kennyc wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

scott1328 wrote::this:
I think everyone on this forum could come up with a much more impressive coincidence from his/her own personal experience and not even have to adorn the truth of the matter. Hell I bet UE himself has a more impressive story.

I have a real haunter from my childhood if I get the time. Three horses, howling in the night, mystery, and death.

Ah....poetry!

The other low hanging fruit.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:You hardly needed to emphasise 'apparently', redwine. The difference between the two words is the assumption that there is a meaningful but unseen connection, or not. If you call two co-incident events syncronicity you are implying a meaningful connection between them. If you call it coincidence you are not. Since there is no evidence of causal connection you can't actually determine which is correct.

Ok. I'm really sad right now but we can get past that.

What kind of 'causal' connection could there possibly be in that story about my dad dying? That incident and all of the events around it is my best example of what I call life's poetry. How about UE's cards?

Why are you asking? How is that relevant?
If we can trace a causal connection, such as two people having watched the same movie the day before, or whatever, then we don't call the result synchronicity or coincidence.

If you call it synchronicity most people will assume you infer some teleology to the similarities. If you call it coincidence most people will assume you infer no teleology.

You may not mean to convey that. I suspect you do not, but don't be surprised if that's how some take it if you call coincidence synchronicity.

Synchronicity is related to "everything happens for a reason" and "There is no such thing as coincidence". I.e. all coincidences are synchronicities.

I was watching this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy25A7vnigg

when this thread popped up again...wow!

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:You hardly needed to emphasise 'apparently', redwine. The difference between the two words is the assumption that there is a meaningful but unseen connection, or not. If you call two co-incident events syncronicity you are implying a meaningful connection between them. If you call it coincidence you are not. Since there is no evidence of causal connection you can't actually determine which is correct.

Ok. I'm really sad right now but we can get past that.

What kind of 'causal' connection could there possibly be in that story about my dad dying? That incident and all of the events around it is my best example of what I call life's poetry. How about UE's cards?

Why are you asking? How is that relevant?
If we can trace a causal connection, such as two people having watched the same movie the day before, or whatever, then we don't call the result synchronicity or coincidence.

If you call it synchronicity most people will assume you infer some teleology to the similarities. If you call it coincidence most people will assume you infer no teleology.

You may not mean to convey that. I suspect you do not, but don't be surprised if that's how some take it if you call coincidence synchronicity.

Synchronicity is related to "everything happens for a reason" and "There is no such thing as coincidence". I.e. all coincidences are synchronicities.

So those are the only two possibilities you see? Unrelated totally random coincidence(whatever THAT is!) or Magic Woo Fingers?

Synchronicity is related to "everything happens for a reason" and "There is no such thing as coincidence". I.e. all coincidences are synchronicities.

Who says? Gots evidence on that one?

But does everything have a reason? What kind of reason are we talking about here?

SpeedOfSound wrote:But does everything have a reason? What kind of reason are we talking about here?

I'm not claiming that. Not at all. I'm merely pointing out how many people use the words. You are the one using 'synchronicity'.

The sort of 'reasons' people refer to are 'karma' or 'fate' or 'gods plan' or 'guiding angel' or ESP (e.g. knowing a loved one is in trouble).

I suppose you could also use the word when you suspect a causal relation but have no clue what it is. We could assume that two identical cards are sent because of of some common cause although we have no idea what it is.

de-wiki actually turns out handy on this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. The subject sees it as a meaningful coincidence. The concept of synchronicity was first described by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s.[1]

The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be connected by a causal line, they may also be connected by meaning. A grouping of events by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of a concrete sense of cause and effect.

The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own poetically logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as occurrences that are meaningfully related.

Synchronistic events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework that encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems that display the synchronicity. The suggestion of a larger framework is essential to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as originally developed by Carl Gustav Jung.[3]

Reveal an underlying pattern that is not discernable via simplistic cause and effect.

Think of the story about my dad. For once thing I, in my mind, brought together a great of meaning about the event. I, a mammal with a fully developed limbic system, brought some emotional power with it. Was that emotion 'real' or was it something made up in my spirit mind?

