Just Coincidence?

[Beth]

After reading through some of the recent threads on prescient dreams, a question occurs to me.

When discussing unlikely events versus paranormal phenomena, many skeptics simply dismiss certain pairings of events (for example, someone dreams of someone close to them dying and awakes to discover they are dead) as being mere coincidence. Perhaps they all are. I'm not so sure. To me they seem to happen far more frequently than mere random chance would imply, but it is quite difficult to assess the probability of such random occurrances.

Generally speaking, most scientific studies use an alpha level of 5%, or about one chance in 20 of being mistaken. Certainly paranormal claims require higher evidence (or lower probability) than that.

My question: how low does the probability of a coincidence (or series of coincidences) need to be before you would be willing to consider a paranormal explanation as a possibility?

Beth

 

[TheBoyPaj]

The odds would have to be astronomical, and built up over a series of tests run by separate laboratories.

After all, people beat odds of several million to one every time they win the lottery.

 

[-42-]

When discussing unlikely events versus paranormal phenomena, many skeptics simply dismiss certain pairings of events (for example, someone dreams of someone close to them dying and awakes to discover they are dead) as being mere coincidence.

Perhaps they all are. I'm not so sure. To me they seem to happen far more frequently than mere random chance would imply, but it is quite difficult to assess the probability of such random occurrances.

My question: how low does the probability of a coincidence (or series of coincidences) need to be before you would be willing to consider a paranormal explanation as a possibility?

Beth

You should include every single thing that will later be considered to be a part of a coincidence, too.

ie: I dropped a coke when taking it out of the refriderator and it smashed my toe.

That would have to be considered beforehand. If it 'misses' the coincidence, you'd never even think about or consider it. You don't remember misses after all, just hits.

However, if later that day or week a family member happens to have a coke machine land on their head that was being hoisted into a building, it might seem pretty paranormal and right away you might remember that earlier unrelated event.

That same day, you probably had thousands, if not more, of things that happened to you that turned out to be a 'miss' for a 'coincidence'.

Humans are also excellent pattern detectors. Such as picking out the face of a deceased relative in a cloud, grilled cheese or shower curtain. Or a bunny, for that matter.

 

[wahrheit]

... (for example, someone dreams of someone close to them dying and awakes to discover they are dead) as being mere coincidence. Perhaps they all are. ...

Consider that 6 billion people do sleep every night, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That amounts to a huge number of dreams. Dreaming of people close to oneself probably is not uncommon. Also, consider how many people do dream of a death which didn't happen. These, of course, are quickly forgotten...

 

[Kopji]

My question: how low does the probability of a coincidence (or series of coincidences) need to be before you would be willing to consider a paranormal explanation as a possibility?

I would not say that the choice is only between coincidence or paranormal though. We process a lot of information we are not consciously aware of. Having our subconscious expressed in the form of dreams seems common, (or at least well established).

We could easily be picking up on hints that something was wrong, but not be consciously aware of it. So that perfectly natural explanation would need to be weighed before I considered a supernatural one.

And how many premonitions do we have that do not come to pass? Sheesh I feel that way every time I get on a plane. wave goodbye one last time now... That would be simply compiling my success data while ignoring my failure data.

 

[Jeff Corey]

... Having our subconscious expressed in the form of dreams seems common, (or at least well established)...

Sorry, but I'm gonna hafta call ya on that.
1. The "subconscious" or "unconscious" as the orthodox Freudians call it, is an unfalsifiable entity.
2. As such, having whatever that is "expressed as dreams" is akin to a suburban legend. Not "well established" at all.

 

[Beth]

I appreciate all the responses, but I can't help but notice that no one has actually answered the question I posed. Yes, there are a lot of people dreaming a lot of dreams. Coincidences are bound to pop up occasionally.

However, they don't just pop up occasionally, they pop up all over the place. For example, many people have a story of somebody they know who had a dream of someone dying and awoke to discover they were dead. I know of two such people personally.

Now we can't really calculate the odds of such an occurrance other than to note that there are far more people who have experienced such dreams than there are lottery winners.

Another thread comments on the emotional response people have to such dreams. All I will say is that they do tend to make believers out of people.

So, assuming that the odds of such a dream could be estimated in some fashion, how low would the odds have to be before you would consider such a dream to be something other than coincidence?

Beth

 

[Kopji]

Sorry, but I'm gonna hafta call ya on that.
1. The "subconscious" or "unconscious" as the orthodox Freudians call it, is an unfalsifiable entity.
2. As such, having whatever that is "expressed as dreams" is akin to a suburban legend. Not "well established" at all.

Yeah, no need to apologize, got me on that one. (What is the purpose of psychoanalysis and all those couches?)

