of one's attachment to its primitive charm that is the problem here.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I don't think he would disagree with that and I certainly would not. So, given the fact that "equally weird" things seem to happen to just about everyone, why not investigate this phenomenon, as opposed to assuming that all of these weird things are garden variety coincidences?

How do you propose to "investigate this phenomenon"? When you ask, "What are the odds of that outcome?" and we answer that the odds are exactly the same as any other random outcome, you reject that. You seem unwilling to explore the idea that events with the same low probability happen but have no significance and the only thing that distinguishes those from the events you claim to be "synchronicity" are a perceived pattern in something that is random. That is, you reject the idea that there is no inherent meaning or significants in the random coincidence of events (even though probability shows that these sorts of things are expected).

Going back to the coin toss. If you toss an honest coin, the odds of getting 20 heads are exactly the same as the odds of getting any other random outcome. Why do you claim the 20 heads is meaningful, but a patternless assortment of heads and tails is not?

ETA: Please note, in this thought experiment with the coin tosses, I'm specifying that it's an honest coin, meaning that the outcome is actually random. That is, in this hypothetical, it's a given that we know there is no significance to the outcome. Yet if it happened that 20 heads came up (which really is possible, and given enough coin tosses is in fact expected--and keep in mind that in the anecdotes that comprise the "phenomenon" you want to investigate, the rules for distinguishing a significant result from a mere coincidence are completely arbitrary and undefined as is the total set of possible trials that one might count), humans tend to see it as a significant and meaningful result. This is an error. Now consider a thought experiment where magic rules and the universe does do things with intention specifically aimed at you. In this hypothetical, the results are never random. If you get 20 heads in a row, you would be correct in saying it is meaningful. If you ignored an outcome that didn't seem patterned you would be incorrect--making a Type II error. Now come back to the real world, where we don't know for sure (though we can ascertain beyond a reasonable doubt) that the coin is fair, and there's no reason to suspect the universe has intention. 20 heads come up. How do you distinguish which world you're in?

I think these are the questions you should address when you "investigate" the so-called phenomenon of synchronicity.

You could also look at the studies in various disciplines that show humans have a tendency to make these kinds of errors (seeing patterns in random data).

 

[quarky]

Halloween falls on a saturday this year. That's a good sign for the party we're planning.
If the weather is also good, it will feel like the universe is smiling at me.
In analysis of past halloweens, I see that the odds of it falling on a saturday, and being nice weather, are rather low.

But, shucks...the very idea of a halloween party is steeped in magical thinking.
I don't have to reject the periodic table of the elements to enjoy it.

I don't pray for good weather. If prayer works, I wouldn't be able to justify my need to manipulate the weather. If prayer doesn't work, there would be no point in it anyway.
I do know that prayer helps some people feel better about their helplessness.

 

[Rodney]

Moving from a mathematically based causality to a human meaning based causality makes a mockery of physics.

Not necessarily. For example, according to Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research:

"In these studies human operators attempt to bias the output of a variety of mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical, and fluid devices to conform to pre-stated intentions, without recourse to any known physical influences. In unattended calibrations all of these sophisticated machines produce strictly random data, yet the experimental results display increases in information content that can only be attributed to the consciousness of their human operators.

"Over the laboratory's 27-year history, thousands of such experiments, involving many millions of trials, have been performed by several hundred operators. The observed effects are usually quite small, of the order of a few parts in ten thousand on average, but they compound to highly significant statistical deviations from chance expectations."
See http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/human_machine.html

If synchronicity operates in the same fashion; i.e., "the observed effects are usually quite small, of the order of a few parts in ten thousand", the laws of physics would basically be correct, requiring only relatively minor modification.

 

[Moochie]

Hey now, no one is saying the laws of physics are nonsense. But perhaps the "observed laws" aren't the full story? I really don't see why this is so hard for you to accept as a possibility ... do you really think we know it all? Or we almost do?

I lol at the thought.

I think that consciousness probably interacts with the 'external world' in ways that current basic physics cannot account for, sure. I don't rule out future science figuring things out that would absolutely blow the doors off the billiard-ball materialism that fearful reductionists cling to.

I do not claim anything "supernatural" - merely "unknown" and/or mysterious.

Some of you seem deeply, deeply uncomfortable with the unknown and mysterious, have you noticed that? Don't feel OK until it's been bagged, tagged, and buried inthe "random meaningless abberant data, nothing to see here" pile ...

