Thread: Coincidences

Well, That's good that I hope you understand that I'm not trying to offer any proof for a philosophy that I subscribe to or try to convert anyone. Just offering a technique and the theory of the mindset hoping people try it earnestly and then draw their own conclusions.
"Some say this, some say that. Try to find out for yourself" -unknown reggae song.

Originally Posted by RCLefty

What does seem odd to me, though, is that you relate these experiences, and yet seem very openminded toward materialism, even if you are not yourself a materialist, per se. Now, this is not a bad thing, at all, but it is a little foreign to my experience.

Well, I am open minded towards materialism because I am not so egotistical to think I know how the universe works and the nature of reality! Also, I am not a materialist, per se, because to me materialism seems to be looking at reality from a microscope while... what shall we call it... the belief in mind as the ground of materiality is looking at reality through a telescope. Both are true, but not the whole truth. The truth may be that mind is one side of the coin and matter is the other side of the same coin.

I have no problem with the scientific method and materialism, however, I also believe that just because something is subjective or something is a feeling doesn't mean that it isn't real. For example, people say "it was only a dream.'
As if dreams aren't real. Dreams are real to me! Not like if I dream that all my teeth fell out that all my teeth really fell out, but a dream is a dream just as a brick is a brick. It is part of reality. Love is real, humor is real. A materialist explains that love is all pheremones and chemical reactions, and I don't know how they explain humor. But if someone says that that is all love is then that shows that they have never been in love. Surely it is half the truth. It is the objective truth. But there is a subjective truth of love that is a lot greater than the objective truth. And to say that just because it is subjective that it isn't true doesn't sit right with me. To minimize subjective experience is to minimize your life, because your whole life is subjective. If only objectivity is real then why do we exist. Then we are not needed. If our very existence is based on illusion. No, neither is unreal. Objectivity, subjectivity, matter, mind, consciousness, energy, life, death, big bang, big crunch. All is real. Or nothing is real.

The only things that are not real are beliefs. Beliefs are saying "I don't know what reality is but I will pretend that I do."

Albert Einstein was married, he must've believed in love. It is funny how many rationalist materialists I find being totally irrational. But I love rational materialists. My wife thinks that I am a rational materialist. Compared to her I am.

I am done with my Rant.
RCLefty, it has been nice talking with you.

Same here.

The only thing I would point out in defense of materialists is that just because an emotion can be explained in terms of pheromones or brain signals doesn't mean it is reduced to those things. They still have meaning, even if that meaning is inherently subjective.

That's all I wanted to add.

Coincidence today:

I was at a party and when I drink i smoke so we all went outside to smoke. As I was walking past the refridgerator that had hundreds of those poetry magnets on it, my jacket brushed against it and a magnet fell on the floor and I picked it up and it said "smoke". I chuckled and made a mental note and walked outside and a girl was talking about poem she heard in a dream of hers. And she said that her dog is named Luka with a K. It used to be with a C but she had a dream where the dog told her it was with a K so she changed it. She said: "You gotta follow your dreams!" And I went inside. People in the house were singing "Dream on" by Aerosmith and screaming "dream until your dream comes true". Right after that I went to the fridge to get another beer but they were gone. A guy who just showed up asked me if I wanted a homebrew that he brewed himself. People were still singing the Aerosmith song. He gave me a beer with a homemade label on it called "Winter Dream".

It gets intense when coincidences are coming back to back. I kind of start feeling like Donnie Darko or something. Like something big is going to happen. But nothing does. But it seems like I turn away out of fear and step out of the stream.

Originally Posted by Xei

Of course coincidences are just coincidences.

Getting double sixes when rolling a pair of dice has a probability of 1 in 36. When you get double sixes it doesn't mean anything. It's just something that happens roughly every 1 in 36 times you roll a pair of dice. If you never rolled a pair of sixes in your life, that would be the extraordinary thing, not vice versa.

That's not really a good example of a coincidence, that's an example of what people consider luck! Or..bad luck

For people to consider rolling double sixes a coincidence, they had to have seen double sixes some where else earlier in the day.


This thread in general is confusing. Does the coincidence mean that two events are meaningful? Or does the coincidence mean that two events are actually meaningless because it's just cause and effect? The term coincidence has been used to mean both.