Did my dad and I share anything deeper than a farmhouse? Do we as a culture and then a species share anything? Any patterns there that might turn out meaningful?

After we identify these possible causally significant shares can we then construct a lab and put a couple of hundred fathers and sons in there to live out there lives under the causal microscope?

If we can't do that then are we to label all of this as a mere coincidence?

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:But does everything have a reason? What kind of reason are we talking about here?

I'm not claiming that. Not at all. I'm merely pointing out how many people use the words. You are the one using 'synchronicity'.

The sort of 'reasons' people refer to are 'karma' or 'fate' or 'gods plan' or 'guiding angel' or ESP (e.g. knowing a loved one is in trouble).

I suppose you could also use the word when you suspect a causal relation but have no clue what it is. We could assume that two identical cards are sent because of of some common cause although we have no idea what it is.

Oh I see. We are going back to that 'how many people use the word' again. How many xtians and muslims and other woo-shit-fucked people we got on this planet Graham? Is that the many people you are holding as authority on how we use our words? Isn't it time? Watched that Dawkins/Kraus documentary last night. They were hopeful that things are changing. I'm increasingly sad about all that.

Not because of the xtians and the muslims and the the other woo-fucked people but because of so called skeptics right here on our little forum. Watching a skeptic start to writhe and turn when I use a simple word reminds me of magical incantations. I must wonder if a little herb on the fire would increase the effect.

kennyc wrote:I was watching this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy25A7vnigg

when this thread popped up again...wow!

Isn't that fucking amazing? That's the shit that really gets me going. Fractals. Damn. Do we need to look any further for our answers about synchronicity?

SpeedOfSound wrote:Oh I see. We are going back to that 'how many people use the word' again.

That's how language works SoS. If you use common words with your own private meanings you aren't communicating, you're talking to yourself.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

kennyc wrote:I was watching this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy25A7vnigg

when this thread popped up again...wow!

Isn't that fucking amazing? That's the shit that really gets me going. Fractals. Damn. Do we need to look any further for our answers about synchronicity?

That's a good video. Did you notice the lyrics? "Spiritus Mundi"

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:Oh I see. We are going back to that 'how many people use the word' again.

That's how language works SoS. If you use common words with your own private meanings you aren't communicating, your talking to yourself.

I think I wrote a lot of text trying to communicate the idea. Then you wrote a lot of text trying to illuminate your religious indoctrination and bias. Shucks. That's how the words work! Four billion fucktards on the planet are going to keep our semantics inline.

That fractal video is a damned good simple example that shows you what synchronicity actually is. Now let's apply some reasoned logic here with that example.

First, we know, just by the fact of poetry and literature that synchronicity exists and is plentiful. With the fractals you can see it plain as hell. Surprising patterns, inexplicable on casual observation.

We must ask. Are there really patterns there? Something we didn't just dream up in our heads after a bad taco? Fractals make it damned clear that the answer to that is yes. They are 'really' there.

Can we magnify them and figure them out right away? No. Magnification fails in a surprising way. To figure them out we have to use a different technique. One that often entails so much work that we have to cancel the project.

Now what posture do we take when we encounter such a thing that is plentiful and obvious and yet we can't figure out all the causal details? Shuffle it off into the coincidence pile? Sculpt a bronze statue in the town square and behead those that don't bow to it? Is there any middle ground?

Synchronicity is a word championed by Jung, for things that have these multiple patterns across scales that are surprisingly complex under the hood. Human relations are stuffed full of these kinds of things and I think Jung had a particular interest in that.

I have no doubt that there are people like the OP in this thread indicates, who want to champion the woo. But jesus fucking christ, do I have to reassert my hard-direct-realist-atheism with every idea I put forth? Every fucking word I choose?

anyway. Rant. I'm so sick of religion and the influence that it continues to have on even those of us who know better.

GrahamH wrote:...
That's a good video. Did you notice the lyrics? "Spiritus Mundi"

I don't even knwo what that means. I'll look it up. Fractals can do that to you.