I'm amused by the multiple screennames on here who dismiss the coincidence of the teapots by stripping away the context entirely - thus reducing the story to the bare-bones level you can find comfort in - "wow, you bought a teapot and then you found one that was the same, big whoop" ... ignoring what I was thinking and feeling, the mystical experience and intuition-following lead-up, the fact that an insanely active 'urban explorer' had never been into his own crawlspace before, that I never bought teapots and only bought the one I did because I had a totally inexplicable intuitive desire to buy it, etc etc etc ...

Many of you have simply dropped that stuff out of the equation entirely, while others seek to dismiss it by pretending that they have rational grounds to do so - that it is "more probable" that some kind of misfiring psychology has made me misremember what I was thinking and feeling (you know, in order to support this incredibly powerful woo-drive I have to believe in something super comforting like "I really don't understand the universe.') The latter approach might be more sophisticated than the former, but it's just that same reductionist-excuse-for-reasoning in action.

If you want to see "magical thinking," just read your own posts, fellows - what you're doing here is not reasoning, and it is not skepticism. You're True Believers in an utterly explicable world, willing to instantly dismiss anything that seems to challenge the ridiculously simplistic model you have of reality.

"Assigning meaning" is not a belief, so please try again - what conclusions have I come to?

Perhaps that reality is more complex than our understanding of it is? That I don't have all the answers? That we can't tell the difference - even in theory - between a random pattern and a pattern with an unknown or even unknowable cause? That unknown or unknowable causes exist? That it is possible and even quite likely that there is a lot more going on than we know about - and given this, it's quite reasonable to abstain from leaping to firm conclusions about seemingly-aberrant data? Conclusions like "all strange coincidences and patterns are random"?

Or wait - those just negations of faith-based conclusions that you guys hold, aren't they?

Reductionist rationalism is, indeed, a very powerful and useful tool. But it is not the only tool in the box. And the simplistic, useful models it employs are not to be mistaken for the reality, itself. It is merely one finger pointing in the direction of truth ... but rather than following where that finger points toward, some seem to prefer to suck on it for comfort.

I find your lack of lack of faith disturbing.

Speculating is fine, especially when it's based on plausible ideas. But I think it would be an error to live one's life treating ideas that are implausible, improbable, and downright unlikely as fact.


M.

 

[Moochie]

Not necessarily. For example, according to Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research:

"In these studies human operators attempt to bias the output of a variety of mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical, and fluid devices to conform to pre-stated intentions, without recourse to any known physical influences. In unattended calibrations all of these sophisticated machines produce strictly random data, yet the experimental results display increases in information content that can only be attributed to the consciousness of their human operators.

"Over the laboratory's 27-year history, thousands of such experiments, involving many millions of trials, have been performed by several hundred operators. The observed effects are usually quite small, of the order of a few parts in ten thousand on average, but they compound to highly significant statistical deviations from chance expectations."
See http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/human_machine.html

If synchronicity operates in the same fashion; i.e., "the observed effects are usually quite small, of the order of a few parts in ten thousand", the laws of physics would basically be correct, requiring only relatively minor modification.

How you can cite PEAR with a straight face is a deep mystery to me.


M.

 

[cyborg]

If synchronicity operates in the same fashion; i.e., "the observed effects are usually quite small, of the order of a few parts in ten thousand", the laws of physics would basically be correct, requiring only relatively minor modification.

I believe the statistical arguments on this have been hashed out with you by others better qualified than I, suffice to say that synchronicity is a binary thing: either the causal chain of an event was created because in being created a human could find meaning in that event or it is not.

Otherwise you really need to understand what it means when people say you're just calling it whatever you want, whenever you want and why this is precisely the reason they say it does not exist.

 

[Dr H]

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.

I would say that "synchronicity" is a term used to assign meaning to a coincidence which is not inherent in the conicidence itself.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Not necessarily. For example, according to Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research:

As published, no doubt, in the Journal of Irreproducible Results.

Come on, the whole PEAR thing was a scam to sell do-it-yourself home-PK kits.

 

[Dr H]

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?"

If I stimulate a part of your brain that makes you feel like you're eating a carrot when there is no carrot, then yes, it means that the carrot isn't real.

Also, read the article - and others - his helmet doesn't really seem to work.

Actually, it does, although Persinger's explanation of exactly what is happening seems to be wanting, somewhat. And whether the induced experiences are "mystical" or not is a matter of individual interpretation.

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns94.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrainqa.shtml

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 realize that it is possible to be a physical materialist without being a reductionist?

