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Just how meaningful is coincidence, beyond the statistics?

#1
C C Offline
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
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#2
Magical Realist Offline
I can say from experience that a good synchronicity is generally something you have to personally experience to appreciate. Described to others it is bound to elicit a few eyerolls. But when it happens to you, its otherworldly nature seems to affect you with a surprising amount of profundity. The tiny often just barely noticed correlation is immediately impactful, like a message whispered to your very soul, "There is a higher purpose to your life." Ofcourse this can be written off by scientific reductionists as just wishful thinking, and perhaps so. But it really is something meant only for you, at your particular stage of psychic growth. There is a sense in which it is indeed an all too probable coincidence. But there is another sense in which it is an orchestrated omen from the universe itself. In this world too often banal and mundane in its outcomes, take this secret sign from the beyond and run with it!

"With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity

A sleep trance, a dream dance
A shared romance
Synchronicity

A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectible
Yet nothing is invincible

If we share this nightmare
Then we can dream
Spiritus mundi

If you act, as you think
The missing link
Synchronicity

We know you, they know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity

A star fall, a phone call
It joins all
Synchronicity

It's so deep, it's so wide
Your inside
Synchronicity

Effect without a cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity..."

The Police


[Image: the-importance-of-synchronicity-and-why-...ention.jpg]
[Image: the-importance-of-synchronicity-and-why-...ention.jpg]

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#3
C C Offline
(Jul 13, 2018 04:59 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: I can say from experience that a good synchronicity is generally something you have to personally experience to appreciate. Described to others it is bound to elicit a few eyerolls. But when it happens to you, its otherworldly nature seems to affect you with a surprising amount of profundity. The tiny often just barely noticed correlation is immediately impactful, like a message whispered to your very soul, "There is a higher purpose to your life." Ofcourse this can be written off by scientific reductionists as just wishful thinking, and perhaps so. But it really is something meant only for you, at your particular stage of psychic growth. There is a sense in which it is indeed an all too probable coincidence. But there is another sense in which it is an orchestrated omen from the universe itself. In this world too often banal and mundane in its outcomes, take this secret sign from the beyond and run with it!


Coincidences often come in lengthy streaks or series for me. Which causes me to occasionally wonder if even the "lawfulness" of this world is not so much the result of abstract principles of governance which elusively lack locations as literal observable objects... But is instead just a billions-of-years long set of still running coincidences that simply impart of the illusion of regulation and coherence. Made possible by endless nonsensical things perpetually popping into existence (or whatever un-nomological concept might substitute for conventional orderly be-ing). Monkeys infinitely typing gibberish till a rare duck falls out that happens to long-windedly hang meaningfully together in terms of surface appearances.

~
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#4
Magical Realist Offline
(Jul 14, 2018 04:04 AM)C C Wrote:
(Jul 13, 2018 04:59 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: I can say from experience that a good synchronicity is generally something you have to personally experience to appreciate. Described to others it is bound to elicit a few eyerolls. But when it happens to you, its otherworldly nature seems to affect you with a surprising amount of profundity. The tiny often just barely noticed correlation is immediately impactful, like a message whispered to your very soul, "There is a higher purpose to your life." Ofcourse this can be written off by scientific reductionists as just wishful thinking, and perhaps so. But it really is something meant only for you, at your particular stage of psychic growth. There is a sense in which it is indeed an all too probable coincidence. But there is another sense in which it is an orchestrated omen from the universe itself. In this world too often banal and mundane in its outcomes, take this secret sign from the beyond and run with it!


Coincidences often come in lengthy streaks or series for me. Which causes me to occasionally wonder if even the "lawfulness" of this world is not so much the result of abstract principles of governance which elusively lack locations as literal observable objects... But is instead just a billions-of-years long set of still running coincidences that simply impart of the illusion of regulation and coherence. Made possible by endless nonsensical things perpetually popping into existence (or whatever un-nomological concept might substitute for conventional orderly be-ing). Monkeys infinitely typing gibberish till a rare duck falls out that happens to long-windedly hang meaningfully together in terms of surface appearances.

~

By coincidence? I started dipping in and out of the complete works of Charles Fort tonight. The preface recommended reading it this way as one can easily become overwhelmed by all the information if read from cover to cover. Amazing how this guy sat in the library every day for 20 years reading old newspapers and science magazines to compile such a meticulous archive of the weird and unexplained. Then they named a society for him, which he didn't even really want to be a part of!
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