He may have unraveled the secret of synchronicity. Will science prove him right?|306|

Alex · Feb 23, 2016

Dr. Eric Wargo has turned Carl Jung’s synchronicity idea upside down by suggesting a link to successfully replicated precognition experiments.http://www.skeptiko.com/wp-content/uploads/302-skeptiko-dan-cohen-emily-volden.jpg
http://www.skeptiko.com/wp-content/uploads/302-skeptiko-dan-cohen-emily-volden-1.jpg

photo by: Robbert van der Steeg
One of the mantras I’ve learned on Skeptiko is, “follow the data wherever it leads.” As truth seeking mantras go this one is pretty good. I’ve had to endure some helpings of humble pie after doing an about-face on my cherished beliefs, but that’s part of the process . Sometimes, however, following the data isn’t enough. On today’s episode of Skeptiko Dr. Eric Wargo, creator of TheNightShirt.com and author Trauma Displaced in Time, gives us a new way to look at data that’s been staring us in the face all along. Has Dr. Wargo cracked the code of Synchronicity, déjà vu and remote viewing. Let’s find out:

Eric Wargo: …I’m really starting to think in terms of our relationship to time as kind of this circuit. We’re completing these circuits [and] moving through life sort of oriented toward future rewards. This I think explains a lot. I had a series of blog posts about a year ago where I took on Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity using this model. And I think it explains so-called meaningful coincidences much better than synchronicity can because really all it says is we are orienting constantly, unconsciously, toward information from our future. And we’re orienting toward rewards specifically in our future. But when we are completely unconscious of that fact–when we find this thing that we are unconsciously orienting towards, we feel this surprise and shock. It feels like some intelligence in the universe is guiding us or that God has sort of given us a sign. But I think it’s just really ourselves. We’re oriented toward [future reward] unconsciously, precognitively; and because our society doesn’t allow us to even think about the possibility of precognition, we throw up our hands and say well it’s some bigger organizing force in the universe. It’s archetypes. It’s collective unconscious or whatever. I think this PSI model of precognition, specifically precognition for our own future rewards, I think this explains synchronicity perfectly.

Alex Tsakiris: And just let me interject because one point to take from that is part of what you’re saying is an unavoidable natural fallout from these presentiment and precognition experiments we have. It’s unavoidable, right? That’s what the data clearly says. So if you’re a student at Northwestern University and you’re told you’re going to win five dollars if you guess the right picture before it’s even selected by the computer, and that motivates you, and we can demonstrate that you’re therefore able to orient yourself towards the future that’s coming. Then it’s only a question of to what extent you’re right–not whether you’re right or not because you’re clearly right. The experiment shows that. It’s just to what extent that does play a role in guiding our lives.

Eric Wargo: That’s a great example. Exactly.

Jim_Smith · Feb 23, 2016

At least they should be studying presentiment, that is low hanging fruit. Once they do that, there will be plenty of time to look at other stuff.

But the associative remote viewing data, and the benefit of eventual feedback to accuracy in other forms of remote viewing is strong evidence suggesting that there is some precognitive aspect to remote viewing in those experiments.

In some situations (eg: lottery, roulette, investing in stocks, etc) precognition and psychokinesis are indistinguishable.

There may not even be different mechanisms for clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and supernatural influence. If the physical universe is like a simulation running in the mind of God the actual mechanism for these phenomena might have nothing to do with anything we currently imagine they do.

If we can perceive the future, does that mean it is predetermined? If it is predetermined how can we have the free will to orient toward it to get a reward?

And you get materialists saying consciousness is an illusion too. The materialists don't have a lot of credibility.

I don't think precognition created the physical universe, which the creation of is strongly supported by the evidence from cosmology including the fine tuning of the universe to support life. And I don't think precognition created meetings with God in NDEs either. So there is still room for God in Wargo's theory. And super-psi cannot explain the evidence for the afterlife.

Sciborg_S_Patel · Feb 23, 2016

I've tried to follow Wargo's posts on his blog but have to admit I couldn't follow everything he was saying.

It seems like there's an aspect of precognition that relates to quantum computing, but also relates to this idea of "jouissance"?

