Watching the clock

I've posted before about the phenomenon of dart-thrower's bias; the tendency of humans to notice outliers, and therefore give them more weight in our attention (and memory) than the ordinary background noise with which we are constantly bombarded.  And once we notice a particular outlier, we're more likely to notice it next time -- further reinforcing the effect.

I remember having an experience of this a while back.  On two consecutive work days, I noticed, when I glanced at the clock after finishing breakfast, that it was 6:43.  On the face of it, this wasn't that odd, since my alarm was always set for the same time, and I did more-or-less the same sequence of actions to get ready for work, in more-or-less the same order, every day.  But I did notice it.  And subsequently, every time I glanced at the clock after breakfast and it was 6:43, it registered.  I was less likely to pay any kind of serious attention if it was 6:46 or 6:39, because I'd already primed my brain to be more aware of one particular time.

But if you think this exemplifies dart-thrower's bias, you ain't heard nothin' yet.  There's a guy named Jordan Pearce who posted over at SpiritScience and has had a similar experience, but doesn't chalk it up to a perceptual bias in the human brain...

... he thinks it's evidence we're going to have a "planetary shift of consciousness."

For him, the time was 11:11.  Despite my feeling that 11:11 is simply the most convenient way to get from 11:10 to 11:12, Pearce thinks that this time is deeply meaningful.  Here's what he has to say:

I’ll bet that if I asked publicly how many people saw 11:11 regularly, we’d probably see a huge sea of hands popping up all over the place. Its [sic] pretty common nowadays, there’s something to it, and its about time we decoded it.

In case you answered that you’ve never noticed 11:11, I would remind you that you’re reading a blog about it right now.  Welcome to the beginning of your 11:11 synchronistic voyage.

There was a time only a few years ago when I hadn’t heard a thing about 11:11.  It was brand new to me, until it wasn’t anymore.  Interestingly enough, my 11:11 synchronicities started right around the time when I began learning about a planetary shift of consciousness… The Shift.

Okie-dokie.  But isn't something being "new until it isn't anymore" kind of the usual way things work?  Anyhow, the upshot is, if you notice 11:11, you're heading toward enlightenment, or something.  So yay for you.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0, Big Ben Clock Face, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Then he throws in a lengthy quote from Uri Geller, who I really wish would go away.  You'd think Geller's popularity would have waned after his conspicuous inability to telekinetically bend spoons on The Tonight Show decades ago, but no, he's still around, and still making grandiose statements about psychic stuff and global consciousness and spiritual ascension.

So Geller doesn't really add anything to Pearce's credibility.  But Pearce goes on, undaunted, and tells us that it all... means something:

11:11 is a wake-up call of sorts, an initiation into the “aha” of realization that something big was going on.  Something that connected everyone.  In truth, the numbers are only a representation of what’s really going on.  A symbol for the connection taking place all over the world.  The numbers aren’t significant, but their meaning.

Well, it would certainly be a wake-up call for me, because if I rolled over in bed and saw the time was 11:11, it would mean that I'd overslept by six hours.  But that's not what he's driving at, of course.  And what sort of meaning does he ascribe to all of this?

When you observe 11:11, you notice some interesting things.  The first thing that I see is that it is a balanced equation.

Actually, it's not an equation at all, given that an equation needs an equals sign somewhere.  But do carry on.

Not only is it two elevens, but two elevens with a : in between.  Two sides of a balanced equation, that equal out at zero.  They have a stable equilibrium were they a mathematical equation.

Yes!  Two elevens with a pair of dots!  And that equals zero!  Except when it equals four:

They also come down to 4.  I feel it like a 4 elements equation, a perfect balancing of a yin and yang energy.  If you know anything about Tarot, you might think of the 4 leaders.  Prince, Princess, Queen, and King/Knight.

I thought that the Tarot cards had a King, Queen, Knight, and Page, but what do I know?  I mean, he's basically making shit up as he goes on, so may as well make this up too, right?  But it gets even better:

Now, the magic about 11:11 is not just that it’s happening to you, but it’s happening everywhere.  11:11 is a global event, it is something that people all over the world, including you right now (because you’re reading this) is experiencing.

Well, I agree that 11:11 is a global event.  In fact, it happens twice a day, no matter what time zone you're in.  That's got to be significant somehow, don't you think?

And he ends with a bang:

You are not alone.  We are all growing and learning different things, and in truth we’re really all learning the same thing.  How to love.  What is love, what does love look like, and what it means to embody Christ.

So 11:11 = 0 = 4 = synchronicity, and therefore Christ?

I mean, this is taking dart-thrower's bias and raising it to the level of performance art.  Sometimes patterns are meaningful, and sometimes they just... aren't.  Imposing some kind of cosmic significance on something that is a random occurrence doesn't make it real.

So anyhow, there you are.  I just glanced at the clock, and it's 5:36, which as times go, is all higgledy-piggledy and unbalanced, and probably points to the fact that I am feeling particularly unenlightened at the moment because I haven't had any coffee yet.  Maybe I'll feel better at 5:55, although by then I'll probably be in the shower.

