I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, The Joe
Rogan Experience, and Joe was talking with Gad Saad, an Evolutionary Behavioral
Psychologist who also writes for Psychology Today. Joe brought up that his one form
of “magical thinking” is a belief Synchronicity. The idea being, if one is in
some way tuned in with the universe (or whatever metaphor inspires
transcendence in your reality tunnel), unexplainable coincidences start
appearing around that person. (More on this below)
Saad smoothly started explaining away Synchronicity by
offering the psychological phenomena known as Confirmation Bias. A fun game
semantically inclined domesticated primates enjoy playing is, “Look I named it, I understand
it.” I was on my yoga mat being high and weird when I heard Saad eloquently
reciting the textbook example of Confirmation Bias (naïve man in shower worried
about his phone.) I felt both a twinge of pride at knowing the exact example he
was referring too, and a larger spasm of annoyance at his skeptical dismissal
of a phenomenon I’ve experienced. Joe had a similar reaction.
This exchange between the magical thinking of Joe and the aseptic
skepticism of Saad highlights a subtle but important riff between the intellectual
and the spiritual. If the unorganized data points of perception can be
explained by both Synchronicity and Confirmation Bias, the question should be, which
belief produces the most fulfilling, enjoyable and blissful experience?
Although my bias is likely obvious, it is a waste of my time
and yours to present a handicapped model of Confirmation Bias. I won’t waste your time. That’s wasting my time.
What is
Synchronicity?
First, a story. A couple years ago I walked into a bookstore
by chance. I picked a book at random from the discount psychology section.
Actually, not by random. I saw the name Eric Berne and I thought the book was a
biography about Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays. It wasn’t. The book, Eric
Berne: Master Gamesman, was a biography about the creator of Transactional
Analysis.
A week later I’m out walking, enjoying this book (1). I turn onto a street as I’m
reading this passage titled “Scattering Golden Apples”,
“What to do about death? Finish
everything and wait for it like a rotting log? Or leave some things unfinished and die with regrets? The
art of living is to walk the earth like a prince scattering apples wherever you
go. The art of dying is to finish your own apple just at the right moment to
say, ‘I am content, the rest are for you to enjoy at my wake.’”
As I’m reading this, I look up to keep from walking into
cars. About 40 feet ahead of me, alone and in the middle of the road is a spherical
object. As I get closer, I start discerning that the little object is red and
gold. Once I’m about 10 feet away I realize it’s an apple. There, in the middle
of a suburban street, where no apple trees grow, is a gold apple, shimmering in
the afternoon sun. (2)
This is an example of what Jung calls Synchronicity. There
was a meaningful coincidence between my subjective experience and external
reality that could not be explained by cause-and-effect. Jung was the higher
primate whom brought the term synchronicity to Western thought so it is with
his perspective on the phenomena that I’ll focus.
Jung is explicit in his distinction between chance coincidence
and meaningful coincidence. If I see the number 13 on my receipt, then 13 again
on my movie ticket, and again when I get a phone call, this is improbable but
still a chanced coincidence. This, in Jung’s eyes, is not a synchronicity, however, as I type this sentence, it is 3:11. I don’t know what to make of
this. A shrug and laugh is what my ego comes up with.
Another way to explain this is, all coincidence is chanced coincidence,
but not all chanced coincidence is meaningful coincidence. If a coincidence is
meaningful, if the coincidence transmits some kind of message or information,
this is synchronicity. The meaningfulness arises from the observer. You create
the meaning. (3)
So we’ve established what Synchronicity is. The real fun
begins when we start playing with different lenses that try to explain why synchronicity happens. Jung was conservative
on this point, but later in his life he admitted that he thought synchronicity
was an external indicator of the individual activating archetypes.
What is
confirmation bias?
The classic example is the naïve dirty homo sapien who
thinks he always gets phone calls while he’s in the shower. Whenever he gets a
call in the shower, (while he neglects his legs because the water will clean
them.) The clever thinking here is understanding our naïve subject only “records”
the events where he gets phone calls in the shower, but the fool does not
record the vast amount of showers he takes where he does not get phone calls.
The cognitive bias is apparent here. We know our minds
cannot objectively experience reality. We know our minds have to filter and
create shortcuts to keep up with the immense flood of information that deluges
us moment to moment. We would drown without these mechanisms. You will enrich
your life researching and understanding all the ways our cognition is biased.
And don’t entertain a moment the possibility that you live
without confirmation bias.
The Hofstadterian strange-loop here is that confirmation
bias is at work right now as you are reading these sentences. Are you absorbing
this information and my bias without obstructions? Are you offering clever
rebuttals and resisting my message? Are you somewhere inbetween? Are you
hopelessly oblivious to your bias?
Looping back
to Saad and Rogan
Saad represents a perspective. He is a part of the church of
rationalism. His Holy Spirit is the Scientific Method. His demiurge is Truth,
the faith that there is an objective reality, free of subjectivity. There is an
assumption, explicit for some, implicit for others, that if the Scientific
Method cannot measure a phenomena or idea, the phenomena or idea is either
false, or not worth exploring. As in all religious circles, there are degrees
with which the followers adhere to their dogma. There are some very open minded rationalists. There are some very dogmatic rationalists.
The map is not the territory. The menu is not what’s for
dinner. The Scientific method is, without exaggeration, one of the greatest
ideas ever discovered. But it is a model. It is a model that cannot capture the
entirety of reality. The Scientific Method is a powerful tool. It is a tool whose
power can intoxicate the wielder. Give a boy a hammer and everything looks like
a nail. Use with care.
In this context, Joe represents the intellectual who has had
direct experience with phenomena that are currently not explained or
unexplainable by the Scientific method model. No model will trump the direct
experience, so Joe’s joking but direct disagreement with Saad that Confirmation
Bias explains away Synchronicity is easy to understand.
If you are an adventuring Rationalist and want to understand
why someone like Rogan would believe in Synchronicity, (or how I can), I
suggest you ingest 3.5 grams of dried psilocybe cubensis. (4)
Exercises:
Learn and understand the Scientific Method. How would you experimentally
research synchronicity?
Spend a couple hours researching Cognitive Bias. Connect
each phenomena with something your friends, coworkers or family members do.
(This will be easy)
Try to connect each phenomena with things that you do. (This
will be harder.) When you conclude you don’t fall prey to any of these, ask
your friends, coworkers, and family members for help. (Try not to blush when
the examples flow quickly.)
For a week entertain the idea that coincidences are hints
from a divine source and are to be listened for and understood. Next week,
entertain that perspective all coincidences are products of faulty information
processing and carry no meaning. Which week did you prefer? Why?
Reread this after you’ve done the previous exercises and embarrass
me by articulating my bias.
***
(1) A recent Standford study by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel
Schwartz showed that walking for 30 minutes increased creative inspiration by up
to 60% compared to those who sat.)
(2) Looking back, this may have been the moment my atheism
evaporated. There is also a curious connection between my first significant bout
of synchronicity and Jung’s famous example. One of his highly intelligent and
very rational patients was resisting exploring her dreams and unconscious. One
day she is describing a dream she had last night where a stranger gave her a
golden scarab. As she is recounting this, a bug bumps into Jung’s window, he
opens the window and grabs the bug. It is golden scarab.
(3) I hope to show that consciousness is a game we play with
ourselves. Most of the rules are breakable.
(4) This is obviously a work of fiction and this sentence is a
work of art and is in no way an actual suggestion on the part of the author to
encourage illegal action. The author only responsibility poisons himself with
sugar, alcohol and tobacco.