If it's supposed to be a reductionist explanation for Psi, doesn't jouissance also have to be explicable in reductionist terms? Are brain chemicals associated with this emotional state sending information backwards in time?

What then makes the information end up at a particular point in time, and how does this idea not avoid either an infinite regression or an infinite amount of information being dumped into the brain at a particular moment in time?

And how does evolution even select for something like this in a reductionist paradigm?

On completing the circuits, the problem here is that something has set the time loop in place....trying to remember the philosophical argument about this

->

Does the setting up of the loop happen in the 5th dimension, while the loop is in the 4th? This quickly leads to a succession of higher dimensions, and then how can time pass at all with this infinite regression?

Max_B · Feb 24, 2016

His ideas seem quite similar to my own ideas, that's where motivation (emotions, feelings etc) come from... our perception of time, or temporal processing, (Same idea as McFadden's - as far as they explain some aspects of speeded up evolution).

But he doesn't seem to have a mechanism, so can't think through the implications of what 'stuff' is in the external world, and how the external world forms a part of a feedback loop. Otherwise you can't explain the other strange phenomenon, which I think is really nothing more than normal 'stuff' which has been exposed in starker relief, because we notice something as not being from the correct space or time location.

Neither does he appear to deal with degrees of freedom, or choice/free-will issues... which is tricky... somehow, sandwiched between what we percieve as the past and the future, I'm either making choices, or I'm not. The latter idea is rather unsatisfactory in my view, but the former is just as difficult, as it almost suggests there is something 'else' within the mix which we can't see yet, something which intrudes into the system, and around which my experiences coalesce.

Although one could suggest that the choices we have are only those available from the information already available within the system, thus choice is constrained by the system. That is, we are not creating, but merely splitting and reweaving what is already present... an additive and purely functional process which we understand through space-time. The whole of the system squeezing out a result at my space-time location, and feeding back into the system.

Inner Space · Feb 24, 2016

Synchronistic experiences do not seem to be the same as precognition as the scientist understands it. Take Jung's classic example of the lady who tells Jung about her dream of a scarab beetle and then Jung coincidentally finds an actual beetle in the consulting room. Did the lady dream about the scarab beetle because an actual beetle was going to appear during her session with Jung? Maybe it's a little more complex than that. Jung would argue that the synchronistic significance of the beetle transcends the individual and belongs to the collective unconscious of all conscious beings. The beetle represents healing for Jung's patient since it enables her to transcend her individual difficulties. The beetle is an archetype which transcends space and time and neither lies in the future or the past of Jung's client. In other words, I think Jung would argue that rather than precognition being an explanation for Synchronicity he would say that Synchronicity is an explanation for precognition. Precognition brings up a bunch of issues such as individual free will versus fatalism but the notion of Synchronicity tells us that the individual is part of a universe that creates meanings for us which can transcend our individual goals and make our seemingly "meaningless" actions meaningful whilst also making our meaningful actions meaningless. Imagine a man who sets out with the ambition to find a pot of gold but in the process instead finds the women who becomes the love of his life. Finding his true love becomes his greatest experience and he is overwhelmed that he "coincidentally" just happened to bump into his lover at that moment in space, at that moment in time while searching for a pot of gold. A scientist studying precognition in relation to our man would expect the man to have a useful precognition that would tell him where the pot of gold is, but the wise person knows that the Synchronicity of Nature will bring this man something of greater meaning and importance that the man only retroactively realises he was searching for all along. The scientist would conclude that precognition failed to help the man find his goal (a pot of gold) but the man himself would realise that some kind "intuition" about the future brought the man his true goal (the love of his life).

Michael Larkin · Feb 24, 2016

Alex's question at the end of the interview:

Are synchronicities deja vu experiences, and a lot of the psychic remote viewing stuff that gets reported really a case of precognition--and does that mean that science, in particular neuroscience, can make significant headway towards understanding these phenomena?

Alex · Feb 24, 2016

Sciborg_S_Patel said:

I agree with your criticisms. I think Eric is trying to point things in a new direction more than nail down a compete theory.

