I have no special knowledge, but ya I think that coincidence without obvious causation might be the basis of magic (spirit, consciousness, meaning, etc). It's also the basis of quantum mechanics. Pauli and Jung noticed the uncanny similarities a century ago:
Basically, science can only puts bounds on this stuff, it can't predict the outcomes of stochastic/emergent processes. Which is where I believe free will resides.
Which might sound like hand-waving, except that it's fundamental:
Basically it comes down to: either the quantum decision was made before the experiment started and stored in hidden variables, or there's a nonlocal connection over a 4th space dimension which we don't understand, or the quantum way of talking about these things is the only description that works. Which unfortunately (fortunately?) seems to be the case. Maybe someone who groks this can explain it with better words. My gut feeling is that this is the physical manifestation of incompleteness:
Anyway, I'm starting to believe that macro-scale effects like social interactions follow the same rules as quantum mechanics. Probably what we'll find is that it's waves and energy all the way down. Like if every person is an antenna, and our interactions play off one another in a vast multidimensional space we aren't aware of, like ripples on a pond. I suspect that this is what's going on inside atoms, and a real-world effect of this is that quantum computers will be limited by noise, and building a simulation of the Hamiltonian and running it would give the same result as flipping coins a bazillion times. This might be yet another hidden variables interpretation though so I'm almost certainly wrong. Probably.
In my own life, I mostly journal any synchronicities, which tend to happen about every 5 days for me, then weeks or months of nothing. I have about 50 written down, but feel that I've only caught maybe 10% of them.
In the last entry, I wore a bowtie to an event to try getting outside my comfort zone, then we came home and the TV was showing the scene where he makes the guy with the goldfish and bowtie leave the office in Wolf of Wall Street. Now what are the odds of that, since I've never worn a bowtie before and may never again?
I've had more intense happenings like that, but unfortunately a lot of them are negative around tragedies so I don't want to get anyone down. Mostly bad feelings before bad things happen. I think that has a lot to do with my disposition, so I've started watching more for angel numbers, and more love-based synchronicities, which seems to help. I believe that our sensitivity to the quantum chaos foam or whatever it is gets more attuned the more we tune out, dissociate, meditate, etc and turn the volume down on our egos. So anyone can do this stuff at any time, it's just that western culture doesn't really have a place for it yet.
Just for posterity, I'm not arguing against reproducibility or the scientific method. I'm just saying that there's an upper bound on how deterministic something can be, and that science largely fails to explain how stochastic systems like brains and economies work, so our shared reality is a fantasy. This article popped up in my Facebook feed and explains it better:
Excuse me, I should have said that I was responding to your recording of synchronicities, not those other things.
You seem to decide what to notice in an ad-hoc way which means you'll be heavily influenced by what you want to notice. If you had made a hypothesis after wearing a bowtie, that you would see a bowtie wearing person on TV when coming home, then you would also have noticed the times when there was no synchronicity and could isolate your personal sensitivity to it from its actual occurrence. As it is, I don't think you can make any conclusions about nature from that record and the 5-day cycle might be nothing more than your fluctuating interest in finding them.
Actually I've read your comment days ago but I was too baffled about what I've read because you've literally wrote what I can't tell anyone because no one would truly understand without actually experiencing themselves (which, I also would have called complete BS and would have dissed with simple explanations), so sorry for the late reply.
I have synchronicities exactly as you have described in the same temporal pattern: happening in an extremely/unbelievable frequency within a short period like days or a few weeks, then complete silence for a few weeks or months. I've been observing this very pattern for years and the pattern is super clear for me. Yet, I have no idea why it's happening. Is it always the way it is and I just sometimes switch my focus, or is it really something that happens from time to time regardless of my focus, I honestly have no idea. But the pattern is there.
I, also, keep a journal of my synchronicities. It's almost four years now and whenever I open, read a few and remember it it gives me goosebumps and a feeling that I can best describe as "being connected to the universe and knowing there's more to it". It feels like "something" is trying to show me something.
The only data I have worth sharing is two things:
- Those weird coincidences generally happen when I need them: like, being mentally a bit off from my core and needing an "anchor feeling" to return to my presence and remember that "there's more to it".
