I've been thinking a lot about the universe recently. Not necessarily in the metaphysical or religious sense really but maybe more in the physical or quantum mechanics sense. One of the things that really got me started thinking about this topic is the Global Consciousness Project. The gist behind this project is to look at random event generators (a simplified example would be the static on an empty radio station) to see if the events are affected by human behavior. This project suggests that these random events are indeed influenced by human behavior - human thoughts in particular. I heard a somewhat related idea at a talk at PARC a while ago titled The Virtual Information Domain. The gist of this talk was that there is a vast repository of shared information that people can subconsciously access. One example I remember from the talk was a study on crossword puzzles. Supposedly, people were better at filling ...
out crosswords that had been in the New York Times than those that had not been printed anywhere. Of course, I've got all kinds of questions about the methodologies behind both ideas and both are looked upon unfavorably by the general scientific community.
But here's the thing - many of my experiences seem to reinforce these crazy ideas. That's the real reason they've held my attention. Here is a recent story from my life, similar to many others, to illustrate my point. We went to a friends house for dinner. When we got there we talked on the deck while our daughters played in the yard. Later when we were inside the house, my daughter was asking about a ball she had been playing with in the yard. I had remembered seeing the ball in the yard and I wanted to test my daughter's memory (as I often do) so I asked her what shapes were printed on the ball. I was very confident that there were large red stars printed on the ball so I had a really good picture of the ball in my mind. My daughter hesitated for a moment before answering but then said "stars," just as I had expected. A few minutes later my wife, daughter, and I all went back outside. Imagine my surprise when we went over to the ball and found it printed with large red hearts instead of stars. I mentioned the incident to my wife and she said that when I had asked my daughter about it inside the house, she had also thought the ball was printed with stars. I should clarify that these hearts were fairly large and did not look anything like stars so it doesn't seem likely that we all recorded them incorrectly in our memories.
So I see four possible explanations for this incident:
1) We all had a similar mental model for balls with stars but not for balls with hearts
2) Random coincidence
3) The world changed - i.e. someone edited the "matrix" and changed the shapes on the ball
4) I somehow nonverbally communicated my expectations to everyone else
I know I have to take 1) and 2) seriously. They seem like the only sane options. But is there really that strong of a mental model for balls with red stars over balls with red hearts? Why would stars be red? Hearts are red!!? Plus, my daughter is only two. Would she have already picked up on this extremely subtle meme of balls having stars rather than hearts? Plus it requires all 3 of us to have used the default mental model rather than actually observing what was there. I'm going to have to do a survey of her books to see if I can find this pattern. I'll report back on what I find. I'd love to hear if others can verify this pattern in childrens books.
Random coincidence is of course the fallback. But the thing is that this is not an isolated incident. Of course, these kinds of things are never definitive. Random coinciding thoughts could always just be coincidence. That's what traditional science says. Well, except for maybe quantum mechanics. Anyway, when does random coincidence stop being random?