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Originally Posted by John Freestone  I'm not sure what it means when you say "two or more events occur in a certain time frame and are not causally related, and the likelihood of them occurring together is very small". Can you explain? The last bit seems to suggest something, and all I can think of is that it implies either a causal relationship (contradicting the earlier bit) or that they are unrelated (but then they would be coicidental).
I see no problem with cylon's point that everything is related. I think we mean to imply different things by it, though. Everything can be causally related by all the inestimable events following the Big Bang (if we take that theory on board), but most of our coincident events now would be connected by causal chains stretching back a long way - like I'm causally related to chimps - it means not that chimps cause me or vice versa, but that we share a common cause or causes in prehistory. Other syn-chronous events share closer causal links. I used the idea of 'coincidental' events only in a loose sense - because of the big bang, etc., maybe nothing is not causally related if you look from far enough away in spacetime - but since the effects of causation seem to dissipate over time and space, things approach a state where they are not causally related to other things far removed from them, although perhaps never actually getting there. Am I making sense? So I say, for instance, that me eating ice cream when shoemaker-levi 9 hit Jupiter is 'pure' coincidence, but assume it is understood that these events happen in the same universe, and hence share a distant echo of causation.
I think cylon implies something much more useful and TRIPPY by his theory. I suspect sparkly dolphins, sorry.
What does Jung imply when he thinks two events are not coincidental, but not causally related either?
Ouch, my head. |
Jung's idea is that the events are synchronous. They reflect or point to an underlying pattern where events are related, but not causally.
It would be like this. You run across a TIME magazine from the 1950s. There's an ad for a Chevy Bel-Air in there, a 1959 turquoise one, great big gorgeous car. You think for a fleeting moment about how you'd love to have a car like that, in turquoise to boot, and you're not even sure you've ever even seen a '50s Bel-Air in that color. Then you decide to go to the store. There in the parking lot is a '59 turquoise Bel-Air. It's not just in the parking lot, it's in the space you always park in if you can get it.
Then somebody approaches the car and opens the door. This person is carrying a copy of TIME.
"Two or more events occur in a certain time frame and are not causally related, and the likelihood of them occurring together is very small."
Would that be a significant synchronicity in your opinion, or what would you need to make you decide it's not just a random coincidence?