- I have no idea why and this is definitely not a recommendation for a diet, but, they tend to increase when I intake too much sugar. Yeah, I know it sounds weird and I definitely know sugar is super-unhealthy, but this correlation is worth mentioning. Especially if I'm light on sugar but consume too much sugary food/desserts etc in a short "burst" period of days, I tend to have these synchronicities' "period" more. Again, this is NOT healthy as it involves eating sugar but the pattern is there.
Also your antenna analogy is very similar to what I had in mind for YEARS: maybe we're pure consciousness (or whatever the correct word might be) and not limited to three dimensions. Yet, we are "picked up" with bodies in the right state (with the chemistry and nervous system) acting as an "antenna that is tuned to our consciousness" and our brain waves like theta/delta etc. states might be the different "tunings" for "resonating in correct frequencies that match/react with consciousness". I've used all the words in quotation marks because they don't necessarily need to be actual "frequencies" or "resonance". They might be, or they might not be, but regardless of what their true nature is the analogy applies. Maybe they are somthing fundamental as vibration and electromagnetic waves but just simply isn't discovered yet, perhaps because we've been looking things the wrong way (at least in this connect) for a long time especially in western culture.
I know many people who read this would just think that I'm delusional and I totally get it: if I haven't experienced all of these through all the years as a skeptic who tries to dismiss it with confirmation bias and selective attention, I'd definitely call someone saying what I've been saying, a delusional, maybe even paranoid or someone with serious mental disorders. But I equally see the western culture totally dismissing anything that can't be explained with current science. I'm pretty much sure that we'll learn a lot about the eastern culture, shamanism, all the mystics, NDEs, and other similar metaphysical phenomenon but until we get there I think we should be open to some ideas that we culturally deem "impossible".
I don't give any special name or say that this phenomenon, but it acts in "weird ways" and science should definitely focus more on these instead of dismissing as BS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
Basically, science can only puts bounds on this stuff, it can't predict the outcomes of stochastic/emergent processes. Which is where I believe free will resides.
Which might sound like hand-waving, except that it's fundamental:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_indeterminacy
People have tried to explain away stuff like quantum entanglement and failed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory
Basically it comes down to: either the quantum decision was made before the experiment started and stored in hidden variables, or there's a nonlocal connection over a 4th space dimension which we don't understand, or the quantum way of talking about these things is the only description that works. Which unfortunately (fortunately?) seems to be the case. Maybe someone who groks this can explain it with better words. My gut feeling is that this is the physical manifestation of incompleteness:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_incompleteness_theor...
Anyway, I'm starting to believe that macro-scale effects like social interactions follow the same rules as quantum mechanics. Probably what we'll find is that it's waves and energy all the way down. Like if every person is an antenna, and our interactions play off one another in a vast multidimensional space we aren't aware of, like ripples on a pond. I suspect that this is what's going on inside atoms, and a real-world effect of this is that quantum computers will be limited by noise, and building a simulation of the Hamiltonian and running it would give the same result as flipping coins a bazillion times. This might be yet another hidden variables interpretation though so I'm almost certainly wrong. Probably.
In my own life, I mostly journal any synchronicities, which tend to happen about every 5 days for me, then weeks or months of nothing. I have about 50 written down, but feel that I've only caught maybe 10% of them.
In the last entry, I wore a bowtie to an event to try getting outside my comfort zone, then we came home and the TV was showing the scene where he makes the guy with the goldfish and bowtie leave the office in Wolf of Wall Street. Now what are the odds of that, since I've never worn a bowtie before and may never again?
I've had more intense happenings like that, but unfortunately a lot of them are negative around tragedies so I don't want to get anyone down. Mostly bad feelings before bad things happen. I think that has a lot to do with my disposition, so I've started watching more for angel numbers, and more love-based synchronicities, which seems to help. I believe that our sensitivity to the quantum chaos foam or whatever it is gets more attuned the more we tune out, dissociate, meditate, etc and turn the volume down on our egos. So anyone can do this stuff at any time, it's just that western culture doesn't really have a place for it yet.