https://aeon.co/essays/just-how-meaningf...statistics
EXCERPT: . . . After the so-called Freud Wars starting in the 1970s, led by the American essayist Frederick Crews, any orthodox adherence to Freudian or Jungian ideas has since been frowned upon in the mainstream scientific community. Statistical and evolutionary arguments against notions of synchronicity, seriality and meaningful coincidences at large have come to seem ironclad, and the existential aspects of coincidence have been wholly discounted. Those who do believe in meaningful coincidences also haven’t been doing many favours for themselves. People who strongly believe in the paranormal and in conspiracy theories, for instance, tend to be significantly worse at probabilistic and statistical reasoning than those who don’t believe in them, according to studies from the University of Bristol and Goldsmiths, University of London, respectively. In truth, most of us are surprisingly poor at gauging the probabilities of events, so when we receive that phone call from the friend we’re thinking of, we’re prone to ascribe to it a significance disproportionate to its relative commonness.
[...] Irrespective of the mathematics of coincidence, there are still psychology specialists unwilling to give up on adapting theories of synchronicity and seriality. Bernard Beitman, a psychiatrist in Virginia and the author of the bestselling Connecting with Coincidence: The New Science for Using Synchronicity and Serendipity in Your Life (2016), believes that meaningful coincidences both exist and can be proven.
[...] Meaning cannot be quantified or even clearly and routinely identified. The difficulty that Beitman faces is in trying to make meaningful coincidence into a scientific concept. Like a religious person, the greatest asset to believing in meaningful coincidence is that you cannot prove that something is devoid of meaning since ‘meaning’ is not scientifically testable. Where Beitman is most successful – even rational – is when he shows how experiencing a coincidence can encourage psychological shifts.
[...] Beneath the statistical incorrectness, beneath any economic ploys, beneath even the potentially grave errors that can result, a belief in meaningful coincidence is, from an existential perspective, surprisingly rational. If your father were to choke to death across the country at the same time that you felt a phantom choking, you might know, intellectually, that there was no mysterious, invisible connection at play. But, if you did let your mind wander to that possibility, it would allow you a new way to grieve your father’s death, giving you a sense of intimacy or a fatalist understanding of events. Beitman claims that science is ‘fairly flexible’, which seems like a red flag to serious researchers. But behind such a statement – and motivating the millions of people who buy books on, watch movies about, or have ever thought about what the many links between the events in one’s life mean – is the sometimes-necessary need to fabricate meaning....
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/just-how-meaningf...statistics
EXCERPT: . . . After the so-called Freud Wars starting in the 1970s, led by the American essayist Frederick Crews, any orthodox adherence to Freudian or Jungian ideas has since been frowned upon in the mainstream scientific community. Statistical and evolutionary arguments against notions of synchronicity, seriality and meaningful coincidences at large have come to seem ironclad, and the existential aspects of coincidence have been wholly discounted. Those who do believe in meaningful coincidences also haven’t been doing many favours for themselves. People who strongly believe in the paranormal and in conspiracy theories, for instance, tend to be significantly worse at probabilistic and statistical reasoning than those who don’t believe in them, according to studies from the University of Bristol and Goldsmiths, University of London, respectively. In truth, most of us are surprisingly poor at gauging the probabilities of events, so when we receive that phone call from the friend we’re thinking of, we’re prone to ascribe to it a significance disproportionate to its relative commonness.
[...] Irrespective of the mathematics of coincidence, there are still psychology specialists unwilling to give up on adapting theories of synchronicity and seriality. Bernard Beitman, a psychiatrist in Virginia and the author of the bestselling Connecting with Coincidence: The New Science for Using Synchronicity and Serendipity in Your Life (2016), believes that meaningful coincidences both exist and can be proven.
[...] Meaning cannot be quantified or even clearly and routinely identified. The difficulty that Beitman faces is in trying to make meaningful coincidence into a scientific concept. Like a religious person, the greatest asset to believing in meaningful coincidence is that you cannot prove that something is devoid of meaning since ‘meaning’ is not scientifically testable. Where Beitman is most successful – even rational – is when he shows how experiencing a coincidence can encourage psychological shifts.
[...] Beneath the statistical incorrectness, beneath any economic ploys, beneath even the potentially grave errors that can result, a belief in meaningful coincidence is, from an existential perspective, surprisingly rational. If your father were to choke to death across the country at the same time that you felt a phantom choking, you might know, intellectually, that there was no mysterious, invisible connection at play. But, if you did let your mind wander to that possibility, it would allow you a new way to grieve your father’s death, giving you a sense of intimacy or a fatalist understanding of events. Beitman claims that science is ‘fairly flexible’, which seems like a red flag to serious researchers. But behind such a statement – and motivating the millions of people who buy books on, watch movies about, or have ever thought about what the many links between the events in one’s life mean – is the sometimes-necessary need to fabricate meaning....
MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/just-how-meaningf...statistics