Synchronicity & confirmation bias

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jappe
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Joined: 19 Jan 2015

05 May 2018

I had a thought provoking moment today.

I woke up to a beautiful Swedish morning, with a bright sun competing for my attention with a neighbors lovely cat scratching my door yet another morning.
Before breakfast, I browsed the ReasonTalk music forum with a feeling of certainty that there would be a song about NDE.

A bit deja vu like feeling.
Similar to the feeling I sometimes get when I "know" I'll complete lyrics on a song, as if it had already been written.

Browsed from the top and found a song "there will not need to die".
Tried to hear the lyrics... difficult, so I went on browsing further down, yep found it: "The last walk", which is an a song about an NDE...or DE.

This is interesting, since my current WIP project is a song about an NDE (v 0.05, a couple of verses vocals before pitch correction with temporary piano comp found here)

I got the inspiration to write this song after a friend of my mother shared a story about the NDE he had when he got an overdose of sedatives before surgery.
I recorded his story on video, and the timestamp of that video is 2018-04-28 17:43

I can't recall if I initiated the NDE discussion or if he shared it spontaneously.
Could I have read that RT post subconsciously while quick-browsing the forum, and that made me bring up the subject?

The timestamp of the RT song is 2018-04-28 18:47

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bxbrkrz
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05 May 2018

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jappe
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Joined: 19 Jan 2015

05 May 2018

Interesting video, thanks for sharing!

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bxbrkrz
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05 May 2018

jappe wrote:
05 May 2018
Interesting video, thanks for sharing!
:puf_smile: :thumbs_up:
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PSoames
Posts: 278
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: Somerset, UK

06 May 2018

That's mighty weird.

Just to add, I've been sat on that tune for a whIle and wondered whether to post it or not. It really was a, "publish and be damned", moment. A last minute thing before getting on with cooking the dinner.

avasopht
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Joined: 16 Jan 2015

14 May 2018

Well, with 7 billion people on the planet there's plenty of opportunity for random occurrences all throughout the world to almost look like synchronicity to the untrained eye.

One time, randomly, my cousin pulled out the keys to his house and as a joke pushed them into the keyhole for the resources cupboard. It was a perfect fit. He'd never done that before, and yet the first time he does he strikes gold!

But then you have to think about all the billions of times someone else has done the exact same thing and not ended up with the same result.

When an unlikely occurrence does take place, we forget about all the other unlikely occurrences that did not.

So yes, I put it all down to confirmation bias.

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bxbrkrz
Posts: 3813
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

15 May 2018

avasopht wrote:
14 May 2018
Well, with 7 billion people on the planet there's plenty of opportunity for random occurrences all throughout the world to almost look like synchronicity to the untrained eye.

One time, randomly, my cousin pulled out the keys to his house and as a joke pushed them into the keyhole for the resources cupboard. It was a perfect fit. He'd never done that before, and yet the first time he does he strikes gold!

But then you have to think about all the billions of times someone else has done the exact same thing and not ended up with the same result.

When an unlikely occurrence does take place, we forget about all the other unlikely occurrences that did not.

So yes, I put it all down to confirmation bias.
I used to think the same way too.
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normen
Posts: 3431
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

15 May 2018

The thing is that we don't just pick up on explicit topics but situations as well. For example most big inventions have been made independently in separate parts of the world just because "the time was ripe". I mean when a new situation comes up theres only so many ways for us humans to deal with it.

There was an interesting documentation about this where they basically primed a team of artists during the ride through the city. They basically told them what they wanted, then rode through the city, making sure there were some actors with certain shirts and logos, doing certain things etc. on the way. Then they let the artists do the pieces and lookey there - they all came up basically with the same idea. The guy who supervised the experiment also made a version of that advert beforehand with what he'd expect them to do and it looked basically the same.

So yeah, our brains WANT connections so they make them. Thats why you can see a face in almost any arrangement of pixels, blobs or whatever.

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JiggeryPokery
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Posts: 1174
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

17 May 2018

jappe wrote:
05 May 2018
I had a thought provoking moment today.

I woke up to a beautiful Swedish morning, with a bright sun competing for my attention with a neighbors lovely cat scratching my door yet another morning.
Before breakfast, I browsed the ReasonTalk music forum with a feeling of certainty that there would be a song about NDE.
Another suburban family morning, grandmother screaming at the wall, we had to shout above the din of our Rice Crispies, can't hear anything at all.

Something something dark Scottish lake

Syncronicity! ;)

oh, the 80s!


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bxbrkrz
Posts: 3813
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

17 May 2018

Is the synchronicity phenomenon locked in Judeo-Christian cultures and societies only?
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