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

If I am reading your story "wrong", feel free to correct me on any point.

As to whether I am misunderstanding what a "mystical experience" is, it could just as easily be claimed that you are the one misunderstanding. "Mystical experiences" are entirely subjective, and defined subjectively. One man's fever-dream is another man's satori.

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."

Exactly. My "mystical experience," if you will, came prior to the snakes. It was the feeling of the "rightness of the world," brought on by the chemical in my bloodstream influencing my interaction with the environment. It was that feeling which gave significance to the snakes, both imaginary and real, later encountered.

In my case, I use the term "significance" in the sense that it made the experiences more memorable, and not in any sense indicative of hidden cosmic meanings.

"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.

I agree that if there is no actual connection to anything then the experience is essentially meaningless.

Of course, we could easily say NO patterns exist, that the entire universe it utterly random,

You could say that, but that would be incorrect. Lack of pattern does not necessarily equate to randomness. But as far as having independent material existence, that is a valid observation, since patterns are nothing more than the way we organize objects and events in order to try to make sense out of them.

As I noted earlier, if the patterns we impose on events are based on real relationships among those events, then our patterns have some predictive value, and that predictive power can be tested. If the patterns we impose do not reflect actual relationships, then they will have no predictive value, and that too, can be tested.

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?

You miss the point: there was a pattern in the portion of the number string presented, but the pattern was not meaningful, since it did not reflect any actual relationship among the numbers. The objective standard is: "can the pattern we observe tell us anything useful about the world?" -- that is, does it have any predictive power? In the case of the repeated "21" in the random number string, the answer is "no".

But if I see a pattern in this string: 01123581321345589144233...
and the pattern I discern is that each number is the sum of the two preceeding numbers, that pattern is meaningful, since it allows me to correctly predict the next number in the series.

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."

You are juxtaposing "random" to "meaningful" in a way which I did not. One of the points of my example is that there certainly can be patterns in a random collection -- because we impose those patterns. In such a case it is the pattern we impose that lacks meaning, and not the randomness itself.

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."

Not at all. As noted, whether or not a particular pattern is meaningful is testable. What is the meaning in "I took acid, and then I happened to acquire a couple of identical teapots under conditions which seem odd to me"? What does this information allow you to predict?

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."

Again, you misunderstood my example. Patterns are not random. Nor are random collections necessarily patternless. The question is whether the patterns involved are meaningful or not. I can impose a pattern on any collection of objects or events. I can make a one-to-one correlation between every car parked on my street that the nearest tree within 100 feet. That correlation doesn't necessarily have any meaning beyond the observation itself. I can't legitimately conclude, for example, that oak trees are more likely to attrack Priuses than are elm trees.

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.

"Paradigm" is an incredibly overused -- and much misused -- term. Kuhn himself came to realize that his "revolutionary paradigm shift" model of scientific progress was a very incomplete desctiption of how science actually progresses. He recognized that while some fringe data might represent a heretofore unperceived meaningful pattern, most of it most likely represented noise. Science moves forward gradually and systematically; even it's "revolutions" are long and drawn out.

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.

It is not 'pardigmatic entrenchment' to ask "so, what is the inherent meaning in the pattern you claim to have discovered?" If you can't answer that question, then all you have really done is to express an unsupported belief in magic. Uncritically embracing irrationality hardly constitutes a scientific paradigm shift.

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.

You have yet to actually define what the "it" is that you claim we are not "getting".

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.

You may not have abandoned it, but it does look like you've opted for a trial separation.

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.”

Here, have one from Samuel Butler:

“An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes, or it may be found a little draughty.”

 

[Dr H]

Enjoy your magical thinking!
that the Earth is flat, that the Earth is hollow,

Well that's just absurd. Celarly the Earth can't be both flat and hollow.

Therefore we must conclude that this is not Earth.

 

[Dr H]

I have an equally weird story myself. Doesn't everyone? What makes Teapots Happen different is not that his coincidence is particularly remarkable: it is not more remarkable than the coincidences that happen to other people. Nor is it particularly meaningful: indeed, it is particularly meaningless. (Two teapots? As someone asked, what's the Universe trying to tell him --- that he should drink more tea?) No, only the exceptional thing about his experience is that he takes it seriously, and is a apparently founding a whole philosophy of life on his teapot-related coincidence, plus the effects of what sounds like some rather good acid.

Amen.

Me, I'm going to wait 'til God gives me some stone tablets with commandments on. I'm a traditionalist at heart.