I hear people use coincidence more to mean something meaningless. "Its JUST a coincidence". And in this case, I don't really believe in a coincidence. Because nothing in our lives is entirely random. Cause and effect run deep on so many levels. Even using Xeis example, rolling dice, isn't completely random. Maybe it would be random if a computer was the one rolling dice, but it's not random if a person does it and puts conscious intention behind it. Our subconscious minds are mathematical geniuses that calculate weight, gravity, speed among other things to keep us alive. It wouldn't be impossible for the mind to figure out the best way to roll the dice to get desirable numbers.

The next question is, is cause and effect meaningless? Only if you don't want to take charge of your own life. And this way, I believe in meaningful coincidences - or rather - a meaningful synchronicity still created by cause and effect. A synchronicity is more than just a coincidence, because it implies that it has occured because it is sync with your being.

Let's narrow it down and use this classic example: You've been taking the same bus to work every day for the past 20 years, and then for the first time in your life you take the day off. Later that night you find out that the bus you always ride has exploded killing everyone on board.

Analysis: Now you could call this a coincidence, a freak occurrence, or divine intervention; it all depends on your view of the world, it is completely subjective. There's no possible way to prove any of these theories. The argument is based on opinion, don't try to bring the science of cause and effect into this discussion, it is irrelevant. Yes, things happen because of cause and effect, so what, that doesn't explain WHY it happened, it only explains HOW it happened. Though that last point is also debatable, and completely subjective. For example, in the "Final Destination" movies: all these events appear to be products of simple cause and effect, yet they didn't happen on their own, there was some outside force making the events happen. There are so many different schools of thought on why things happen, it's basically like a religious belief based completely on faith. Nobody knows why things happen when and how they do. Are we products of our environment, or vice versa? Perhaps we affect our our destinies. Maybe life is like a lucid dream, what we anticipate happening, happens. Maybe other people's expectations also have an effect on the outcome of a situation? So many question, how knows? It is impossible to prove anything.

I agree with most of that, but I don't think the "science of cause and effect," as you call it, should be completely ignored. After all, it can shed light on some coincidences. If for example, the reason an event is seen as significant is closely tied to the reason that it happened, or if it turns out that one of the two coinciding events was actually quite probable or inevitable, that would be relevant to our perception of the coincidence.

But more important than cause and effect is probability. I'll take your example of the bus: Considering the vast number of buses in the world, and the vast number of people who take them, the scenario you describe is inevitable, given enough time. Of course, it will seem very monumentous to the individual concerned, and fairly enough, I admit, but on a global scale, it's rather mundane. It seems likely to me that this scenario has already happened to some people, out there, (whether I believe individual anecdotes or not), especially if we expand it to consider regularly scheduled trains, charter planes, and ferries (which we should, I think, since we would concider an event involving one of these just as significant.)

It is impossible to prove anything.

That's true (to an extent, at least.) I don't necessarily know what I would think if it happened to me. As a skeptic and an atheist, I like to think that--although I would be profoundly glad to have my life--I would accept it as merely fortuitous chance. But, since it has never happened to me, it is impossible for me to say how I would react if it did. I can admit that.

However, even if that event caused me to, let's say, completely devote my life to religion or cherish every item I wore that day as "lucky," my personal, emotional reaction would change nothing about the probabilities involved.

Does the coincidence mean that two events are meaningful? Or does the coincidence mean that two events are actually meaningless because it's just cause and effect? The term coincidence has been used to mean both.

This is a good question. Strictly speaking, the word "coincidence" doesn't mean either of those. The word is neutral on the question of meaning. It simply means that two events "coincided." In fact, two events can still constitute a "coincidence," even if they are not related in any apparently meaningful way. If you see two sixes, and then roll a two and a five, that's still technically a coincidence, as long as those two things happened closely enough in time.

So, when you hear someone using the term in a loaded way, regardless of whether they are attributing meaning or dismissing it, they are misusing the word.

It is acceptable, though, if they separate the word itself from the meaning or lack thereof, by using the word "just" or "merely," or something similar.

In Psych we're taught that the human mind is programmed to categorize, and make connections. Our mind is full of concepts, prototypes, and the like... and one of our brains jobs is to make connections. It a natural biological function to find 'coincidences' in everything... I don't think I really need to go further into it... unless you'd like me to.

