How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

[JoeTheJuggler]

I think it's obvious to even the most fanatical reductionist 'skeptic' (yes I'm looking at YOU Joe!) that the universe is telling me to kill my co-worker.

The hypothesis that the universe is telling you to kill your co-worker as an explanation of a low probability event is 1) unnecessary and 2) unparsimonious and 3) pretty insane.

Again, you ask "what are the odds of this event". Since you didn't define "this event" ahead of time (and I promise you, there are a LOT of coincidences that could happen that would allow you to assign meaning in this way), it's impossible to calculate. That is "this event" is undefined, so we don't know how many outcomes would count.

This part is simply the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy again. (You shoot a bullet at the side of a wall. Then you draw a tiny circle around the bullet hole and ask, "What are the odds against hitting that exact spot?")

Even so, I can tell you the probability is no lower than other low probability events that happen every day that you don't ascribe meaning to. So what's the difference between this one and these others? (That's the question Rodney can't answer either--how do you distinguish "synchronicity" from mere coincidence.)

Also, there's what Dr. H. correctly called an abuse of the language. Are you simultaneously saying this event was caused and uncaused?

Also, your memory of the events could well be faulty since memory is very plastic. People frequently trick themselves into thinking that a stray thought that happened at a different time actually coincided with another event.

And finally, there is the law of really big numbers that tells us that given enough opportunities, extremely low probability events are expected to happen by random coincidence.

All these arguments have been made before. Your anecdote does nothing to refute them.

Now, if you care to address the question of why a human would ascribe meaning to a meaningless coincidence, I have also explained that. We evolved to avoid Type II errors at the cost of having a tendency to make Type I errors. That is, as intelligent animals living in complex social structures, pattern recognition and the ability and tendency to infer intention was highly adaptive. Missing patterns or missing intentions could take your genes out of the pool, so we tend to see patterns even in random data, and we tend to see intention even where there is none (see above about the universe's intention being unnecessary to explain this event).

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Just a string a meaningless coincidences but one may get the idea that the universe is trying to tell you something.

And my point has been all along that if it's a string of meaningless coincidences and one gets the idea that the universe is trying to tell one something, then one's idea is a Type I error.

Further, it's an abuse of the language to say you can simultaneously believe it's a string of meaningless coincidences AND it signifies that the universe is trying to tell you something.

ETA: The title of this thread is " How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?" and I guess what I'm trying to say is, "You don't."

I agree, and that's because there is no such thing as "cases of synchronicity" so the implication in the question is false.

However, if you take the question to mean, "How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of extremely low probability coincidences that some people take to be cases of synchronicity?" it has been amply shown that we can explain them by the laws of probability and the human tendency to make these kinds of incorrect inferences of significance.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well, I merely tried for a definition. I'm not imposing rules on the universe that don't exist.

I understand, but I think your definition of synchronicity as merely a subjective experience (like feeling a chill or deja vu) is not the way the word is conventionally used. It's not the way Jung defines it, and it's certainly not the way Rodney uses it. It is offered as an alternative explanation to mere coincidence (in the real world, not in one's subjective experience of it).

I don't think we look for synchronicity. Maybe some do.
I don't see it as a magical explanation for anything.
Its more like spotting the animals in a picture with hidden animals.

Not quite. It's more like seeing animals in random data (like wood grains, clouds, rocks) where there are no hidden animals. (Again, otherwise you are claiming that there really is something actually there in the universe that is inherently significant.)

The word for this is apophenia (or pareidolia in strictly visual examples). Synchronicity really is an explanation that claims there is something going on beyond mere coincidence or misperception.


ETA:
For the record, here's Wikipedia's definition:

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance.

Again, it shows that logical contradiction. Something cannot both be "causally unrelated" and yet still occur "in a meaningful manner". But this does show that the word doesn't just describe a subjective feeling. It includes the idea that the coincidence of events really is meaningful.
It also includes that bit about being low probability which suggests the only distinction between low probability meaningless coincidences and low probability coincidences that are cases of synchronicity is that the latter are inherently meaningful.