Or some kind of "tablets," at any rate.

 

[Dr H]

I don't think he would disagree with that and I certainly would not. So, given the fact that "equally weird" things seem to happen to just about everyone, why not investigate this phenomenon, as opposed to assuming that all of these weird things are garden variety coincidences?

Exactly what "phenomenon" is it that you propose we investigate? "◊◊◊◊ happens?"

 

[Dr H]

the billiard-ball materialism that fearful reductionists cling to.

"Fearful reductionists"? Now you're starting to sound like the chief woo on my woo-woo mail list.

Some of you seem deeply, deeply uncomfortable with the unknown and mysterious, have you noticed that?

Interesting you should say that, because that's often been my observation of people immersed in religious or magical thinking. They just can NOT seem to get comfortable with the idea that there may be something that we currently don't know, and HAVE to create an "explanation" for everything out of whole cloth.

Like finding cosmic meaning in a couple of old teapots.

...the fact that an insanely active 'urban explorer' had never been into his own crawlspace before,

I can name a dozen people, some of them relatives, who have lived in NYC all their lives and never visited the Statue of Liberty. Some of them live in Manhattan and never visited the World Trade Center. But they've all seen the Gateway Arch and the Washington Monument.

Exploring everywhere but home is actually pretty common.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well that's just absurd. Celarly the Earth can't be both flat and hollow.

And T.H. missed that--thought I was making some assumption about what he doesn't believe.

Therefore we must conclude that this is not Earth.

Oddly enough I'm content with the way that approach works with the other contradictory pair of beliefs I mentioned!

 

[Elizabeth I]

Either you can observe it and formulate a law for it or you can't.

And repeat it at will, and see it repeated by other investigators.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Hey now, no one is saying the laws of physics are nonsense. But perhaps the "observed laws" aren't the full story? I really don't see why this is so hard for you to accept as a possibility ... do you really think we know it all?

I am sure we don't. That's why physicists still have jobs. But there is no particular reason to connect the remaining puzzles and lacunae in physics with your Tale of Two Teapots. It isn't as though anything in your narrative actually contravenes the known laws of physics, is it? Come back if your teapots start levitating. You may then request that the moderators change your username to Teapots Levitate, and I shall concede that we have a genuine mystery on our hands.

Some of you seem deeply, deeply uncomfortable with the unknown and mysterious, have you noticed that? Don't feel OK until it's been bagged, tagged, and buried inthe "random meaningless abberant data, nothing to see here" pile ...

The ability to recognize costume jewelery is not a sign that one is "deeply, deeply uncomfortable" with diamonds.

 

[Teapots Happen]

If I stimulate a part of your brain that makes you feel like you're eating a carrot when there is no carrot, then yes, it means that the carrot isn't real.

Come on, you're missing the point - on purpose? What if there is no way to know if there is or isn't a carrot, as is the case with the reality/validity of perceptions in a mystical state?

Sure, you can just assume that there is no 'carrot,' but that kind of begs the question doesn't it? Even if Persinger could induce mystical states with magnetic fields, it hardly proves or even indicates that mystical perceptions are all illusionary - any more than stimulating a brain into perceiving a carrot means that carrots do not exist.

As I said earlier - you cannot simply presuppose that the dataset (in this case, all unexplained or inexplicable coincidences) is random data - because that is precisely the question we are trying to examine - can they be meaningful? Don't mistake axioms in your philosophical framework for arguments - just because you do not or can not question them does not mean they are objectively 'givens.'

Actually, it does, although Persinger's explanation of exactly what is happening seems to be wanting, somewhat. And whether the induced experiences are "mystical" or not is a matter of individual interpretation.

Disagree, although it's not really relevant that I can see anyway. In all three links you provided, the headset made people feel weird, at best - and none of them reported a "mystical experience" - which IS a term with a meaning. It doesn't just mean any altered state of consciousness.

Again, please see the Johns Hopkins studies I linked to for examples of actual mystical experiences which have been induced, if that is what you seek. These links may also be helpful to your understanding:

http://www.srds.co.uk/begin/mystical.htm
http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/m/mystical_experiences.html

And since I can link to it now - here is a non-reductionist rationalist's answer to the question, 'can an atheist have a mystical experience?':

http://www.srds.co.uk/begin/papers/robinson-mystic.pdf

You realize that it is possible to be a physical materialist without being a reductionist?