Ya I understand what you mean, its just such a weird feeling when it happens all the time. Like for me, I just went to Jamaica, and before that I never really heard that much about it and now Ive been hearing about it a lot! and that happens with everything. I guess you don't notice the connection until there's some sort of significance attached to it. Or Ill be thinking about something and then a couple seconds later Ill hear about it, or someone will mention the exact same thing I was just thinking about. And this happens to me all the time, not just occasionally.. But Ive learned to just shrug it off immediately because I don't understand it.
Another example is, a while ago I was sleeping and was having SP.. I heard someone coming into my house..and sharpening knives in the kitchen. I was scared and tried to wake myself up,but couldnt.. The person started walking towards my bedroom door, and was just about to open it, and I forced myself out of it right before he walked in. When I woke up, I went to the living room and turned on the t.v, and the show that was on was about this serial killer that goes to random houses and kills people with knives.. ya i was pretty tripped out. So.. was this a coincidence..or what was this?

To be honest I only read about 85% of this thread, but find the phenomena of happenstance quite interesting. In fact, it was the inspiration for my main thesis (and final project) for obtaining my undergraduate degree back in 08.

At the time, I found myself thinking about what was going to become of me. I was about to graduate, and up until that point my plans after college were heavily considered but otherwise undetermined. So to me, it was like I had pushed myself to this point where so many things were possible, but I really didn't know how to bring about the specific consequences I desired.

Being in this mindset was like being suspended in air. It felt like even the smallest decision could eventually lead to very fortunate or unfortunate things, but I didn't know which decisions or where they would lead me. I began to think about how even the little events in our lives can play very pivotal roles. How they can inexorably lead to more significant events, which can then lead to even more significant events in an exponential type fashion.

In any case, I decided to make a sculpture (I am an artist BTW) that was inspired by the quantum physical concept of "super positioning". For those who are not too familiar with quantum mechanics, when something is super positioned it exists in a state of indeterminism, in a way. For example, an object occupying more than one point in space at a single point in time, or more than one object occupying the space point in space at a given time. The significance of this was not only the inherent nature of a super positioned "thing", but how the nature of cause and effect is ultimately the product of smaller causalities, and those of smaller causalities, and so on.

Oh and as a side note:

Originally Posted by Xei

When was science wrong..?

Science (as in the practice of science) accepts wrongness with open arms. It is an intrinsic part of the method. For every one thing science has gotten "right", there have been a thousand things science has gotten "wrong" leading to that success. That is the very nature of experimentation.

Originally Posted by ethen

Science (as in the practice of science) accepts wrongness with open arms. It is an intrinsic part of the method. For every one thing science has gotten "right", there have been a thousand things science has gotten "wrong" leading to that success. That is the very nature of experimentation.

That was not "science" being wrong. Those were individuals who believed wrong things; science is what told us they were wrong.

Science is the method, and ONLY the method. It is not a body of knowledge. The method is never wrong, unless our capacities for reason are so flawed and confused as to be useless to us.

However, science does embrace revision, but I don't feel that can be well characterized as embracing "wrongness."

On the contrary, science and the scientific method are two different things in my mind. Yes, the scientific method is indeed just a method. The scientific method by itself explains nothing, provides no evidence of anything, and therefore cannot be considered right or wrong in any case. It is just a mute process. The scientific method is like a musical instrument without a musician.

Science, on the other hand, is the application of the scientific method to concepts, ideas, etc, and therefore can be "wrong" in certain cases. Case in point, hypotheses and theories are both aspects of Science and yet both a hypothesis and theory can also be considered wrong (or inaccurate) in certain circumstances.

So I would have to respectfully disagree with your previous post, as it appears to equivocate the scientific method itself with the application of said method to man-made concepts and ideas, otherwise known as "science".

Don't you think it is inherently problematic to define "Science" so loosely that it can be described as asserting every hare-brained idea put out by someone with more than a Master's degree?

I don't seeing anything problematic with recognizing that there is real a distinction between the scientific method itself and the results of applying this method. If this is something you refuse or are unable to do, that's really not my problem. The fact of the matter is that without actually applying the scientific method to something (a concept, idea, hypothesis, theory, etc), you don't get "science".

Though it's admittedly not the best analogy, I previously likened the scientific method to a musical instrument. By itself it does nothing, despite its potential. Only when the scientific method is "used" (i.e when the instrument is played) will you get what the method can produce (i.e science/music). This is the inherent nature of any method.

A method is simply "a specific way of doing something", but if you are not actually "doing something" in accordance to the method, you are not producing what the method is capable of producing. In this case, the product would be "science" and the method would be "the scientific method". The product and method of production are two distinct things.

And in reality, even a hair-brained idea that is properly being applied to the scientific method is still science, despite how that may affect the "image" you are trying give science. The scientific method doesn't magically stop working when in the hands of those without terminal degrees.

Objectivity is utterly indiscriminate.