Most of us have had things happen to us which could be considered 'coincidental', something we cannot quite explain. I've had some occurrences over the last couple of months and have spent some time thinking about each incident and attempting to compare the similarities and differences. I'm not necessarily religious, if I had to define my relationship with religion I would have to say that I am agnostic. Instead I find myself looking towards psychology and philosophy when trying to come to some understanding of reality. I've noticed that sometimes these random occurrences will feel different than others. I was thinking of a way to explain it and reflected on the times my father and I would skip rocks down by the river. We would start by picking up rocks of different shapes and sizes, and we would then compete to see who could skip them the furthest. Eventually I learned what shape of rock I was able to skip the furthest, and would try to find rocks that fit this description (flat, smooth, rounded, etc...). I would never find two rocks which were exactly identical to eachother, and the splashing of the water would match. No mater how similar each rock was, the water would splash different each time. There's so much going on which determines how the water splashes - The angle at which the rock hits the water, the movement of the tide, the speed of the projectile, the shape of the projectile, etc... I started to think about the "You cannot step into the same river twice" quote by Heraclitus, and then thought the same is true about skipping rocks. You could swim into the water and retrieve the rock, but you would be hard pressed to recreate the way the water splashes when the rock hits it's surface. This is how I have started to feel about 'coincidences', if life is a river constantly flowing, then why do these rocks seem to create the same splash? Now there are a few possible explanations, the most obvious is that I am looking for these coincidences, and that they are something called 'frequency illusion'. Have you ever bought a new car and suddenly you see that make/model behind/in front/next to you at stop lights? A family member of mine swore they saw more pregnant women when they were pregnant. There are many more examples of when we are looking for something, it becomes more apparent and therefor we notice it more. Esentially frequency illusion says that I am looking for these 'things' and therefor they seem like a coincidence. While it is certainly possible for that to be the case, I also feel like I am able to discern some differences in these situations. For instance I will have a word on my mind, and all the sudden it seems to pop up often EX: Sommelier, and that stupid out of context sonic commercial(I don't hate commercials because they suck, I hate them because somebody gets paid to write this nonsense). Sometimes this hits me as a nothing more than a "haha that is random", but sometimes I can't help but think "what are the odds". The most recent would be when I recognizes somebodies face, but couldn't put a name to it. I thought about this for a while, and came to the conclusion that the closest I could come up with was a childhood friends father whom I had not seen for some 12+ years. I knew it wasn't him so I went about my day as I normally would, until I ended up at the grocery store... Low and behold there was my friends father, lookig at me as if I was supposed to recognize him. It was almost frightening, what are the odds that today is the day I come across him? Perhaps I had seen him at the grocery store many times over the year, but since he was on my mind I finally noticed him. Long story short I feel like there have to be forces at work which we do not, possibly cannot understand, be they the work of science, of a god/gods, or rooted in psychology. TLDR; I'm curious what you guys think of 'coincidence', or 'synchronicity' if you are Jungian. Do you have any interesting examples to share?
Humans routinely "feel" like things are true that demonstrably aren't. It is in our nature. It's probably a beneficial evolutionary adaptation in some way. It should be the base assumption that intuitive feelings without objective observational support are (at best) unreliable. So unless someone is prepared to attempt an objective statistical analysis to support the hypothesis that apparent coincidences are something more than that, nothing to see here.
lol^ Great thread. There is so much to this world that our current level of consciousness cannot comprehend. I wish people would at least get over the God debate and be serious about exploring the unseen powers at work, and how connected we are as human beings beyond the surface. Recent synchronicity for me, my wife and I both got new job offers on the same day in December, then subsequently both started said jobs on the same exact day in January. Dream jobs I might add.
You're suggesting there is an unseen mindless force (not definable as "God") that somehow is able to unconsciously draw a connection specifically between you and your wife, and control and direct the choices and actions of the individuals responsible for the hiring and work start dates of you and your wife so they necessarily coincide. You might as well suggest magic is real and people should be serious about exploring it.
Well, there is that large portion of our brains we don't use. Maybe we control what we want to see/happen without knowing? Maybe nothing is real? There are just too many things that happen that there isn't logical explanations for. Jesus Christ, reading that I sound like that old stoner guy who lives by the riverfront and tells stories about 1974 or some shit.
There's certainly no shortage of personal anecdotes that support that impression for people that already have it formed.
