Coincidence Bias

Our friend Dale Dassel from Georgia was browsing for information about a polar explorer and was led to a website of notable events in history,  organized by dates. So, out of curiosity, he decided to see what happened in history on his birthday, Jan. 19.

He figured there would be something about Edgar Allan Poe, who shared his birthday. But instead he was led to an article about German airships, which is one of his long-standing subjects of interest. Then he noticed the counter at the bottom corner and saw that he was visitor 1979…which just happened to be the year of his birth.

I’ve put up this story, mainly because Dale called it a ‘random coincidence,’ not a synchronicity, because he didn’t find it particularly meaningful. That led me to thinking about the question: When is a coincidence just that and when is it a synchronicity? I thought Dale’s story was a synchronicity…or rather I thought that he had accepted it as one. But when I questioned him, I found out he didn’t.

A day after Dale sent me the story I stumbled upon blog post in which someone was writing about that very subject. Hmm, so was that a coincidence or a synchronicity? I want to quote the post that appeared in a ‘community blog’  somewhat ominously called the Skeptiko-forum. I figured it was a place where hard-core skeptics would be ranting about the imbeciles who believe in the paranormal. But that wasn’t the case, at least in the small list of posts that I looked at. The post that caught my attention was called ‘Coincidence Bias,’ by Hurmanetar.

Here’s what he says, in brief.

“How do we know if something is a random coincidence or a meaningful synchronicity? There is really no scientific way to tell the difference. Sure, we can attempt to calculate the odds in attempt to discern between the two, but unless the phenomenon is repeatable and testable, there’s no way to examine it with science leaving it up to the individual to assign meaning to the coincidence or synchronicity based on a WAG (wild ass guess) of the probability and the individual’s own Confirmation Bias or Coincidence Bias. The justification for Coincidence Bias is that with a staggering amount of improbable possibilities it is highly probable that something improbable will happen in an apparently meaningful way.

“I’m creating the new term (at least I think it is new) “Coincidence Bias” because I think it is a real bias that hasn’t been identified. In the pervasive modern rationalistic materialist paradigm, it is assumed that the events of the universe are either causal or random so that when a seemingly meaningful coincidence occurs that has no apparent cause, there is a bias to assume it is completely random and meaningless. The converse of Coincidence Bias is Confirmation Bias in which we assign post-hoc meaning or justification to a random or non-causal event. Confirmation Bias is a bit more natural to us with our origins and pattern recognizing brains, so in scientism it is relegated to the same dustbin inhabited by old wives’ tales and religions.

“If we give up the rationalistic materialistic notion that the universe is fundamentally meaningless, and instead adopt the notion that the universe is fundamentally an interesting story developed for the sake of experiencing interestingness, then it becomes apparent that coincidence bias is a real bias.”

I like what Hurmanetar had to say. He’s pointing out that to assume any coincidence is inevitably meaninglessness is a bias every bit as much as is the belief in synchronicity. Yet, all that said, to me the answer to the original question – when is a coincidence a synchronicity – is actually quite simple. Whoever has the experience is the arbitrator of what’s meaningful and what’s not. I can’t decide that Dale’s coincidence (or anyone’s) is a synchro or not one. It’s subjective…and if ‘subjective’ means bias, well, so be it.