The Merriam Webster definition comes closer to the way you want to define the word:

: the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

Note, that while it says it's not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality, the word "synchronicity" implies that there is some other causality or as some phrase it, some other "acausal connection" (which is again, the whole abuse of the language thing--the claim that it is acausal yet cased or meaningless but meaningful). Again, if they're talking about events that are not inherently meaningful, then how does "synchronicity" differ from "apophenia"? I think it does in that people who use the term apophenia recognize that someone is seeing a pattern in random data, but someone using the term synchronicity are somehow suggesting that there is some inherent meaning and that the perception of a pattern is significant. (To use your analogy, aphophena suggests that we're only seeing animals in the clouds, whereas synchronicity suggests there really are hidden animals in the picture-- and someone intended them to be put there and intended them to be found.)

 

[aggle-rithm]

I agree. The suggestion that there is "meaning" through a "connection" that is "acausal" is basically an abuse of language. IMO it's in the same category as reading tea leaves.

Or, in this case, teapots.

Jung was wrong in stating that there could be two events that were connected acausally...such as a dream about someone dying, followed by that person dying the next day. The truth is, event A (the dream) and event B (the death) are both causally connected to event C (the perception of synchronicity, or if you prefer, the awareness that a coincidence occurred).

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Jung was wrong in stating that there could be two events that were connected acausally...such as a dream about someone dying, followed by that person dying the next day. The truth is, event A (the dream) and event B (the death) are both causally connected to event C (the perception of synchronicity, or if you prefer, the awareness that a coincidence occurred).

But that's not an inherent connection (inherent to the two events that comprise the coincidence in question).

Again, if you think the connection is strictly the misperception of pattern, then there's nothing to distinguish this phenomenon from apophenia. Consider a Virgin Mary concrete stain. You've got two "events" a stain (random data) and and the popular image of the Virgin Mary. They're only connected by the misperception. There is no inherent connection between the stain and the popular image of the Virgin Mary. This is apophenia (in this case, pareidolia). A Type I error.

(You can apply the same thing to your example with the dream of dying and the death, but I wanted to use an example that most of us agree is a Type I error since many people here seem to think it's not an error to think the universe is trying to tell you something.)

 

[aggle-rithm]

But that's not an inherent connection (inherent to the two events that comprise the coincidence in question).

My point was that there is a causal connection, but Jung was looking for it in the wrong place. Had he been a clearer thinker, he would have realized that the connection is created entirely by the observer.

 

[quarky]

Significance exists, and is mostly self-imposed.
A brilliant skeptic could apply significance to a fairly meaningless gesture from a woman in a bar, and get all excited or bummed out by it, and even alter his behavior because of it.

Maybe those that experience the feeling of synchronicity are merely open to it, much like a guy that desperately wants to fall in love is extra open to all manner of mostly irrelevant perceptual data in regards to signs from their quarry.

The un-realness of our focus is a fact of life. I found meaning today in hearing the sand hill cranes migrating, and the time of year. Most people I know probably didn't notice them flying over today, and couldn't have noticed anything meaningful, much less emotional, about it.

 

[Marshmallow]

Seriously, how do you explain the stuff in the link I posted? How is that coincidence? Anyone?

And why am I accused of trolling just because I post something that happens to suggest a conspiracy or something unusual of some sort. I'm not saying the Illuminati thing is necessarily true, but it seems like there is definitely something unusual going on, and you're just ignoring it.

 

[fromdownunder]

Seriously, how do you explain the stuff in the link I posted? How is that coincidence? Anyone?

If you had actually followed the thread, you would already know what we have said, and responded to the specific points made. Since you have not bothered, well... if the cap fits...

Norm

 

[Marshmallow]

If you had actually followed the thread, you would already know what we have said, and responded to the specific points made. Since you have not bothered, well... if the cap fits...

