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How do you guys explain really bizarre cases of synchronicity?

fls said:
But the reality is that most 'precognitive' dreams are undocumented anyway.
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Exactly. If we eliminate all those, the one or two remaining well-documented cases would surely be expected to happen by chance given the arbitrary rules of the game (retrofitting) and the great number of humans that have dreams.

By the way, when we do this analysis we usually use today's living population of 6.7 billion, but the game covers humans who have now died, so that number is much higher. As Ivor has been saying, you could easily consider the number to be infinite since the game applies to every human who has ever lived, is now living, or who ever will live in the future. The probability of these coincidences occurring approaches certainty!
 
fls said:
But the reality is that most 'precognitive' dreams are undocumented anyway.
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As are most "non-precognitive" dreams. So don't you agree with me that Robert Carroll's analysis of dreams and precognition is flawed?

fls said:
So it isn't the case that only a few dreams are documented and that they happen to match up with later events in a way that is unexpected due to chance. It's that we recall undocumented dreams as being a better match than they were. We do have documented dreams to draw from and I suspect that the reason so few of the amazing precognitive dream stories depend upon one of these documented dreams is that unembellished accounts don't seem so amazing in comparison to undocumented accounts which can be remembered as a much better 'fit'.
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Do you have a few examples of "documented dreams"?
 
Rodney said:
My point is that skeptics constantly trot out the "it would be far stranger if no coincidences occurred" mantra to dismiss seemingly wildly improbable coincidences.
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Yes, that's because they understand probability. To someone who doesn't, I can see why that would be confusing or frustrating. The solution is not to try to project your ignorance onto your opponents but to learn about probability.
 
Rodney said:
Do you have a few examples of "documented dreams"?
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I've got hundreds of them, since I kept a dream journal for a number of years.

Interestingly, there were several occassions where I thought I had a synchronistic experience, but when I went back to my dream journal found that the dream wasn't what I remembered it was, and thus didn't really match the "synchronistic" event.
 
aggle-rithm said:
Interestingly, there were several occassions where I thought I had a synchronistic experience, but when I went back to my dream journal found that the dream wasn't what I remembered it was, and thus didn't really match the "synchronistic" event.
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Nice!

My one relatively recent anecdote is when a former girlfriend (and believer in all things woo) one day told me to be careful driving because she dreamed that I'd be involved in a car accident and it was a day I would be driving a lot. The only trouble I had was getting stuck in a traffic jam that might have been the result of a car accident. She retrofitted that to be a "fit" to her dream and counted it as another bit of evidence of precognition, even though it was obvious that I was not involved in an accident.
 
fls said:
Lincoln's dream, for example, fails to be documented because no immutable recording was made before the assassination.

Linda
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...and, given the rabid hatred that existed for Lincoln in certain segments of society back then, it would hardly be surprising even if he did have a dream about being assassinated. So it wouldn't necessarily be predictive, just the usual result of our unconscious processing our conscious experiences.
 
Guys, I confess--I read the first couple pages of this; and the last...

Skipping much of the Caramel Flavored Nougat in the middle.:jaw-dropp

I would like to point out: If someone comes running into my presence; eyes bulging; arms waving frantically; chin quivering in emotional intensity...

And they demand, in a self-righteous and accusatory tone, for me to explain some improbable seeming Phenomena they just witnessed...:eek:

I don't have to explain it.

"I have no idea" is a perfectly Logical and Acceptable answer...

But when you start putting forward some controversial; far-fetched seeming theory--then the onus of proof is on you.

And I must say, the OP is remarkably imprecise in stating his Premise. I'm still not sure what it is.:confused:

.....RVM45 :cool::boggled::cool:
 
Belz... said:
Yes, that's because they understand probability. To someone who doesn't, I can see why that would be confusing or frustrating. The solution is not to try to project your ignorance onto your opponents but to learn about probability.
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Have you ever taken a probability course?
 