Maybe I'll see what happens at 6:43.  That's bound to be interesting, right?

Of course right.

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Cause and effect

In 1960, Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity in his book of the same name, and defined it as follows:

How are we to recognize acausal combinations of events, since it is obviously impossible to examine all chance happenings for their causality?  The answer to this is that acausal events may be expected most readily where, on closer reflection, a causal connection appears to be inconceivable...  It is impossible, with our present resources, to explain ESP [extrasensory perception], or the fact of meaningful coincidence, as a phenomenon of energy.  This makes an end of the causal explanation as well, for "effect" cannot be understood as anything except a phenomenon of energy.  Therefore it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity.  Because of this quality of simultaneity, I have picked on the term "synchronicity" to designate a hypothetical factor equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation.

Synchronicity is a peculiar thing, and when it happens to us it can be extremely startling.  I recall going to a doctor's appointment one day, and in the car I was listening to a station that plays classical music.  When I arrived I was in the middle of the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, a piece I love -- but I was right on time for the appointment and couldn't sit and listen to the rest of it.

So I shut the engine off, got out of my car, and went into the doctors' office.  I checked in, went to the waiting room...

... and over the speakers came the ethereal notes of the piano playing the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, picking up almost exactly where I had left off five minutes earlier.

This would have been surprising but not really all that peculiar if they had simply been tuned to the same station on Sirius-XM satellite radio as I was; but they weren't.  As I found out from sitting there for the next half hour (just because I was on time for my appointment doesn't mean the doctor was), the music being piped in was just a collection of "atmospheric piano music" for waiting rooms and the like.  The fact that it seemed to pick up exactly where I'd turned the radio in my car off was pure coincidence.

Or, if you like Jung's term, synchronicity.  I'm wary of it for two reasons.  First, it immediately turns on our conviction that occurrences like this Mean Something, that it was more than simple random chance at work.  Second, this kind of magical thinking is at the heart of dart-thrower's bias -- our tendency to notice (or overemphasize) the hits and ignore the misses.  In this case, all of the millions of times I've walked into a waiting room or elevator or grocery store and the speakers weren't playing a tune I was just listening to or thinking about.  All of that randomness gets subsumed into the background white noise of life.  I only noticed it this time, and remembered it afterward, because the music I heard was unexpected in some way.

The reason this comes up is because of an article at Insider about a phone app called "Randonautica," which takes the concept of synchronicity to new levels.  What the app does is to give you a random set of coordinates within a ten minute drive of your home, and then acts as a GPS to get you there.  Before you leave, you're supposed to "set an intention" -- something you want to find or learn when you arrive -- with the expectation that at the site, you'll discover something relevant to that intention.

Various "Randonauts" have reported all sorts of things -- creepy abandoned buildings, unexpected beautiful spots hidden away from view, cryptic graffiti on walls that seemed in some way to connect to the seekers' intention, and so on.  One group had a horrifying experience; Randonauts in Seattle stumbled upon a suitcase that contained human remains in a plastic garbage bag.

Now, I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade (although finding a dead body certainly would quell my enthusiasm for the whole enterprise).  I can see how Randonautica could be a great deal of fun, and in fact, it's related in spirit to a hobby my wife and I both participate in, geocaching.  But it's an interesting question to consider whether what the Randonauts are finding is meaningful.

My take on it is that sure, it's meaningful, but the meaning is something the Randonauts are imposing upon what they find.  Put another way, there's nothing mystical to this; if you go to a strange place and look for something, with the only criterion being that it has to be relevant to a broad intention to "find something strange," then you're almost certain to succeed.  I can pretty much guarantee that no matter where you go, if you look for weird and unexpected stuff, you'll find something.

But that's just me being a hyperrational type, and there are people who absolutely swear by synchronicities that even I would find a little hard to explain as dart-thrower's bias.  Jung, for example, told the story of a patient who had a vivid dream of a golden scarab beetle, and asked him what relevance it had to her life.  While she was telling him this, he heard a noise, and saw there was an insect trying to get out of the window -- and reached out his hand and caught it.  Guess what it was?  He handed the shining green-gold beetle to the patient, and said, "Here is your scarab."

"This experience punctured the desired hole in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance," Jung wrote.  "The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results."

[Image is in the Public Domain]

So who knows?  Maybe there's more to this than I'm seeing.  I'd encourage you to try Randonautica if you're so inclined, and let me know if anything untoward happens.  I may well do the same -- although I wonder what would happen if your intention contains the subclause, "... but there's probably nothing mystical going on here."

****************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is for anyone who likes quick, incisive takes on scientific topics: When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought by the talented science writer Jim Holt.

When Einstein Walked with Gödel is a series of essays that explores some of the deepest and most perplexing topics humanity has ever investigated -- the nature of time, the implications of relativity, string theory, and quantum mechanics, the perception of beauty in mathematics, and the ultimate fate of the universe.  Holt's lucid style brings these difficult ideas to the layperson without blunting their scientific rigor, and you'll come away with a perspective on the bizarre and mind-boggling farthest reaches of science.  Along the way you'll meet some of the key players in this ongoing effort -- the brilliant, eccentric, and fascinating scientists themselves.

