Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with synchronicity

Help Me Find Synchronicities

dmaterialized — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:53:13 -0800

Looking for examples of synchronicity, or evidence of "collective unconscious"-- like world records that, once broken, are broken by many others, or two musicians coming up with similar tunes without knowing each other, etc. Has there ever been historical evidence of synchronized events?

Is there objective proof of psychic phenomenon or what??

my homunculus is drowning — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:38:15 -0800

Is there any scientific evidence to support the existence of psychic phenomenon? I've been reading Daniel Pinchbecks 2012 and early on in the book he makes the claim that it's a fairly done deal as regards the reality of various psychic phenomenon, linking it in the same sort of way to quantum physics that the movie What The Bleep did. What's the deal? Is there really a large group of scientists who 1) say that these things happen and 2) are not complete nut jobs? Are we really on the verge of accepting that we don't live in a stricly mechanical world? That consciousness might actually be able to affect its surroundings? That consciousness might actually be at the center of everything?

Daniel Pinchbeck is a lucid, enaging writer (his Breaking Open The Head is one of my favorites) so when he says that the scientific proof is out there yet doesn't cite any it gives me some problems as a reader trying to take his work seriously. In fact, a lot of my favorite authors make similiar claims. What's the deal?

Noticing New Words

zelphi — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 00:43:39 -0800

Language/Listening/WordFilter [mi] Everytime I learn a new word, I start hearing it on TV and reading it (even though I never heard it before on a regular basis). People I've talked to say they experience the same thing. Their only explanation is that I'm paying more attention to that particular word because I just learned it and it isn't just some crazy coincidence. The problem is that I'm the kind of guy who has to look up every word I hear and don't know. If I'm to believe the explanation for this phenomenon, I'm inadvertantly ignoring words I don't know, which is something I have a hard time believing. What's really going on?

death comes in threes, science works in twos...?

kev23f — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 03:40:46 -0800

When reading a book about Newton V's Leibniz recently, it occurred to me that great advances in Science often seem to occur in tandem, ie two unrelated persons or groups often arrive at a breakthrough at roughly the same time. Is this true? Can anyone think of some other examples? Can anyone explain why this may be the case?