Anyway. Synchronicity is related to emergence. The design of our brains and bodies make it very likely that we will find these emerging patterns. Some bad thinking would just cast that off as a hallucination. I don't. I think it the conjunction of the pattern seeking mind and actual patterns in reality. It's obvious to me. My dad and I share DNA, a species, a culture, 30 years of life, and much more. If patterns didn't emerge across our lives at all THAT would be Really Spooky! If you ever wake up and your day had no synchronicity at all then that would be a good day to start believing in sky fairies. Scary.

I think it significant because we are after all human animals. Significance to us is not the same as significance to say a galaxy or a black-hole. Not even sure if black holes care at all.

Reading further it seems Jung had a case of the Woo. This so irritates me. There is middle ground in all of this. His story about the rationalist woman illustrates the tendency to think that it's all one way or the other. Coincidence or some human like uber-guidance.

Another word I like to use is god. To me god is in the fractals. If I engage with one of my xtian AA friends (they are always so damned curious about my atheism) I would ask them how well they know god. Do they know where he lives and what kinds of hats he likes to wear. They don't of course. The whole spiel behind xtianity is filled with references to the inability of man to fully comprehend god. So I lead them to this idea that they do not know anything about god at all. God could be anything and whatever it is it is inconceivable by man.

So. Why not a fractal or a physical universe? We don't actually know shit about the physical universe so it has that in it's favor as a god candidate. We can't possibly conceive all of the processes going on in a single cell of a single leaf on the common oak. Compound that with the fact that no two leaves are ever the same and even if they were the things around them couldn't possibly be as two things opposed to one thing entails them not being identical.

Try to imagine what it would take to imagine everything in the physical universe. Now imagine all of the criss-crossing patterns from multiple perspectives and multiple scales that could supervene on any description of this reality. If, you were the kind of thing that could sample these multiple perspectives and assemble some of the patterns what would we have?

That all sounds like god to me.

I think the belief in apophenia is irrational.
Pareidolia is not.

SpeedOfSound wrote:I think the belief in apophenia is irrational.
Pareidolia is not.

As pareidolia is considered to be a form of apophenia, your first sentence needs modification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

...
Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, seeing patterns in random data.
...

DavidMcC wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:I think the belief in apophenia is irrational.
Pareidolia is not.

As pareidolia is considered to be a form of apophenia, your first sentence needs modification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

...
Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, seeing patterns in random data.
...

Maybe. Depends on how we cut it. Apophenia is about seeing patterns in random data and supposedly being wrong about that. You can't be wrong about that unless what you actually have is pareidolia which is detecting patterns that aren't actually in the data. There is nothing to prevent random data from actually having patterns. So that is what I was getting at. The patterns are everywhere and that goes to the very nature of 'random' data. Scare quotes because I have a hard time assigning actual meaning to random.

Look at the hidden presumptions in all of this. What's really going on is that some are promoting the idea of anthropic tinkering with the universe to create the patterns. Others are vehemently rejecting it. But the baby is out with the bath in this case. There actually are patterns and we actually are mammals who detect them and assign meaning to them. That meaning does not have to be about anthropic tinker fairies.

Pareidolia is what happened to me when I stayed up for nine days or when I overdosed on Navane.

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:Oh I see. We are going back to that 'how many people use the word' again.

That's how language works SoS. If you use common words with your own private meanings you aren't communicating, your talking to yourself.

Absolutely.
SoS does not even seem to realise that he is talking only to himself!

SpeedOfSound wrote:
...I think I wrote a lot of text trying to communicate the idea. Then you wrote a lot of text trying to illuminate your religious indoctrination and bias. Shucks.
...

I was not aware that Graham had "religious ... bias". You could be imagining it.

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:Oh I see. We are going back to that 'how many people use the word' again.

That's how language works SoS. If you use common words with your own private meanings you aren't communicating, your talking to yourself.

Absolutely.
SoS does not even seem to realise that he is talking only to himself!

I am reinventing as I go. I thought it was understood that religion is over now and we have to move on? Am I ahead of my time here? Again?

As for talking to myself I do understand that not everyone is going to be able to keep up. I'm talking to those who can.