Rodney said:
As are most "non-precognitive" dreams. So don't you agree with me that Robert Carroll's analysis of dreams and precognition is flawed?
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Is he the Skeptic Dictionary guy? Purported examples of things like synchronicity and precognitive dreams represent a highly manipulated sample from all of the events available to us. That the events available to us already contain mildly to moderately to highly unexpected coincidences means that we don't have to work very hard to be able to include mildly, moderately or highly unexpected coincidences in our stories. Rather than the events inspiring the idea of synchronicity or precognition (which maybe is what you think Carroll is saying?), I suspect that the events are available for anyone who gets the idea of synchronicity and goes looking for something to apply the idea to.

Do you have a few examples of "documented dreams"?
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Dream diaries (such as Aggle-rithim described) would be an example. Another example would dreams recorded as part of other research (like clairvoyance studies).

Linda
 
fls said:
Dream diaries (such as Aggle-rithim described) would be an example.
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So you would accept as an immutable recording a dream diary revealed after the fact, but you do not accept several witnesses coming forward after the fact to confirm a claimant's dream account?
 
RVM45 said:
I would like to point out: If someone comes running into my presence; eyes bulging; arms waving frantically; chin quivering in emotional intensity...

And they demand, in a self-righteous and accusatory tone, for me to explain some improbable seeming Phenomena they just witnessed...:eek:

I don't have to explain it.

"I have no idea" is a perfectly Logical and Acceptable answer...

But when you start putting forward some controversial; far-fetched seeming theory--then the onus of proof is on you.
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I agree wholeheartedly. From a skeptical point of view, it's not necessary to debunk a claim to reject it. If there isn't sufficient (or any!) evidence for a claim, we provisionally reject it.

However, with this thread, if the OP is asking how do we explain the occurrence of low probability coincidences if not by "synchronicity", we can fully explain why low probability coincidences are expected to occur given enough chances.

There's also the issue I've been harping on, that the real Jungian (or Rodneyian) definition of the term synchronicity includes a logical contradiction. (I can prove there are no occurrences of synchronicity the same way I can prove there are no 4-sided triangles.) That is, an event cannot be simultaneously acausal and caused (or "connected" or "inherently significant").

Much of the thread was on the notion that the term synchronicity isn't really an explanation of how the universe works (given as an alternative to causality) but was just the same thing as apophenia. I think that's been settled by now, but I'd like to reproduce the diagram Jung made. While I don't pretend to understand what he meant by it, it's clear that he was talking about synchronicity as a theory of how the universe actually works.


Énergie indestructible
|
|​
Causalité----------------------------------------------------------------------------Synchronicité
|
|
Continu Espace-temps​


(The two axes are meant to be centered--that might change depending on your window width.)
 
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Dr H said:
It has not been demonstrated that "paranormal communications" occur.

No need to identify an organ "responsible" for something which doesn't happen.
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This Quixotic quest reminds me of the "Cargo Cult science" mentioned in another thread. What makes some people believe that after many decades of research, the Truth of paranormal abilities/effects will somehow emerge with yet more research? This is not science, it's faith.


M.
 
Rodney said:
So you would accept as an immutable recording a dream diary revealed after the fact, but you do not accept several witnesses coming forward after the fact to confirm a claimant's dream account?
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A dream diary written before the event would be immutable. Witness recollection we already know to be mutable.

Linda
 
Rodney said:
No, but would you discount all witness accounts, no matter how many and no matter how credible?
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It's not so much an issue of credibility as it is an understanding of how we remember things and what sorts of changes we make to those memories. Post-cold-reading interviews compared with the transcript is a good example. The cold-reader will say - I'm seeing a male figure such as a father or brother and the subject will say, "my father has died". Later the subject will remember the cold-reader as seeing her/his father, rather than a male figure. Or a subject will tell the cold-reader that she is worried about her sister because she has been ill and later remember that the cold-reader was able to tell her that her sister was ill.

The statement "the president has been killed" or even "the president is dead", could easily be changed to "the president was assassinated", in the recollection of Lincoln's dream, for example.

Linda
 
Rodney said:
No, but would you discount all witness accounts, no matter how many and no matter how credible?
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With regard to a claim of an extremely low probability result and no corroborating evidence? In that case, I wouldn't consider the witness accounts to be credible, so I'm not sure how to answer your question.

It's sort of like asking, "If it didn't hurt like crazy and result in a period of disability, would you mind if you broke your leg?"
 
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