It's a wonderful read, and anyone who is an aficionado of the sciences shouldn't miss it.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Watching the clock

I've posted before about the phenomenon of dart-thrower's bias; the tendency of humans to notice outliers, and therefore give them more weight in our attention (and memory) than the ordinary background noise with which we are constantly bombarded.  And once we notice a particular outlier, we're more likely to notice it next time -- further reinforcing the effect.

I had an experience of this a while back.  On two consecutive work days, I noticed, when I glanced at the clock after finishing breakfast, that it was 6:43.  On the face of it, this isn't that odd, since my alarm is always set for the same time, and I do more-or-less the same sequence of actions to get ready for work, in more-or-less the same order, every day.  But I did notice it.  And subsequently, every time I glance at the clock after breakfast and it is 6:43, it registers.  I'm less likely to pay any kind of serious attention if it's 6:46 or 6:39, because I've already primed my brain to be more aware of one particular time.

But if you think this exemplifies dart-thrower's bias, you ain't heard nothin' yet.  There's a guy named Jordan Pearce who posted yesterday over at SpiritScience.net who has had a similar experience, and doesn't chalk it up to a perceptual bias in the human brain...

... he thinks it's evidence we're going to have a "planetary shift of consciousness."

For him, the time was 11:11.  Despite my feeling that 11:11 is simply the most convenient way to get from 11:10 to 11:12, Pearce thinks that this time is deeply meaningful.  Here's what he has to say:

I’ll bet that if I asked publicly how many people saw 11:11 regularly, we’d probably see a huge sea of hands popping up all over the place.  Its [sic] pretty common nowadays, there’s something to it, and its about time we decoded it. 

In case you answered that you’ve never seen 11:11, I would remind you that you’re reading a blog about it right now.  Welcome to the beginning of your 11:11 synchronistic voyage.

There was a time only a few years ago when I hadn’t heard a thing about 11:11.  It was brand new to me, until it wasn’t anymore.  Interestingly enough, my 1111 synchronicities started right around the time when I began learning about a planetary shift of consciousness… The Shift.

Okey-dokey.  So if you notice 11:11, you're heading toward enlightenment, or something.

Then he throws in a lengthy quote from Uri Geller, who I really wish would go away.  You'd think Geller's popularity would have waned after his conspicuous inability to telekinetically bend spoons on The Tonight Show decades ago, but no, he's still around, and still making grandiose statements about psychic stuff and global consciousness and spiritual ascension.

So Geller doesn't really add anything to Pearce's credibility.  But Pearce goes on, undaunted, and tells us that it all... means something:

11:11 is a wakeup call of sorts, an initiation into the “aha” of realization that something big was going on.  Something that connected everyone.  In truth, the numbers are only a representation of what’s really going on.  A symbol for the connection taking place all over the world. The numbers aren’t significant, but their meaning.

Well, it would certainly be a wake-up call for me, because if I rolled over in bed and saw the time was 11:11, it would mean that I'd overslept by six hours.  But that's not what he's driving at, of course.  And what sort of meaning does he ascribe to all of this?

When you observe 11:11, you notice some interesting things.  The first thing that I see is that it is a balanced equation.

Actually, it's not an equation at all, given that an equation needs an equals sign somewhere.  But do carry on.

Not only is it two elevens, but two elevens with a : in between.  Two sides of a balanced equation, that equal out at zero.  They have a stable equilibrium were they a mathematical equation.

Yes!  Two elevens with a pair of dots!  And that equals zero!  Except when it equals four:

They also come down to 4.  I feel it like a 4 elements equation, a perfect balancing of a yin and yang energy.  If you know anything about Tarot, you might think of the 4 leaders. Prince, Princess, Queen, and King/Knight.

I thought that the Tarot cards had a King, Queen, Knight, and Page, but what do I know?  I mean, he's basically making shit up as he goes on, so may as well make this up too, right?  But it gets even better:

Now, the magic about 11:11 is not just that it’s happening to you, but it’s happening everywhere.  11:11 is a global event, it is something that people all over the world, including you right now (because you’re reading this) is experiencing.

Well, I agree that 11:11 is a global event.  In fact, it happens twice a day, no matter what time zone you're in.  That's got to be significant somehow, don't you think?

And he ends with a bang:

You are not alone.  We are all growing and learning different things, and in truth we’re really all learning the [sic] same thing.  How to love.  What is love, what does love look like, and what it means to embody Christ.

So 11:11 = 0 = 4 = synchronicity, and therefore Christ?

I mean, this is taking dart-thrower's bias and raising it to the level of performance art.

So anyhow, there you are.  I just glanced at the clock, and it's 5:36, which as times go, is all higgledy-piggledy and unbalanced, and probably points to the fact that I am feeling particularly unenlightened at the moment because I haven't had any coffee yet.  Maybe I'll feel better at 5:55, although by then I'll probably be in the shower.

Maybe I'll see what happens at 6:43.  That's bound to be interesting, right?

Of course right.