Carl Jung thought that synchronistic events are not just random occurrences but rather manifestations of an acausal connecting principle. Coincidences are simply contemporaneous occurences with no inherent significance, while synchronistic events have a deeper meaning that resonates within the individual's psyche.
Marie Louise von Franz once spoke of a synchronistic event that happened to a client. Keep in mind that this was in the 1950s in Europe. The client had ordered a blue dress from a shop and the dress arrived on the same day that she received notice of the death of a friend and the subsequent funeral. The shop sent a black dress rather than the blue one that had been ordered. Without the connection to the funeral, this would simply have been a mistake on the part of the shop, however, given the personal connection to the upcoming funeral and the need for a black dress, this becomes more than a coincidence and is, I think, an example of meaningful synchronicity.
All macro events were hatched in the quantum world.
To understand chance, let’s consider the simplest possible model. Measuring the spin of an electron is a good candidate. If we send an electron into a Stern–Gerlach device with the spin axis at 90 degrees, there is a 50/50 chance of the electron deflecting upward (spin up) vs downward (spin down). You can see the difference with the naked eye.
Why did we get up vs down. There is no information in the environment that could possibly help answer this question. Not all physicists agree, the pilot wave theory argues for a classical interpretation but let’s assume the Copenhagen interpretation (wave function collapse) since it is more popular. Wave function collapse means the electron instantly becomes either spin up or down when it encounters a magnetic field.
If spin up (or down) wasn’t caused, then did it deflect up (or down) due to magic? Saying it was due to unknown interactions in the environment is wrong. Since no deeper explanation is possible, what is wrong with saying it was caused by chance?
Hard to reconcile essentially saying "there is no physical cause" and "it was caused by chance". This might be one explanation why there is controversy in particle physics.
"There is no information in the environment that could possibly help answer this question."
That statement is not attributable to fact.
FACT: We cannot currently measure additional information. The quoted statement originates from a philosophical underpinning of the Copenhagen Model, not observable fact.
"If spin up (or down) wasn’t caused, then did it deflect up (or down) due to magic? Saying it was due to unknown interactions in the environment is wrong. Since no deeper explanation is possible, what is wrong with saying it was caused by chance?"
Because it is a philosophical outlook that closes off any potential of further investigation, thus is antithetical to the scientific method.
Your stance that we accept the event as "just happening" is actually the acceptance of "magic".
It is incorrect to say that interpretations of the measurement problem are entirely philosophical. Philosophers of physics are very clear that they think a scientific explanation is possible, but that doesn’t mean it will be a classical interpretation. Most evidence suggests in won't be.
If wave collapse is eventually proven correct, then the statement: “There is no information in the environment that could possibly help answer this question”, will become a scientific fact.
It’s fine to say physicists disagree, so we cannot say for sure that wave function collapse is correct. But this article is making declarations on how chance should be interpreted as if everything is settled.
No. One of the fundamental underpinnings of Quantum Mechanics is the Correspondence Principle. It essentially says we can't go from a Classical Physics "causal world" to the philosophically-proposed-yet-unproven-via-evidence "acausal world" that some interpretations of Quantum Mechanics propose.
"But this article is making declarations on how chance should be interpreted as if everything is settled."
Science is never settled. Get that lie out of your head.
When you recall that for a biologist "instinct" just means "I don't know why that happens", it's an easy step for the mathematician or physicist to say the same thing for "random".
Once again, the departure from observation and reality into the "Shut up and Calculate" world of the Epicyclic Thinkers has damaged Science and our ability to use it.
Matt, what a coincidence that you used income as an example I was just telling someone about my experience with this subject! In a former life, I got sucked into doing salary equity studies at the university. It seemed like our female faculty were having a field day suing us over salary discrimination. I had access to every scrap of data on our faculty—every one of us. So, a couple of us got roped into building a model. We decided to predict women’s salaries using equations built solely from male data. Clever yes?