Alex · Feb 24, 2016

Max_B said:

But he doesn't seem to have a mechanism, so can't think through the implications of what 'stuff' is in the external world, and how the external world forms a part of a feedback loop. Otherwise you can't explain the other strange phenomenon, which I think is really nothing more than normal 'stuff' which has been exposed in starker relief, because we notice something as not being from the correct space or time location.

Neither does he appear to deal with degrees of freedom, or choice/free-will issues... which is tricky... somehow, sandwiched between what we percieve as the past and the future, I'm either making choices, or I'm not. The latter idea is rather unsatisfactory in my view, but the former is just as difficult, as it almost suggests there is something 'else' within the mix which we can't see yet, something which intrudes into the system, and around which my experiences coalesce.

wow... nice.

Alex · Feb 24, 2016

Inner Space said:

Synchronistic experiences do not seem to be the same as precognition as the scientist understands it. Take Jung's classic example of the lady who tells Jung about her dream of a scarab beetle and then Jung coincidentally finds an actual beetle in the consulting room. Did the lady dream about the scarab beetle because an actual beetle was going to appear during her session with Jung? Maybe it's a little more complex than that. Jung would argue that the synchronistic significance of the beetle transcends the individual and belongs to the collective unconscious of all conscious beings. The beetle represents healing for Jung's patient since it enables her to transcend her individual difficulties. The beetle is an archetype which transcends space and time and neither lies in the future or the past of Jung's client. In other words, I think Jung would argue that rather than precognition being an explanation for Synchronicity he would say that Synchronicity is an explanation for precognition. Precognition brings up a bunch of issues such as individual free will versus fatalism but the notion of Synchronicity tells us that the individual is part of a universe that creates meanings for us which can transcend our individual goals and make our seemingly "meaningless" actions meaningful whilst also making our meaningful actions meaningless. Imagine a man who sets out with the ambition to find a pot of gold but in the process instead finds the women who becomes the love of his life. Finding his true love becomes his greatest experience and he is overwhelmed that he "coincidentally" just happened to bump into his lover at that moment in space, at that moment in time while searching for a pot of gold. A scientist studying precognition in relation to our man would expect the man to have a useful precognition that would tell him where the pot of gold is, but the wise person knows that the Synchronicity of Nature will bring this man something of greater meaning and importance that the man only retroactively realises he was searching for all along. The scientist would conclude that precognition failed to help the man find his goal (a pot of gold) but the man himself would realise that some kind "intuition" about the future brought the man his true goal (the love of his life).

great point... and at some level this must be true in a interconnected universe.

I think Eric would argue for more of a "shut up and calculate" approach. maybe both have merit.

Eric Wargo · Feb 24, 2016

Hi Jim,

The issue of predetermination is a huge one, but the existence of precognition doesn't necessarily argue for a completely deterministic view, i.e., the eternalist position (see my post "When Is It Hyperfootball Season"), or the Minkowski glass-block universe in which the future has "already happened." It could be that the future sending information into the past is a quantum future of high probabilities, not a certain future.

Re: the afterlife, actually I think the precognitive view can explain some of the purported "survival" evidence. As I've suggested recently on my blog ("Altered States of Reading #3"), you can interpret things like "past-life memories" as precognition of feedback events, for example children producing statements/information that yield rewards from parents or researchers. Same with mediumship. I'm not saying this is the best or only explanation for these phenomena, and certainly not making any claims about the afterlife or lack thereof, but I think a lot of what has in the past been assumed to be survival evidence has other possible (and interesting) explanations that should be looked at.

Cheers!
Eric

Eric Wargo · Feb 24, 2016

Hi Sciborg,

I outlined the physical theory in a series of posts recently (so it's hard to summarize briefly). But basically the idea is that information about a state of the brain at a future time point B would alter the firing potential of neurons or specific synaptic connections at a slightly previous time point A. The brain may be continually passing information about its current state backwards in time via such (at this point hypothetical) neurons.

It’s not that information about an event or stimulus itself is sent to a particular destination time in the past, as in a time machine, but that the sensitivity of neurons/synapses is altered or perturbed in a certain way by future information, just as it is altered by past information in the form of memory, via long-term potentiation. Precognition (I am suggesting) is just memory in reverse. When something encountered in the present resembles the future stimulus, it stands out or alerts us more than it otherwise would. Thus precognition is really the wrong word: It’s more of an associative preconditioning toward future rewards.

