Robert Todd Carroll on Synchronicity

“What reasons are there for accepting synchronicity as an explanation for anything in the real world? What it explains is more simply and elegantly explained by the ability of the human mind to find meaning and significance where there is none (apophenia). Jung's defense of acausal connections is so inane I hesitate to repeat it.”

“Sympathetic magic is probably the basis for such notions as karma, synchronicity, eating the heart of a brave but defeated warrior foe, throwing spears at painted animals on cave walls, wearing the reindeer's antlers before the hunt, having rape rituals to increase the fertility of the crops, or taking Holy Communion to infuse the participant with Divinity. Sympathetic magic is surely the basis for homeopathy and remote healing.”

“Carl Jung, like many people who have experienced an uncanny pairing of events, did not think such happenings are mere coincidence. He developed the notion of synchronicity to explain "meaningful coincidences." He described synchronicity as an acausal principle that links events having a similar meaning by their coincidence in time. However, if you think of all the pairs of things that can happen in a person's lifetime and add to that our very versatile ability of finding meaningful connections between things, it then seems likely that most of us will experience many meaningful coincidences. The coincidences are predictable and we are the ones who give them meaning. Given the fact that there are billions of people and the possible number of meaningful coincidences is millions of billions, it is inevitable that many people will experience some very weird and uncanny coincidences every day.”