John Crowley's LJ (RSS Feed)
11-15-2007, 07:38 PM
http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif (http://joculum.livejournal.com/profile)joculum (http://joculum.livejournal.com/) has been posting many insightful and challenging (deeply learned too) notes on coincidence, and the nature and meaning (if any) of them. This is a subject that has entranced me too for years.
In my old story "In Blue", coincidence was integral to understanding human interaction and the social network (the subject of an imaginary science I proposed called "Act Field Theory") A calculus derived from Act Field Theory could (it was claimed) reduce the entire field of human activity to a measurable, predictable (in shape if not in specifics) flow, chaotic but intelligible. Coincidence played a role in this calculus, because unlikely coincidences formed spikes in the act field that needed to be accounted for, i.e. reduced to an expected part of the field. A certain pattern of coincidence was predicted in the theory and measurable by the calculus; coincidences of greater magnitude than those predicted would form an "implicit spike" and would themselves be accounted for.
All this guff was fun to toy with, but more than one real scientist, or thinker about science, was intrigued -- well, two anyway -- one just recently, you can find his post down a ways below.
Anyway -- Coincidence magnitude (that is, how spectacular or mindblowing a coincidence was) was posited in the theory as being a function of unlikelihood and meaningfulness. If it could be shown (but how?) that everybody in Iowa blinked at the very same moment, that would be a coincidence of high improbability but low meaningfulness, yielding a not-high magnitude. A random story on the radio about a lost child being sought for, whose name is the same as your mother who that day died, is far less improbable but more meaningful. Act Field Theory can calculate general levels of expected coincidence magnitude, but of course we can't (since the science is yet to be invented). What we can do is try to find out how rare high-value or high-magnitude coincidences really are, something that probability theory can't predict because probability theory can't deal in meaningfulness.
So to help future researchers -- do you have a cherished example of an astonishing, high-magnitude coincidence? Multi-part ones are the best , i.e. ones that connect along more than one parameter (see http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif (http://joculum.livejournal.com/profile)joculum (http://joculum.livejournal.com/) 's remarks on W.G. Sebald) but all are welcome. Science seems to have taken little notice of our dream researches; we can try again.
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/71133.html)
In my old story "In Blue", coincidence was integral to understanding human interaction and the social network (the subject of an imaginary science I proposed called "Act Field Theory") A calculus derived from Act Field Theory could (it was claimed) reduce the entire field of human activity to a measurable, predictable (in shape if not in specifics) flow, chaotic but intelligible. Coincidence played a role in this calculus, because unlikely coincidences formed spikes in the act field that needed to be accounted for, i.e. reduced to an expected part of the field. A certain pattern of coincidence was predicted in the theory and measurable by the calculus; coincidences of greater magnitude than those predicted would form an "implicit spike" and would themselves be accounted for.
All this guff was fun to toy with, but more than one real scientist, or thinker about science, was intrigued -- well, two anyway -- one just recently, you can find his post down a ways below.
Anyway -- Coincidence magnitude (that is, how spectacular or mindblowing a coincidence was) was posited in the theory as being a function of unlikelihood and meaningfulness. If it could be shown (but how?) that everybody in Iowa blinked at the very same moment, that would be a coincidence of high improbability but low meaningfulness, yielding a not-high magnitude. A random story on the radio about a lost child being sought for, whose name is the same as your mother who that day died, is far less improbable but more meaningful. Act Field Theory can calculate general levels of expected coincidence magnitude, but of course we can't (since the science is yet to be invented). What we can do is try to find out how rare high-value or high-magnitude coincidences really are, something that probability theory can't predict because probability theory can't deal in meaningfulness.
So to help future researchers -- do you have a cherished example of an astonishing, high-magnitude coincidence? Multi-part ones are the best , i.e. ones that connect along more than one parameter (see http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif (http://joculum.livejournal.com/profile)joculum (http://joculum.livejournal.com/) 's remarks on W.G. Sebald) but all are welcome. Science seems to have taken little notice of our dream researches; we can try again.
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/71133.html)