Coincidences, "Jungian synchronicities", or ?..

[anhinga_anhinga]

I am puzzled by the nature of coincidences one observes in LJ friends pages.

For example, I collected the 5 such events in my Friends page here (5 pairs of posts):

http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=anhinga_anhinga&keyword=sovpadenie_1

1. references to Chomsky


2. references to cinema institutions in Moscow


3. references to the same song by Scherbakov


4. references to spoons


5. references to showers

(The first 4 pairs are in Russian.)

In these instances the entries do not seem to obviously depend on each other.

So there can be a whole spectrum of explanations, ranging from the "most materialistic one" (there is no mystery at all, it is just my pattern-detecting mechanism at work), to the "most mystical one" ("someone out there is trying to tell me something"). And there are plenty of "intermediate versions"...

If the "most materialistic" explanation is true, I wonder how does one verify this statistically?

And if an "intermediate" explanation is true, how do we figure out which one?

Comments

[cema.livejournal.com]

Serendipity is everywhere. I was just thining about it! :-)

[stealthyhippie.livejournal.com]

:-)

What if the most mystical one is true? Would the someone be humanity?

Who knows? I don't think we're built to understand. At least not in one fail swoop. I tend to believe as we grow we accumulate more and more seemingly useless information both consciously and subconsciously until we're hit with realizations based on connections that are made between these things that can be applied in everyday life.

Sort of a semi-fatalistic, to each their own approach to growth, synchronicity and such, but we may never know. However it is fun to think about and I would say it can be seen working if you look with the right eyes.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rowan_tree_/]

Yeah, I noticed that too. My recent one is various cat-like creatures in my friend-list :-)

One possible explanation is that we are all exposed to the same mass media, directly or indirectly. Include the major news sources in your statistical analysis, see what comes up...

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

> What if the most mystical one is true? Would the someone be humanity?

It's one of the possibilities...

> However it is fun to think about and I would say it can be seen working if you look with the right eyes.

Indeed :-)

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

Flash mobs, and other mass exposures are a source of some of this. And there might be some less pronounced common-source influences.

But I don't see what could have possibly accounted for pairs 1, 3, and 4
(messages 1,2, 5,6, and 7,8 in

http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=anhinga_anhinga&keyword=sovpadenie_1

if you want to follow the links).

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

The first question still is: is this anything more than a variant of a birthday paradox?

(I bumped into this reference from looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocaml, because someone suggested that I give a tech talk on OCaml, because it was mentioned today during a tech talk, in passing. This sequence of events is another example of "the phenomenon in question".)

[ipain.livejournal.com]

have you read sync (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0786887214/qid=1121232302/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/104-1339943-0685543?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)?

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed :-)

The "intermediate explanation" which I personally consider most likely is that it is our common cognitive environment which forms these patterns. So "Sync" is quite relevant. ( ;-) Of course, thoughts about "collective consciousness" come to mind as well, with all this pattern formation/pattern detection ;-) ).

Hmmmm... perhaps, it's time to undig my copy of "Sync" and try to concoct some models...