a surprising situation?

[brucebrown]

I'm trying to develop a reasonable criteria for determining meaningless or insignificant coincidence vs. possible or even probable connection or causation, when that connection or causation may not be verifiable by empirical means. Yes, I'm thinking of religious attribution, but not that subject alone -- I'm hoping to find a more general theory or method that can be applied to other topics. Ideas?

[thedoc]

It sounds like it would be a very subjective theory at best.

[uwot]

I'm trying to develop a reasonable criteria for determining meaningless or insignificant coincidence vs. possible or even probable connection or causation, when that connection or causation may not be verifiable by empirical means. Yes, I'm thinking of religious attribution, but not that subject alone -- I'm hoping to find a more general theory or method that can be applied to other topics. Ideas?

I think it's worth considering that, given that huge number of events, it would be very strange if no two were ever coincidental. It would be more strange if nobody ever rang, when they were being thought of, than the fact that they occasionally do, for instance.

[Dubious]

Chance, coincidence is the collusion of events in proximity likely to have begun in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang event. Without such would there even be a universe or most of what the universe itself created in spite of those "events" being further apart due to inflation, that is, an expanding cosmos. I'd also hazard a guess that the collusion of events within a virtually infinitely compressed area join together almost instantaneously meaning magnitudes faster than the speed of light being mostly a derivative.

[Impenitent]

reasonable?

shit happens

-Imp

[Arising_uk]

I'm trying to develop a reasonable criteria for determining meaningless or insignificant coincidence vs. possible or even probable connection or causation, when that connection or causation may not be verifiable by empirical means. Yes, I'm thinking of religious attribution, but not that subject alone -- I'm hoping to find a more general theory or method that can be applied to other topics. Ideas?

Well I'm not sure it was causation but Jung had three times the trick when it came to connecting a meaning for oneself from 'disparate' events, Synchronicity I think he called it.

[Sir-Sister-of-Suck]

The problem with attributing an event to something religious or supernatural, is there is usually (as far as I'm concerned, always) another explanation that fits in perfectly fine with what we already accept.

In science specifically, evidence is collected with correlation + a plausible explanatory mechanism. This is a principle articles often ignore when they're quoting a study.