We had access to all kinds of factors: degree level, years of experience, gender, race, scholarly output... I even wanted to include "pedigree" as a variable, but the others vetoed that idea. We tried countless approaches, but breaking things down by department and then by school or college made the most sense.
In the end, we plugged the female faculty into the equations to see what their salaries should have been based on the male benchmarks. And what did we find? To our shock, most of them were overpaid—at least according to the model. We thought it was hilarious at first, but trust me, it got ugly fast. Year after year, we churned out these results. It was solid, if non-statistical, work—a blunt-force comparison.
That whole mess started back in the early 1980s—around 1983. And you know what they say, Matt: no good deed goes unpunished. We tried to put an end to it, but of course, it only got worse. What we found it that the idea that women are underpaid, mistreated, and all that is complete nonsense. In reality, it’s the exact opposite.
In control charts, values over 3 standard deviations from the mean are thought to be due to a special cause, because it is not expected for the "normal" variation in data which, itself, has a common cause (the typical variation seen by the daily interplay of independently-fluctuating causal factors) to have been behind it.
The overly-certain interpretation of this "3-sigma event" is that it demonstrates a special cause was in effect, but what would be wrong with saying it is suggestive that a special cause is in play?
On this view, the phrase "due to chance" is akin to the phrase "not readily explainable by common cause variation." A researcher's conclusion may be something like:
"This isn't the type of difference that you would expect to find from the fluctuating common causes which are known or postulated to affect this variable. Therefore, we reject the null hypothesis that the difference is due to common cause variation."
"boy do i look mean" It's Monday morning.
Carl Jung thought that synchronistic events are not just random occurrences but rather manifestations of an acausal connecting principle. Coincidences are simply contemporaneous occurences with no inherent significance, while synchronistic events have a deeper meaning that resonates within the individual's psyche.
Marie Louise von Franz once spoke of a synchronistic event that happened to a client. Keep in mind that this was in the 1950s in Europe. The client had ordered a blue dress from a shop and the dress arrived on the same day that she received notice of the death of a friend and the subsequent funeral. The shop sent a black dress rather than the blue one that had been ordered. Without the connection to the funeral, this would simply have been a mistake on the part of the shop, however, given the personal connection to the upcoming funeral and the need for a black dress, this becomes more than a coincidence and is, I think, an example of meaningful synchronicity.
When we see strong correlations in large sample sizes, are we obliged to conclude they are causally connected (at least in part if not wholly)?
Or is this tangential to the discussion, since knowing there must be a cause and knowing what the cause is, are different topics?
NO!
“If we knew these causes in advance, we could deduce—predict with certainty—the outcome. This isn’t in the least controversial. “
This is not true. Quantum effects can amplify.
https://physicsworld.com/a/the-quantum-coin-toss
All macro events were hatched in the quantum world.
To understand chance, let’s consider the simplest possible model. Measuring the spin of an electron is a good candidate. If we send an electron into a Stern–Gerlach device with the spin axis at 90 degrees, there is a 50/50 chance of the electron deflecting upward (spin up) vs downward (spin down). You can see the difference with the naked eye.
Why did we get up vs down. There is no information in the environment that could possibly help answer this question. Not all physicists agree, the pilot wave theory argues for a classical interpretation but let’s assume the Copenhagen interpretation (wave function collapse) since it is more popular. Wave function collapse means the electron instantly becomes either spin up or down when it encounters a magnetic field.
If spin up (or down) wasn’t caused, then did it deflect up (or down) due to magic? Saying it was due to unknown interactions in the environment is wrong. Since no deeper explanation is possible, what is wrong with saying it was caused by chance?
Hard to reconcile essentially saying "there is no physical cause" and "it was caused by chance". This might be one explanation why there is controversy in particle physics.
"There is no information in the environment that could possibly help answer this question."
That statement is not attributable to fact.
FACT: We cannot currently measure additional information. The quoted statement originates from a philosophical underpinning of the Copenhagen Model, not observable fact.