Yes, but what I'm dealing with here is clearly a pack of rabid reductionists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism#In_science

Exactly. My "mystical experience," if you will, came prior to the snakes. It was the feeling of the "rightness of the world," brought on by the chemical in my bloodstream influencing my interaction with the environment. It was that feeling which gave significance to the snakes, both imaginary and real, later encountered.

Perhaps, but you lacked the same kind of connection between the state of mind that you experienced* and the snakes - and there was really no connection between the hallucinated snakes and the car snakes - other than that both were snakes. You merely hallucinated snakes while feeling good and tripping, then, much later had an unrelated experience involving snakes.

*(it sounds to me more like you just felt really good, but given your apparent inability to understand the definition of a 'mystical experience' I am going to leave that alone for now)

Your original statements were:

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".

And I pointed out that the subsequent synchronicity, while related to the mystical experience, was in no way part of the mystical experience itself. Hopefully you grasp this now.

My mystical experience profoundly shook up the way I viewed reality. The primary lesson I took away from it was "intuition is a useful tool - pay attention to it."

I babbled about this happily to my GF in the car while still tripping, and tried to make decisions in the aftermath based upon it. I did not make this up - my GF witnessed me doing this, talking about this, and, eventually, fretting about this - as I got further away from the experience and my old fundamentalist 'rationalism' came seeping back and made me think I'd been a magical-thinking fool to even consider intuition potentially valid.

Note that there was no initial connection between the mystical experience and a teapot, which you clearly failed to understand when you wrote:

a not uncommon effect of certain hallucinogenic drugs is the apparent perception of certain correlations/underlying meanings in experiences encountered while under the influence ... such experiences can be very memorable and even influential on subsequent behavior ... such memories can easily be triggered by subsequent encounters with components of the original experience (in your case, a teapot; in mine, snakes) ... in the event such a recall is triggered there can be a strong tendency to correlate the current trigger with the previous event ...

This belief in intuition was the explicit and direct result of the mystical experience, and it was the explicit and direct reason that I bought the first teapot a week later (not because I was "triggered" by a teapot from the trip.)

I bought it because of the seemingly-unrelated conceptual content / reality model that I'd experienced and believed in while in the mystical state.

But there was nothing about that particular object that tied it to the mystical experience, the trip, or the idea of intuition I'd found so compelling during the trip - other than that for some reason, I was powerfully, intuitively drawn to it.

I chose it - out of a sprawling thrift store packed full of random objects - for no reason other than an irrational intuition I could not shake, coupled with a fading mystical mindset that had told me that intuition was a legitimate guide to navigating reality.

So I followed intuition, and bought the thing, confused about why I was doing so.

A week later, I found the identical teapot buried under my house, after having lived above it, unknowing, for eight years.

If you cannot understand why this is both different from your snake hallucination and more meaningful to me than merely having found two of the same teapot, there is really nothing I can do for you.

If the patterns we impose do not reflect actual relationships, then they will have no predictive value, and that too, can be tested.

We are not all-knowing, and therefore not all actual patterns can be predictive for us. This is a great example of why I call you a reductionist - you rule out as meaningless any pattern that's not simple enough to be completely understood, as measured by its predictive utility.

You axiomatically rule out patterns we can perceive, but not fully enough to understand or predict. Rule out patterns that we cannot even begin to perceive, yet exist and effect our lives ... and no, I am not saying that any all perceivable patterns are meaningful - just that you cannot assume that they are not, any more that you can assume they are.

If scientists and thinkers from the distant past thought like you, civilization would have never progressed, because any pattern that could not be explained by the knowledge of that time would have been dismissed out of hand.

Sometimes, randomness looks like pattern. And sometimes, patterns appear random.

We should agree on that, I think - but you also believe that you have rational, objective grounds for dismissing the possibility of my teapots (or any other reported synchronicity) being meaningful, rather than random.

I am trying to help you see that the basis for your conclusion is not actual reasoning - merely that your framework presupposes that any and all such inexplicable patterns are random, the connections that form them, illusionary.

Not at all. As noted, whether or not a particular pattern is meaningful is testable.

Perhaps, but only if you employ reductionism in order to keep your worldview and filters manageable in the face of a world far more complex than your worldview allows for ...

What does this information allow you to predict?

Unless someone predicts and repeats the effect it's like blazing away at the side of a barn ...

we would say it's a significant or meaningful correlation (in which case, you could predict that reaction and get it to happen repeatedly under similar conditions).

We impose patterns on the world because if a pattern is really there, then it has predictive value

Either you can observe it and formulate a law for it or you can't.