See I think that we get what we put out, and that in a sense is 'karma'. So to me it is perfectly reasonable to think that two people as close as husband and wife would be putting out similar positivity. I've come across a fair share of people who believe energy is responsible for much of this. In a sense it is plausible, being as everything we know is made of energy, from the sofa I'm sitting on, to the IPad I'm typing this on and the fingers I'm using to do so. I know that energy plays a big part in Taoist beliefs, but I'm not educated enough in Taoism to speak on it specifically.
I feel like you got too caught up in the idea that it has to be a scientific explanation which disputes monotheistic/polytheistic beliefs. First and foremost it is possible for there to be both a god/gods AND evolution. I always find it funny when I ask someone if they believe there is a god/gods and they respond "no I believe in evolution". It is funny because this is clearly the person who is thinking on what they are told, and not thinking for themselves(I'm not saying this is you). Your first response is an interesting prospect. I believe that there evolution can explain some of the things which we cannot. However if we are able to trace things like this to some sort of fight or flight reflex which motivates our survival, then why can't we understand them? I don't know if you are familiar with Immanuel Kants Transcendental Idealism, but he disputes Locke and Humes empirical claim that all knowledge comes from experience. He does this by describing what he calls 'a priori' knowledge, or knowledge which independently preceeds experience. Using your original claim you would almost have to make an argument that we have some a priori knowledge on these coincidences which allow us recognize these incidents and activate said evolutionary tactic. This actually gives support to BDSF's thought. It might not be as stonerish as you think. Perhaps coincidence is actually something our minds have programmed inside of them that function independently from experience. But I'm not sure how this would explain how one coincidence has seemingly different 'energy'(I don't know how I want to phrase that, it's not emotion) behind them. If we have this knowledge of what the coincidence is or means before it happens then part of me feels like each coincidence would have the same affect on the person experiencing it.
I wasn't stating anything about the possible combination of God/evolution. I was responding to HailBlazers nonsensical implication that some other (not God) sort of non-intelligent connective force is responsible for actually manipulating events in external reality so as to appear coincidental to us. Why? When it happens we're just making an instinctive connection between events we have experienced or are experiencing as possibly non-random. No a priori knowledge of the events themselves is required for that. Based on what we know about evolution, this type of recognition of apparent coincidence could (speculatively) be a trait that helped our ancestors avoid danger, or aided in the development of complex problem solving ability in some way. Could be. It's not something I have read a lot about, but there are no shortage of theories that mentally misinterpreting external reality was sometimes a beneficial adaptation - a primitive human invariably interpreting rustling bushes as a predator ready to pounce even when it was the wind etc. It may be why we demonstrably have a tendency to fool ourselves mentally in certain circumstances today. Why isn't what you call 'different energy' just a different psychological reaction than we normally experience?
This blind devotion to the physical world via only what can be measured cracks me up. 1,000 years ago you folks wouldn't have believed in other planets because you couldn't see them. But that doesn't mean they didn't/don't exist. Most of the universe is invisible. Gravity is invisible. Electricity is invisible. Love is invisible. Yet they all exist. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"All the stars, planets and galaxies that can be seen today make up just 4 percent of the universe. The other 96 percent is made of stuff astronomers can't see, detect or even comprehend." - Space.com
One day in November I found out in a shit way I wasn't getting the temp job I was doing (maternity leave coverage, then the chick quit so her job was open) after being unemployed for about 3 months before this. Earlier that day I had emailed a hiring manager for another job I had applied and interviewed for and hadn't heard back from (was supposed to hear back a few days before this, so I was nervous it was a rejection) About 1 hour after I sent that email, my current boss started telling everyone (including me, as I was in the conference room) about the person she had hired right in front of me, hadn't told me I wasn't getting it yet. My co-workers were floored, and later asked my boss if she even realized I was in the room, my boss apparently didn't know I was there. About 2 hour after finding this out and going to lunch to cool off, I got an email from the hiring manager of the other job saying I was going to get it, and I should be hearing from HR soon with the official offer. This new job was in a better field for my career, was a LOT more money and a much better company to work for. So in a span of 2 hours I went from the lowest lows to the highest highs. Now my previous employer has lost 2 more of my co-workers and called me back with a job offer. I politely turned their bitch asses down. To me it is just crazy that over the weeks of interviewing, the tons of communication, that all that would happen within a 2-3 hours period. What are the odds?
