Quoi de neuf ?

Bienvenue sur Psychonaut.fr !

En vous enregistrant, vous pourrez discuter de psychotropes, écrire vos meilleurs trip-reports et mieux connaitre la communauté

Je m'inscris!

Randomness vs. Synchronicity

IJesusChrist

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
Inscrit
22 Juil 2008
Messages
7 482
I don't believe there is a human intervention in the universe, so I don't believe in synchronicity. I think it is a self-fulfilling prophecy...

If you don't I think you give too much credit to humans, or you are missing at how good your brain is at making connections.
 

Mescaline

Elfe Mécanique
Inscrit
4 Jan 2007
Messages
340
IJesusChrist a dit:
I don't believe there is a human intervention in the universe, so I don't believe in synchronicity. I think it is a self-fulfilling prophecy...

If you don't I think you give too much credit to humans, or you are missing at how good your brain is at making connections.

But if synchronicity is a self-fulfilling prophecy, which I agree it could be, why then are causal relationships not a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Synchronicity is an acausal relationship between events. Whereas causal relationships become evident to us through cause and effect, relationships of the kind of synchronicity become evident to us by them seeming meaningful, or as you put it by the brain seeing a (meaningful) connection.

So, compare the following two lines of thought:

1) Couldn't it be that a causal relationship is self-fulfilling in the sense that it only comes into existence as soon as we attribute cause and effect to those scenarios? For all we know these supposed causal relations are merely coincidental correlations (without implying causation), and cause and effect are complete illusions.

And..

2) Couldn't it be that synchronicity is self-fulfilling in the sense that it only come into existence as soon as we attribute meaning to, or when we see a connection in those scenarios. These as well could simply be coincidental correlations (without implying meaning or a connection), and synchronicity is nothing more than an illusion.


I think it becomes obvious that the only reason that we accept causal relationships as a given, and that we don't question its existence is because we have been brought up with it. In other words, the existence of causal relationships is by means of convention and/or because it is engrained in our culture.
One of the reasons in my opinion why synchronicity doesn't gain the same acknowledgement is because it is hard to make its existence scientifically plausible (not provable!), simply because the relationship cannot be easily "measured" in any way, opposed to cause and effect relationships.
However, it is not the case that relationships of the kind of synchronicity have never been attempted to be measured. Quite a number of studies have been conducted to measure synchronicity. One of the main findings is that synchronicity seems to occur more often, or rather that it becomes more evident, when the subjects are in a state of "high emotionality". This is actually pretty interesting, and seems to fit with I'm assuming most people's psychedelic experiences.

To answer the main question, wether there is synchronicity or randomness (i.e. random correlation), it seems you can ask the same question of whether there are causal relationships or simply random correlations. In my opinion everything is a random correlation (randomness), until we as humans attribute either causation or synchronicity to it. So, yes, I guess, in a way it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet at the same time no one would probably question the existence of causation, as it plays an important role in today's society and life in general. So, in that sense I would actually not question the existence of synchronicity either.
In other words, to me it seems both causal relationships and synchronicity both exist solely in the experiential reality, whereas completely meaningless correlations exist only outside of human experience.
 

ararat

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
Inscrit
8 Juin 2006
Messages
3 374
can one say anything about reality outside of human experience?
"Completely meaningless relation" seems just as much like a label as causality and synchronicity seem. I agree with you that we usually apply meaning to what we see, since everybody seems to do so differently, but I think that we can't talk about what it really "is".


also, what I remembered in that regard; the universe has some acausal relationships: when you change the spin of some sub-atomic particle (I forgot which kind), and this particle got related to another by I forgot which way, the other particle will change its spin instantaneously, with no delay whatsoever, even if it floats around lightyears away. a cause as such would be unable to travel that fast to the other particle, it happens infinitely fast. one could consider this an acausal relationship, a synchronicity of sorts.
 

Mescaline

Elfe Mécanique
Inscrit
4 Jan 2007
Messages
340
BananaPancake a dit:
can one say anything about reality outside of human experience?
"Completely meaningless relation" seems just as much like a label as causality and synchronicity seem. I agree with you that we usually apply meaning to what we see, since everybody seems to do so differently, but I think that we can't talk about what it really "is".

Yea, you are right, there seems to be nothing to be really known about reality outside of human experience for certain. Although.. it seems to be possible to infer some things..

If you assume what I said seems to be correct about people attributing causation and synchronicity to events, then it seems to follow that there has to be something that we attribute these things to, namely the events. And it seems to me these events have to be correlational or co-incidental in nature; there has to be "stuff" that is happening in a co-incidental or correlational manner. For it seems to me it would not be possible to attribute causation or synchronicity to something that does not correlate or co-incide in any way. Of course, the mere "being" of things already makes them co-incide, so you should not read too much into this. All it says is that there seems to be stuff that "is", and that everything that "is", actually co-incides with eachother.
As to it being meaningless.. It seems that it can't be meaningful in either the sense of causation or in the sense of synchronicity, but calling it meaningless might indeed be jumping to conclusions. It does seem to be "not meaningful" though. Maybe it is neither meaningful, nor meaningless.. This, of course, is impossible to imagine, but if it falls outside of human experience, then that is what should be expected, I guess.

BananaPancake a dit:
also, what I remembered in that regard; the universe has some acausal relationships: when you change the spin of some sub-atomic particle (I forgot which kind), and this particle got related to another by I forgot which way, the other particle will change its spin instantaneously, with no delay whatsoever, even if it floats around lightyears away. a cause as such would be unable to travel that fast to the other particle, it happens infinitely fast. one could consider this an acausal relationship, a synchronicity of sorts.

Very interesting. This could indeed be interpreted as some scientific proof for acausal relationships. Although it could also still seemingly be interpreted as a different kind of cause and effect relation wherein the cause travels instantaneously. This of course also seems to be the kind of counter argument one could bring up for synchronicity as an acausal relationship in general. Maybe it is not acausal at all.

Funny actually, I was thinking about e-prime while writing this, and then see you bumped the e-prime topic. :lol:

By the way, in case you are interested you can read Jung's "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle" over here :): http://www.scribd.com/doc/47494388/SYNCHRONICITY-An-Acausal-Connecting-Principle

EDIT: On second thought.. after thinking through the implications of e-prime some more :p I take it all back about being able to infer something about the "real" reality that "is".. Everything that the inference is based on only seems to be a certain way, so it can't seem to be possible that one can conclude that something "is" on the basis of something that only seems to be. :rolleyes: Seem seem seem, it all seems to be seemingly.
 

IJesusChrist

Holofractale de l'hypervérité
Inscrit
22 Juil 2008
Messages
7 482
I guess it is as real as you want to make it, like all subjective things of the mind.
 

MichaelVipperman

Glandeuse pinéale
Inscrit
1 Août 2011
Messages
226
Synchronicity: seeing strings of salience.

All it suggests is that there's something important to do with the thing that keeps recurring, because otherwise you wouldn't have noticed it recur.
 
Haut