Jouissance reflects not an intrinsic aspect of psi specifically but an intrinsic aspect of what humans find interesting as part of our natural threat-vigillance orientation. Some kind of excitement or pleasure needs to be paired with certain types of threats in order for us to be interested in them and vigilant about them. Thus presentimental phenomena reflect “future excitements,” very often about disasters involving fire and other forms of entropy. Edwin May thinks entropy gradients carry a psi signal; I think we are just always interested in entropy gradients, and that it is information about them that gets passed back through entanglement processes in neurons.

The information about what is going to excite us is imperfect and imprecise, as it needs to follow the associative rules governing memory in the cortex. This is why precognition/prophecy is so imperfect and rough, most of the time. Precognitive dreams reveal this associative process very vividly; to understand the character of precognition/presentiment, it helps to understand the associative rules of memory and dreaming (see my recent post on interpreting precognitive dreams).

Cheers,
Eric

Eric Wargo · Feb 24, 2016

Hi Max,

The "degrees of freedom" issue is crucial, as you note. I'm unable to post links for some reason, but you might check out my recent series of posts beginning with "Destination Pong" where I outline the quantum argument. One of the crucial pieces of the puzzle is a quantum computing concept called "post-selection" which basically answers these issues of paradox (and may, according to some cosmologists like Paul Davies, answer very fundamental questions about the arising of life in the universe--everything that leads us to imagine intelligent design). Basically, precognition operates on a noisy channel, and there is a sort of fuzzy margin between non-allowed paradoxes (information that would be self-cancelling, like the grandfather paradox) and outcomes that are consistent with a information received and acted upon in the past. I will be writing more about post-selection and its implications for precognition in the near future.

Cheers!
Eric

Vortex · Feb 24, 2016

Eric Wargo said:

Welcome to the Skeptiko forum, Eric! Glad to see you here.

BTW, here is the link for "Destination Pong". And "When Is It Hyperfootball Season". And "Altered States of Reading (Part 3)". And "Quantum Psychoanalysis: Interpreting Precognitive Dreams". All links work for me - I have no idea why you cannot post them...

Eric Wargo · Feb 24, 2016

Hi "Inner Space,"

I'm not able to link to it, but my post "Scarabs and the Send Button" from a year ago addresses Jung's theory and shows how the precognition can explain these events more parsimoniously than the kind of transpersonal matrix of meaning required by "synchronicity." The meaning in these events, I argue, is the meaning we ourselves give to them. This is why they feel so personal -- because they are personal, constructed from our own unique associative language. It's just that we have no clue we are precognitive, and our culture doesn't allow us to even think that possibility, so we are forced to fit them into another framework.

Coincidence still plays a role however. Because future information lacks context, it influences us via stimuli or thoughts in the present that resemble a salient future emotional event. Our present thoughts, feelings, sensations serve as a kind of "noisy channel" that can reveal future information via association. This, in fact, is precisely why various forms of divination (Tarot, tea leaves, etc.) work: They provide a noisy channel with many possible interpretations, and thus the mind is free to be guided by future information toward an interpretation that "fits" with the individual's future.

Cheers,
Eric

David Bailey · Feb 24, 2016

Eric Wargo said:

Eric,

Sorry about the restriction on links, but as you have probably guessed, we received a lot of spam for a while. Actually, I don't think we need that restriction any more, because Alex vets all new members, so maybe he could remove that restriction.

In the meantime, I think if you spell out your links, people will know what you mean - e.g.
www dot skeptiko dot com

I think your ideas about precognition explaining a lot of ψ phenomena can be broken down into two components:

1) The basic idea that precognition is involved in these phenomena, and that a lot of other evidence (such as Libet's results) does suggest that something peculiar happens in the brain with respect to time. This must happen in some cases - particularly 9/11 - I think, though it doesn't always really fit the story. For example, if a woman becomes aware that her son is dying on a battle field, she becomes aware of the trauma of the death, and maybe her son's final message to her, she does not simple become precognitively aware of receiving the telegram or viewing her son in a coffin.