Norm

Eh...no one actually addressed the link I posted on this page, except for one person who basically said I was a troll for posting it. I wasn't referring to the links I posted on the first page of the thread.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Seriously, how do you explain the stuff in the link I posted? How is that coincidence? Anyone?

And why am I accused of trolling just because...

Marshmallow, you only have a few posts here. I clicked through to them and found you had already been accused of trolling nonsense in that brief period. I didn't, if you read properly, accuse you of trolling - I asked if you were afraid of being thus accused (again).

Let's Wiki-Fisk the link you posted until it gets boring, shall we?

" 1. 555 is the number of feet of the Masonic obelisk called the Washington Monument. This is 6,660 inches. Zero has no value in western numerology since Zero was a concept in mathematics invented by the Mayans. Allegedly, the base of the Washington Obelisk is 20% below ground which would make the total structure length 666 feet. This means 555 is a 'kinder gentler' way of meaning 666 - the biblical number of the beast."

Lie 1: Actual height of the Washington monument, 555 feet 5.5 inches
Lie 2: The obelisk is an Egyptian design, not masonic (as I fondly imagined everyone knew).
Lie 3: Zero does have a meaning in numerology - "everything or absoluteness"
Lie 4: The zero used in our "Arabic" number system was invented in India, independently of the Mayans
Lie 5: "Allegedly" - LOL! No further comment necessary, but just for thoroughness: Wikipedia has a nice cross-section of the monument, showing exactly how much of it is underground. Perhaps you'd like to take a ruler and estimate for us what percentage that is. Do you get 20%? Nor do I.

See, that's just the 1st paragraph and I'm bored of this made-up ******** already.

So, what were you scared of, again?

 

[fls]

Absolutely.

Ah, but it shouldn't. If synchronicity represents something real, then the complexion shouldn't change at all upon investigation. Because the way that you identified synchronicity had nothing to do with that subsequent investigation. You seem to be admitting that individual intuitions are not an accurate way of discovering synchronicities, since you have just admitted that it cannot serve as your "gold standard".

Linda

 

[fls]

Seriously, how do you explain the stuff in the link I posted?

Poor scholarship combined with ********ting and mind****ing. A gullible and credulous audience.

Linda

 

[Rodney]

Ah, but it shouldn't. If synchronicity represents something real, then the complexion shouldn't change at all upon investigation. Because the way that you identified synchronicity had nothing to do with that subsequent investigation. You seem to be admitting that individual intuitions are not an accurate way of discovering synchronicities, since you have just admitted that it cannot serve as your "gold standard".

Linda

So you're telling me that if synchronicity represents something real, and Teapots Happen buried a teapot, forgot about it, bought an identical teapot, and then dug up the original teapot, that would be a synchronicity?

 

[Moochie]

So you're telling me that if synchronicity represents something real, and Teapots Happen buried a teapot, forgot about it, bought an identical teapot, and then dug up the original teapot, that would be a synchronicity?

Hypotheticals -- the last refuge of the deluded.


M.

 

[Rodney]

Hypotheticals -- the last refuge of the deluded.

Linda's not deluded -- just biased.

 

[Moochie]

Linda's not deluded -- just biased.

Linda has her own cross to bear. I was addressing yours.


M.

 

[Dr Adequate]

So you're telling me that if synchronicity represents something real, and Teapots Happen buried a teapot, forgot about it, bought an identical teapot, and then dug up the original teapot, that would be a synchronicity?

He'd have identified it as such, wouldn't he?

 

[Rodney]

He'd have identified it as such, wouldn't he?

Sure, but if he were so spaced-out that he could bury a teapot under his house less than a decade ago and then forgot having done so, his perception wouldn't be terribly relevant.

 

[fls]

So you're telling me that if synchronicity represents something real, and Teapots Happen buried a teapot, forgot about it, bought an identical teapot, and then dug up the original teapot, that would be a synchronicity?

You tell me. You're the one who has now claimed that intuition cannot reliably identify synchronicity (i.e. when you answered "absolutely" to my suggestion that the results of investigation could overturn the results of intuition). On what basis are you making that claim?

Linda