And repeat it at will, and see it repeated by other investigators.

Holy Billiard-Ball-Believers Batman!

Guys, not all actual, causal patterns are cyclical or simple, and many manifest in unique ways. As a result, many meaningful, real, connected events or patterns cannot be used for making predictions.

It is ridiculously reductionist to reject as random and meaningless all patterns which are not simple enough for you to test, repeat, and use to make accurate predictions.

See the outputs of consciousness for an example. Or social groups. Or any complex system at all whatsoever. Or stochastic processes. Or chaotic systems.

The fact that we cannot predict how a mind or a society will unfold in a given circumstance in no way discredits the possibility that there are actually causal connections involved in such a process, or that there are reasons that things happened as they did.

In the same way, the fact that we cannot predict anything based on an acceptance that a synchronicity is meaningful (not random) does not mean that synchronicity does not exist as an actual phenomenon.

I do not think I know how the teapots happened. I do not expect to be able to make predictions regarding future events. I do not conclude that teapots are more likely to attract people who have been to California and dropped acid.

I simply do not have faith in the belief that it was a meaningless pattern, imagined in randomly-connected events.

Science moves forward gradually and systematically; even it's "revolutions" are long and drawn out.

Scientific revolutions happen. I don't care how fast or slow you say they move. Even if you just call it "growth" or "change" instead of a 'paradign change,', it in no way changes the fact that today's fringe data has a habit of becoming foundational to tomorrow's hot new theory on the block. Not all fringe data leads to new accepted theories - but most new accepted theories grow from fringe data, not adequately explained by currently accepted patterns within the paradigm.

It is not 'pardigmatic entrenchment' to ask "so, what is the inherent meaning in the pattern you claim to have discovered?"

Regardless, it IS paradigmatic entrenchment to respond to whatever answer is given to that question with "because I do not believe such patterns can be meaningful, any meaning you find in it is irrational and false."

---

Aaaanyways ... we seem to be doomed to go around in circles at this point, unfortunately, repeating the same things in slightly different words.

I'm not about to return to what I see as fundamentalist reductionist materialism, and you guys aren't going to revise your entire paradigms to accommodate someone else's account of a strange coincidence wrapped up in what you see as irrational magical thinking.

Perhaps we should just agree to disagree ...

Unless perhaps you're now willing to concede that Teapots can Happen meaningfully, and not just randomly, illusionarily?

 

[Prometheus]

<snip>
My mystical experience profoundly shook up the way I viewed reality. The primary lesson I took away from it was "intuition is a useful tool - pay attention to it."
<snip>

This is an interesting statement. Describing intuition as "useful" implies that it can be a means to an end, and that there is some objective way of determining such utility (ie. it really does make it easier to accomplish some purpose).

So, since you had this realization, to what ends have you used your intuition? What goals has intuition helped you to accomplish, and how do you know that you wouldn't have accomplished them at least as easily had you not paid attention to intuition?

Lastly, why did the teapots confirm this hypothesis for you. Presumably if finding two almost identical teapots as a result of intuition made you realize that intuition is useful, then you must have had some use for a pair of teapots. What did they help you to do?

 

[Dr Adequate]

If scientists and thinkers from the distant past thought like you, civilization would have never progressed, because any pattern that could not be explained by the knowledge of that time would have been dismissed out of hand.

Not at all. But it is first necessary to demonstrate that there is a pattern.

Sometimes, randomness looks like pattern. And sometimes, patterns appear random.

We should agree on that, I think - but you also believe that you have rational, objective grounds for dismissing the possibility of my teapots (or any other reported synchronicity) being meaningful, rather than random.

We do. As follows: coincidences do happen, and we have no reason to think that this was anything else.

Perhaps, but only if you employ reductionism in order to keep your worldview and filters manageable in the face of a world far more complex than your worldview allows for ...

You owe me a new irony meter.

Guys, not all actual, causal patterns are cyclical or simple, and many manifest in unique ways. As a result, many meaningful, real, connected events or patterns cannot be used for making predictions.

But a pattern can --- that's what makes it a pattern.

I'm not about to return to what I see as fundamentalist reductionist materialism ...

Nor, indeed, define this bizarre phrase.

... and you guys aren't going to revise your entire paradigms to accommodate someone else's account of a strange coincidence wrapped up in what you see as irrational magical thinking.

Abandon Occam's Razor for a teapot? No. So far in the history of human thought Occam's Razor has been of more use than the Teapots Of Mystery.