2) The idea that this phenomenon can be explained by QM.

I'm not as comfortable with (2) because I am not sure whether the most recent experiments transmit 'information' backwards in time, or transmit an influence backwards in time (maybe someone here knows for certain). The reason I say this is that the classical entanglement experiment doesn't let the recipients of the two particles transmit information, yet some influence is transmitted, which can be detected when the experimental records of A and B are brought together and compared. I gave a brief description of this here:

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/entanglement-and-observing-wave-functions.793/#post-19575

David

Max_B · Feb 24, 2016

Eric Wargo said:

I had a quick read of your 'pong' article... made some brief comments below...

I can't see any way for me to move access to information forward in time, so that I can usefully reaccess it again in the future within the same relative space, unless it's stored in spatial patterns of matter. Whether it's a note to remind yourself to pick up the dry cleaning, a pattern of dots on a DVD, a pattern of charges on a flash drive, a painting, a house, or an axe. These are all space-like patterns that allow one to access, manipulate, and share information.

It only makes sense to me to think about 'matter' is our perception of 'time' when looked at from a spatial perspective, and thus 'energy' is our perception of 'space' when looked at from a temporal perspective.

These are I would say where our different perceptions are built-up from in space-time, as we process the same information in time-like and space-like separations (symmetry/conservation).

I thought your understanding of quantum entanglement wasn't quite right.

I don't think the brain sends stuff back to itself in time, it seems more likely that it's a purely additive process of quantum coherent interference. That we would understand as like patterns interfering with each other (additive).

Sciborg_S_Patel · Feb 24, 2016

A critique about precognition & retrocausality, drawn from Part V:The Problem of Precognition of Braude's Psi & Our Picture of the World

Now this idea also presents problems (as Braude willingly notes), in that sometimes it seems multiple people have precognition of the same future event, not to mention that a person has unconscious reasons for wanting random plane crashes, etc. It would odd indeed if multiple people had subconscious desires for 9/11 to happen.

OTOH I think Braude is correct that there does seem to be something odd about precognition, in that the forward arrow of time applies to the entire universe but the backward arrow seems to be very selective. There might be a way around this, if we look at Arvan's idea that the "multiverse" is actually all potential timelines mapped out in the same way all potential paths in a video game "exist" in the code.

Consciousness is then a spotlight on the Present Moment, but might be able to peek ahead to which track is about to be taken. So it's more a non-mechanistic means (think reverse Morphic Resonance) of responding to upcoming dangers rather than information coming from the future to the past...admittedly I'm far beyond my pay grade here and just speculately a bit wildly....

Anyway, added a bunch of stuff from the old Retrocausality discussion thread into the Time Resources thread.

Alan Amsberg · Feb 24, 2016

Eric,

If you google "Alan Amsberg Mike's Bikes" you will find a Skeptiko post I made about a personal synchronicity I experienced in 2014. Maybe synchronicity isn't the right word, maybe instead we could say it was a VERY improbable event. I see three possible explanations for this:
- Just plain coincidence. Improbable things do happen.
- It is the work of a supernatural intelligence - "God", "Angels", "Spirit Guides" - take your pick.
- It could have some naturalistic explanation like you are positing.

Let me say one more thing. This event happened to me and I am not Joe Average:
-I had a mental illness in 2009 and was psychotic thinking God was sending me "signs".
-Since then I have been very attuned to "signs" and have experienced some other improbabilities besides this.

So, this Mike's Bikes event was a big deal to me.

Can you explain how you would explain this specific example in your theories? Actually, that is maybe a bit strong

What I really mean is, do you have any thoughts on your ideas and my experience?

Alan

David Bailey · Feb 24, 2016

Eric,

Have you considered this famous ψ example:

http://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln46.html

It doesn't seem to fit your ideas very well because the ψ event related to well beyond the death of the receiver (he was in his coffin) - so without life after death he would not have been able to anticipate his own emotions from that time.

David

malf · Feb 24, 2016

As I understand it, if we all give Eric enough "likes" he can post links.