"If spin up (or down) wasn’t caused, then did it deflect up (or down) due to magic? Saying it was due to unknown interactions in the environment is wrong. Since no deeper explanation is possible, what is wrong with saying it was caused by chance?"
Because it is a philosophical outlook that closes off any potential of further investigation, thus is antithetical to the scientific method.
Your stance that we accept the event as "just happening" is actually the acceptance of "magic".
It is incorrect to say that interpretations of the measurement problem are entirely philosophical. Philosophers of physics are very clear that they think a scientific explanation is possible, but that doesn’t mean it will be a classical interpretation. Most evidence suggests in won't be.
If wave collapse is eventually proven correct, then the statement: “There is no information in the environment that could possibly help answer this question”, will become a scientific fact.
It’s fine to say physicists disagree, so we cannot say for sure that wave function collapse is correct. But this article is making declarations on how chance should be interpreted as if everything is settled.
No. One of the fundamental underpinnings of Quantum Mechanics is the Correspondence Principle. It essentially says we can't go from a Classical Physics "causal world" to the philosophically-proposed-yet-unproven-via-evidence "acausal world" that some interpretations of Quantum Mechanics propose.
"But this article is making declarations on how chance should be interpreted as if everything is settled."
Science is never settled. Get that lie out of your head.
The Correspondence Principle was cooked by Niels Bohr and modern experts on the measurement problem don’t take his opinions seriously.
Bohr, who was a proponent of the Copenhagen Model.
Yet you will take the rest of Copenhagen philosophy unalloyed.
Spin up on your physics a bit before you try this again, son.
I have no problem with the Correspondence Principle, but it is irrelevant to my point.
And yet no one has seen a wave collapse.
When you recall that for a biologist "instinct" just means "I don't know why that happens", it's an easy step for the mathematician or physicist to say the same thing for "random".
Once again, the departure from observation and reality into the "Shut up and Calculate" world of the Epicyclic Thinkers has damaged Science and our ability to use it.
Time to go back. Repentance is due.
And especially in academic circles, expensive.
😆
Matt, what a coincidence that you used income as an example I was just telling someone about my experience with this subject! In a former life, I got sucked into doing salary equity studies at the university. It seemed like our female faculty were having a field day suing us over salary discrimination. I had access to every scrap of data on our faculty—every one of us. So, a couple of us got roped into building a model. We decided to predict women’s salaries using equations built solely from male data. Clever yes?
We had access to all kinds of factors: degree level, years of experience, gender, race, scholarly output... I even wanted to include "pedigree" as a variable, but the others vetoed that idea. We tried countless approaches, but breaking things down by department and then by school or college made the most sense.
In the end, we plugged the female faculty into the equations to see what their salaries should have been based on the male benchmarks. And what did we find? To our shock, most of them were overpaid—at least according to the model. We thought it was hilarious at first, but trust me, it got ugly fast. Year after year, we churned out these results. It was solid, if non-statistical, work—a blunt-force comparison.
Oh, the fallout was something to behold.
I'm sure they showered you with major awards for that.
That whole mess started back in the early 1980s—around 1983. And you know what they say, Matt: no good deed goes unpunished. We tried to put an end to it, but of course, it only got worse. What we found it that the idea that women are underpaid, mistreated, and all that is complete nonsense. In reality, it’s the exact opposite.
Briggs,
In control charts, values over 3 standard deviations from the mean are thought to be due to a special cause, because it is not expected for the "normal" variation in data which, itself, has a common cause (the typical variation seen by the daily interplay of independently-fluctuating causal factors) to have been behind it.
The overly-certain interpretation of this "3-sigma event" is that it demonstrates a special cause was in effect, but what would be wrong with saying it is suggestive that a special cause is in play?
On this view, the phrase "due to chance" is akin to the phrase "not readily explainable by common cause variation." A researcher's conclusion may be something like:
"This isn't the type of difference that you would expect to find from the fluctuating common causes which are known or postulated to affect this variable. Therefore, we reject the null hypothesis that the difference is due to common cause variation."
What's wrong with that? How would you reword it?