Synchronicity: A Mere Delusion

                Besides the fair probability of “unlikely” happenings to occur, misguided notions often spring from two distorting factors: aphophenia and confirmation bias. Aphophenia is essentially the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena – basically, making unrelated connections. For example, Jung’s beetle story is believed to contain elements of aphophenia, as Jung’s ultimate conjecture is quite far fetched. Confirmation bias is a form of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one’s beliefs, and to ignore what contradicts one’s beliefs – basically, seeing only what one wants to see. Gilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, stated that confirmatory information is much easier to deal with cognitively. Given these two distorting factors in the realm of synchronicity, the concept becomes much less credible.

                Inflicted with aphophenia and confirmation bias, synchronicity is essentially a claim made by an observer that unexpectedly returned propitious results. It is the denial of the truth; it is the deviation of verity; it is the delusion of the mind.