"Aspies less likely to see purpose behind events"

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Or the mind's tendency to seek patterns around significant events. Correspondences & synchronicities are often more a result of selective attention than anything. Two events seem to be related only by a mind that can ignore/dismiss all the unrelated events of the day.

This is how superstitions get started. The whole vague portent tradition is a fascinating study in psychology.

I wonder if I'm 50/50 on it. A string of coincidence can make me think some weird effect is in play (still not intelligent). In fact, because I don't think there is intelligence or purpose, I think chasing after meaning in the coincidences is futile.

Even if my speculation had any merit, and you could somehow measure a 'Probability Fluctuation', I still don't think you could get anything more out of following it or studying it.

Suppose you were watching the news while eating cherries. The dog jumps up and spills all the cherries onto the floor. At that moment,on the news,is a story about a truck full of cherries overturning on the freeway. Obviously just a coincidence. Then 5 minutes later your wife walks in and says that your friend Sam Smith died. The phone rings and its a wrong number,someone asking for Sam. Probably a coincidence. This goes on every 5 minutes. Obviously, if this goes on for a month something weird is going on. If it continues for only 10 minutes probably just coincidence. My question is, is there a mathematical way to determine when the process becomes significant?

In a population of events that are distributed according to the Gaussian distribution you can find out how many sigmas away from the mean these strange events are.

ruveyn

I don't think that we don't see purpose, we just realize there is no purpose. Explaining that you were sick because of a virus you were exposed to is exactly right. When people start looking for magical answers to everything, they lose sight of reality. Not always in a dangerous way but it still happens with religion.
Why did someone die? Because they were hit by a bus, not because it was there time... that's pure fantasy. I'd be fine with that kind of talk if it was done in the same way adults act as though Santa Claus is real, because it makes being a kid more fun. I remember when I found out Santa wasn't real, I was crushed!
It sucked at first but looking back, the fantasy was overall a good thing. If God, Jesus and every other character from the bible (and same sort of thing with any religion that has a version of heaven) were left out and the only thing parents told their kids was that when people die, they go to heaven and everyones happy, that'd be fine. Because as people get older, they usually either work out what is real by themselves or if not, are told by someone else and then you get the realization of how completely unrealistic Santa is.
But since people keep pushing the God fantasy on everyone, regardless of age, it's so much harder for people to think rationally and logically, because so many others believe and so there's peer pressure, not wanting to be left out, fear of Hell, the comfort that people find in religion for some reason.... and so on. Then you get people dismissing scientific facts because of a book written 2000 years ago that can't back up anything it claims to be true.

ANYWAY... the point is... I do name the purpose, if I can. But I'm not going to say it was due to karma, God or anything like that because there is no proof, it's completely illogical and I'd rather live in the real world, despite how crappy it can be.

Last edited by Redstar2613 on 20 May 2013, 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Finding purpose and agency among events (most of which are random with respect to each other) is just another way of connecting the dots. Humans love to see patterns in things and connect the dots.

ruveyn

Technically, Karma is just the law of cause & effect as applies to the mental continuum of a sentient being.

Of course, weird elaborations by the magical thinkers quickly make a hash out of something that is very straight forward & sensible.

But cause & effect? I can totally be on board w/that.

How so? Because Karma is supposedly when something bad happens to you after you did something bad. Despite the fact that plenty of bad people get away with their crap all the time. But the convenient response is that it might take a long time and we just don't get to see it. But that's pure convenience. How is that like cause and effect?
Oh and there's the really good people that have really horrible things happen to them. Even babies who literally can't have done anything wrong. But then someone usually says something about them probably being bad in a past life or something else you can't prove.

I thought Aspies were notorious for connecting the dots even more than NTs. I know that's the way I am.

That's what I mean about the magical thinkers. It all becomes external & in the West very mixed up w/the notion of morality, punishment, reward.

It's basically saying the way you see the world is the world you inhabit. An impoverished mindset leads to a view that can't see abundance, always feels there is never enough. An anxious mind experiences the world as a frightful place. We in the US have a particular cultural way of viewing ourselves (broad generalization), that sort of thing. It's not about the flat tire, it's about how you react/respond to the flat tire. Unfortunately, magical thinkers have given moral meaning to a flat tire, rather than pointing out that the way one responds is the fruition of certain habits of thought.

What about magical thinkers that blame curses? That wouldn't necessarily have morality mixed in. Someone with powers hates you and so s/he cursed you.

What about them? I'm not clear about what you're asking w/regards karma.

I'm not asking anything that has to do with karma. I'm just pointing out that someone could be a magical thinker without ever attributing moral meanings to events. It's trivial I just wanted to point it out.

Some silly coincidences in my life gives examples of some patterns I have noticed in things important to me. G. K. Chesterton once wrote "Coincidences are spiritual puns." Humans perceive patterns. It's what we do.

Oh, ok.