Q: Is psychology really considered a science? It seems very art-like.

In another of Freud's systematizations, the mind is divided into the Conscious mind or Ego and two parts of the Unconscious: the Id or instincts and the Superego. Freud used the idea of the unconscious in order to explain certain kinds of neurotic behavior. (See psychoanalysis.)

Many modern philosophers and social scientists either dispute the concept of an unconscious, or argue that it is not an entity that can be scientifically investigated or discussed rationally. In the social sciences, this view was first brought forward by John Watson, considered to be the first American behaviourist. Among philosophers, Karl Popper was one of Freud's most notable contemporary opponents. Popper claimed that Freud's theory of the unconscious was not falsifiable.

However, there is agreement among many, perhaps most, psychologists and cognitive scientists that much mental functioning takes place in a part of the mind inaccessible to consciousness.

The 'dream' thing. I was thinking specifically of a famous incident with the inventor of the sewing machine. The story goes that he was stumped, but had a dream about being attacked by natives holding spears with holes in the tips. He suddenly woke up with the answer. (Someone here will have the name and the story).

 

[thaiboxerken]

Another thread comments on the emotional response people have to such dreams. All I will say is that they do tend to make believers out of people.

They do make believers out of SOME people. I've had a few "coincidental" dreams, yet I am not a believer. When the paranormalists can actually test their claims successfully, I will become a believer.

Tell me, when you have dreams, do you actually make plans based on those dreams?

 

[-42-]

So, assuming that the odds of such a dream could be estimated in some fashion, how low would the odds have to be before you would consider such a dream to be something other than coincidence?

Beth

Most people have 4-5 Dreams a night. However, they virtually always only remember a dream when they are woken in the middle of it.

Unless there is an outside factor for why you were awoken during a dream, this would mean you have a much higher likelyhood of remembering a nightmare (that awakens you).

If it was a nightmare, it could easily be about someone dying. How often do people dream about people dying and it does not come true... Well, I guess it'll come true EVENTUALLY right, but lets say within a few days.

Was there a reason for them to be worried about a particular person to begin with? Were they very old or sick?

I would think if someone is concerned with someone dying they are more likely to dream about it - and infact, might even dream about it every night but simply not remember it because they weren't awoken by the dream.

A lot of people die every day, why don't all relatives, a majority or a notable percentage dream about it right before - or when - it happens?

If it were so, then it would certainly be widely accepted because everyone - especially older people - would have had it occur multiple times and everyone would have experienced it at some time or another.

 

[fishbob]

To me they seem to happen far more frequently than mere random chance would imply, but it is quite difficult to assess the probability of such random occurrances.

and

My question: how low does the probability of a coincidence (or series of coincidences) need to be before you would be willing to consider a paranormal explanation as a possibility?

The key phrase here is 'seem to happen'. -42- responded directly to this with: "You don't remember misses after all, just hits. "

Until you have some actual data, 'seem to happen' is meaningless except as a question to design an investigation around.

Long ago, early telescopic viewing reported features on Mars that were interpreted to be canals. Lots of people spent lots of time speculating about Martian canal-building civilizations until better telescopes and careful observation showed no canals on Mars. Your probability studies should wait until you have some actual data.

 

[TheBoyPaj]

And what does "better than random chance" mean anyway, when dealing with dreams of death?

How can you work out the odds that you will dream the death of someone who dies next day?

You'd have to know the frequency of dreaming about a death in the general population. I wouldn't even know where to start.

 

[Nucular]

Yeah, no need to apologize, got me on that one. (What is the purpose of psychoanalysis and all those couches?)

Q: Is psychology really considered a science? It seems very art-like.

Yes, psychology itself is a science. The Freudian stuff you refer to is psychoanalysis, a rather outmoded branch of psychology which is full of unfalsifiable claims and non-seqs. Irritatingly, though, it's what most people seem to call to mind when they picture psychology.

Not much of psychology is especially artlike as in, "hey there are no wrong answers, man", though you do get subsections which are. Although some of psychology is artlike I guess, in the sense that medicine is artlike: the application of a science is an art, you could argue.

 

[Ashles]

I appreciate all the responses, but I can't help but notice that no one has actually answered the question I posed. Yes, there are a lot of people dreaming a lot of dreams. Coincidences are bound to pop up occasionally.

More than occasionally - all the time.

However, they don't just pop up occasionally, they pop up all over the place. For example, many people have a story of somebody they know who had a dream of someone dying and awoke to discover they were dead. I know of two such people personally.