Planets, gravity, electricity, and human emotions are all measurable physical things, physicists have no problem detecting dark matter/energy, and I in no way suggested that only the currently measurable exists. In the post you are responding to I was only objecting to the logical absurdity of a mindless force (as implied by HailBlazers) "knowingly" caring about and directing the events in the lives of and actions of humans specifically into what we perceive as apparent coincidence. If you want to hypothesize some sort of trickster god is doing all that, no problem - I'd have no (logical) objection.
Every time a bad driver cuts me off in traffic I try to give them a stroke with my mind. One day someone I'm trying to give a stroke may have one by coincidence. If humans do have that power in our brains, I figure you have to try to use it to find out right? My response is not meant to help other than to point out that this thread is a bunch of gibberish written by people who need to get some sun. Seriously, you talking about stuff like that does nothing. There is a better chance me giving someone a stroke with my mind would cause some mystic alien to appear and let me in on the secrets of the universe. It sounds stupid because it is.
Please tell me where you gained such tremendous insight as to come forth to the knowledge you hold above everybody else in this world. You've shown what a deplorable individual you are on multiple occasions. I only hope you are trolling and do not actually act in the way you portray yourself on these forums. The fact that there are people who would wish something so terrible on someone simply for cutting them off in traffic...It makes me sick. You think it would be a coincidence when somebody has a stroke. Well keep being a scumbag and it just might be you who has one. I hope you can learn to love rather than hate, you seem to have so much hate that it is not healthy. Get some help or find something you enjoy to take your mind off of the needless anger...
crow - I am not saying it is some "trickster God", what I am saying is that there are forces in this universe that, even though we do not have an explanation for them, are real nonetheless. Carl Jung dubbed one of these things synchronicity. He wrote a book about it with a Nobel Laurette: I don't know what synchronicity is, but I do experience it as real: I am close with my brother. We don't live in the same city. One day in 1992, I bought my first and only fax machine. Turns out he bought the same one, the same day, 600 miles away. In 2003 I went t Japan. I bought a little clay sumo wrestler. My bro came to visit me in Sacramento a few months later and saw it. Turns out he bought the exact same statute three years earlier when he went to Japan. I probably have a half dozen more stories like that.
Is an interesting idea that is a bit more coherent than the suggestion I was originally responding to, but despite numerous controlled studies no significant objective evidence has ever been found that might support it or anything else paranormal. There are only the aforementioned personal anecdotes. If you don't know what it is then how do you know it isn't just that your mind is programmed by evolution to interpret certain coincidental circumstances as non-random? Great example of the psychological process that leads to overrating coincidental circumstances. You and your brother presumably have bought dozens of electron devices and decorative articles in your lives. It's very easy to ignore all the times they did not sync up and focus only on the few that did, and also ignore the millions of other siblings that do not seem to offer similar anecdotes (selection bias). If anything this is evidence that you and your brother may have similar tastes.
I've always found it fascinating how many times my wife and I will be together, not talking, and simultaneously notice and comment on something that would be irrelevant to anyone else, or respond identically to someone else's statement, or come up with the same clever witticism, etc. With the high frequency of these occurrences (as contrasted to the same with almost anyone else), one might suggest that we have some sort of eerie psychic link. I have always simply said "common experience plus common stimulus equals common response".
My daughter was born May '02, and I was laid off April '03. While laid off, I was submitting applications nearly constantly, getting no replies for a good 2 months. In that time, I got my final paycheck on my final day; got a severance check a couple weeks after being laid off; then got my tax refund a few weeks later (I filed basically on 4/15); then got about a month of back unemployment a few weeks after that. All in all, money flowed in as though I hadn't lost my job. Then, after about 2 1/2 months of being incapable of getting an interview, I had the following happen all in the span of one week: Monday: I get a (half-assed) interview for a telephone sales job. I also schedule a credit analyst interview for the next day. Tuesday: I bomb my interview (unprepared for an interview at a real company), and get called out of the blue by a hiring agency I'd never heard of for a different credit analyst interview on Thursday. Wednesday: Get offered the job from the Monday interview, being told how much they liked me and want me. Tell them I will let them know after the weekend. Thursday: With a job offer in my pocket, and fully prepared from the interview two days prior, I absolutely nail my interview Friday: Get offered the job I interviewed for the day prior, for more money than I had been making before I was laid off The almost perfectly scheduled cash flow, the inexplicable inability to even get an interview for over two months, and the improbable confluence of events that led to the perfectly-timed end to my unemployment--all could simply be chalked up to "coincidence". I choose to believe otherwise.