And I can give you many stories of examples where I have dreamt of people dying, in peril and landmarks being destroyed. Not one has ever come true.
Also you only have the anecdotal stories of the people providing you with the information after the event. How accurately do they really recall theit original dream? How close to the event was the dream?
They could be lying or genuinely mistaken.
And again, how many other similar dreams have they had like these, after which nothing happened.

Now we can't really calculate the odds of such an occurrance other than to note that there are far more people who have experienced such dreams than there are lottery winners.

This means nothing whatsoever except that people have dreams and sometimes attach significance to them.

Another thread comments on the emotional response people have to such dreams. All I will say is that they do tend to make believers out of people.

Again this is completely irrelevant. Some people become believers for the smallest of reasons, others would be unlikely to become believers after 5 such occurrences.
What conclusions can we draw except for the fairly well known fact that some people are more gullible than others, some people are more sceptical than others, basically people have different types of belief.

So, assuming that the odds of such a dream could be estimated in some fashion, how low would the odds have to be before you would consider such a dream to be something other than coincidence?

Beth we are aware that you are a statistics lecturer, but you seem to labour under the misapprehension that you can work out the existence of such things by hammering your data with statistical manipulations. You can't. I was taught the limits of statistics within my first few lectures on the subject - I am very surprised you seem to have forgotten that.

You are failing to take into account many unmeasurable factors.

How truthful are people when reporting such stories? Frankly, when I was a believer, I would enhance my stories without even thinking twice about it. They were more interesting that way.

And how many dreams do people have that could potentialy be significant? I have had literally hundreds, probably thousands of dreams involving close family members and famous landmarks. If any of these had been followed by a notable event they would have been considered hits.

Also, bad things happening to those close to us is basically inevitable - the only odds involved here is how likely is it one of our dreams about one of these people will be close in time to the actual event.
Realistically? It's entirely possible, and, at a rough guess, likely to happen to most people at some point during their lives.

Figures in this type of phenomenon are almost entierely irrelevant, unless someone undertook a large scale analysis of people's dreams and recorded them all for a long period of time.

And even then you would have to start including variables like how likely you are to dream of a loved one, or someone you haven't dreamt about for ages etc.


Beth you are trying to apply statistical analysis to things that are very much subjective and prone to exaggeration and I would imagine you are discovering the limitations of such an approach.


Many more people report alien abduction in the US than elsewhere in the world - from this, statisticians might conclude that alien abduction is real (from the high number of reports) and that it happens mostly in the US.


However statistics, it must be remembered, is not a way of gathering data, merely a way of analysing data. The methods of gathering dream prediction data as it currently stands are not in any way acceptable for forming any statistical analysis that anyone would intend to be meaningful. It's just based on stories.

Why are your two friends marked down as particularly more significant data points than the rest of us who describe many years of non significant dreams?
Because you are falling into the classic trap of over registering 'hits' - hits in this case which may not even be true (not that I'm calling your friends liars, merely reiterating the problems with anecdotal evidence).

To me they seem to happen far more frequently than mere random chance would imply

Can you show your working for this? Or is it just a subjective guess?

 

[Beth]

Well, again, thanks for all the responses, but again, no one has actually given me an answer to the question I have posed.

Yes, I am aware that an actual computation of the probability is not possible. Yes, I am aware of the limitations of asking people to remember such occurrances, that they are not likely to remember misses, etc.

But I am not asking for an assessment of the probability of such an occurrance. What I am asking is at what point do you stop considering coincidence to be a justifiable explanation and start examining other possibilities. This is known as setting the significance level for a test. It is generally recommended that this level be settled on prior to beginning a study.

Generally, for most experiments and studies, 95% is used. That is, you have a 5% chance of wrongly rejecting the null hypothesis - in this case, the null would be that such events are just coincidence.

Now, I agree with the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. JREF requires a 99.9% level of confidence for the preliminary test, and a 99.9999% level of confidence to win the million, equivalent to a 1 in a million chance it was just coincidence.

Assuming we had the ability to gather accurate data on the phenomena (I know, a BIG assumption but just pretend it could be done), what level of significance would be appropriate for rejecting the null hypothesis?

Beth

 

[Ashles]

Assuming we had the ability to gather accurate data on the phenomena (I know, a BIG assumption but just pretend it could be done), what level of significance would be appropriate for rejecting the null hypothesis?

I don't really understand what you are asking Beth.

If we are pretending that we can gather good data for this experiment, and we are pretending that we have some way to compare frequencies of events with any degree of accuracy or confidence, then why would you not apply standard scientific levels of statistical analysis to them?

Since we are pretending that it's a possible experiment, why not pretend all the way?

Or since we are pretending I could just say 8%. That'll do. It's a figure.

I think you are sort of missing the point here Beth.

What's the point of having a pretend experiment?

 

[drkitten]

My question: how low does the probability of a coincidence (or series of coincidences) need to be before you would be willing to consider a paranormal explanation as a possibility?

As has been pointed out, but I will try to restate : in order to make this question meaningful, the probability must be calculated correctly. This, unfortunately, is not often done, and may in fact be impossible. This means that the question itself may not admit of a meaningful answer.

What you're really up against is one of the limitations of pure observational statistics. It's very difficult to get results that are cleaner than your raw data. That's one of the reason that scientists prefer whenever possible to run controlled experiments -- it makes the data cleaner. Rather than trying to estimate the amount of effect unmeasurable factors might have, scientists control for those factors so that they will not have any effect.

In direct answer to your question, I would consider a paranormal explanation as a possibility when the probability of the paranormal effect was greater than the cumulative probability of the mundane effects, including selection bias, mismemory, or lying on the observer's part.

Unfortunately, since I consider the a priori probability of lying to be greater than the a priori probability of paranormal events, this really means that no amount of pure observational statistics will be able to achieve the required confidence level.

 

[Beth]

I don't really understand what you are asking Beth.

If we are pretending that we can gather good data for this experiment, and we are pretending that we have some way to compare frequencies of events with any degree of accuracy or confidence, then why would you not apply standard scientific levels of statistical analysis to them?

Since we are pretending that it's a possible experiment, why not pretend all the way?

Or since we are pretending I could just say 8%. That'll do. It's a figure.

Thank you. 8% is fine. Personally, I feel that a probability of between 5 and 10% is worth a further look rather than simply dismissing the data as coincidence, but I didn't know if other people would feel the same.

I think you are sort of missing the point here Beth.

What's the point of having a pretend experiment?

Well, that was one thing that Einstein did in working out his theory of relativity. He conducted thought (i.e. pretend) experiments. He imagined what would happen if people could ride a spaceship at speeds approaching the speed of light. He did this despite the fact that there weren't any kind of space vehicles at that time. My understanding is that those pretend experiments were helpful in developing his theories.

Now, I'm no Einstein, but if such a technique was helpful to him, why couldn't it be helpful to me also? The point, for me, is to get an idea of what is reasonable to accept as being merely coincidental and when coincidence becomes too far fetched and it's time to begin examining other hypotheses. That's all. Thank you.

Beth

 

[Ashles]

Thank you. 8% is fine. Personally, I feel that a probability of between 5 and 10% is worth a further look rather than simply dismissing the data as coincidence, but I didn't know if other people would feel the same

Sorry I think you took this the wrong way.

I picked 8 as an entirely random figure between 0 and 100.

Still I'm pleased you took my random figure as statistically acceptable.

Well, that was one thing that Einstein did in working out his theory of relativity. He conducted thought (i.e. pretend) experiments. He imagined what would happen if people could ride a spaceship at speeds approaching the speed of light. He did this despite the fact that there weren't any kind of space vehicles at that time. My understanding is that those pretend experiments were helpful in developing his theories.

Poor Einstein - he does get much abused in inappropriate situations.

Einstein had a great understanding of physics - he understood problems with contemporary models and wanted to expand on those theories, so he formulated new ones.

And yet you appear to be saying that when a child pretends it can fly it is performing a thought experiment every bit as valid and scientifically useful as Einsteins theories.

Not all theories are equally valid Beth, and it is downright silly to say so.

Your 'thought experiments' into precognition are not based on a large body of current experiments, theories and data. They are based on an effect never accepted as existing in the first place.
Any theories about this are as pointless as asking a child how faster than light travel might work, and what are the odds of each flight going smoothly.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with Einstein's experiments and is not comparable in any sensible way.
Sometimes Beth I really can't believe you are a lecturer. This is nonsense of the highest order.

 

[Kopji]

Nucular
Yes, psychology itself is a science. The Freudian stuff you refer to is psychoanalysis, a rather outmoded branch of psychology which is full of unfalsifiable claims and non-seqs. Irritatingly, though, it's what most people seem to call to mind when they picture psychology.

Thanks. Yeah its what I call to mind. I worked as a volunteer counselor a few years ago with a victim advocate group. I have some practical experience in some kinds of counseling but it hardly makes me an expert in anything.

However, they don't just pop up occasionally, they pop up all over the place. For example, many people have a story of somebody they know who had a dream of someone dying and awoke to discover they were dead. I know of two such people personally.

Now we can't really calculate the odds of such an occurrance other than to note that there are far more people who have experienced such dreams than there are lottery winners.

I've had dreams of people dying who didn't really die. Are we counting those kinds of dreams too, or only the ones that match actual deaths?