When a coincidence happens, do you believe that there was a deeper meaning for higher purpose? Or just let it go as a dopamine kick?

Coincidences happen all the time. I have no issues with them and I do not see reasons for deeper meaning.

I sometimes just go with the flow if it was meant to happen then it was

At the risk of being pedantic, dopamine isn’t necessary for coincidence detection…

Dopamine?

I pretty much believe in the Webster’s definition of the word.

There are countless times in which a coincidence could have happened, but didn’t. We forget those instances. We only remember things when they happen to be coincidences. At that point, our selective memory can make us draw connections that aren’t really there.

@nikipedia I know, it’s related to the deeper meaning/higher purpose part. Dopamine is about pattern recognition…
Comprehensively phrased question for every answer :)

@atlantis: Not to derail the question, but I don’t think I quite follow….what do you mean when you say “dopamine is about pattern recognition”?

The former.

If it’s good then I go for it!

I have always been taught by my Grama, that there is no such thing as a Coincidence! No matter how big or small, everything that happens in sync with each other, is supposed to be! Believing this to the very core, brings me some sort of peace, my family doesn’t believe in a god,nor do I.

I don’t know exactly what I think of them, but sometimes they seem too freaky to be pure chance.

I like them. I think they are fun.

you can look for deeper meaning in anything. everything does have a deeper meaning if you look into it close enough.

Just chance at work, very definitely. Think of it this way; if you only had two experiences in your life, and those two experiences happened to have strong similarities between them, then this would be very unlikely to happen by chance, and there would be good reason to suspect a deeper pattern. But you don’t have two experiences in your life; you have an infinite number of them. It would be extremely unlikely, therefore, for there not to be many, many instances of symbolic convergence. Essentially, the chance of two given events forming a coincidence is small; but the chance of any two events, out of the innumerable events you experience daily, having a ‘significant’ link between them, is quite large; so the fact that you observe coincidences, even with great frequency, is no evidence for an underlying pattern at all. This chance is further increased if you are inclined to read significance into coincidence, simply because there will be a greater number of connections that would qualify in your mind as meaningful. Such a disposition also makes you more liable to ignore the mathematical reasoning above and see only the events that do coincide, turning a blind eye to the much larger set of possible coincidences that don’t happen.

Use all experiences to improve your view of life..there are no coincidences, just an opportunity to learn. If the chance element intrigues you to search for deeper meaning, then it is no coincidence, it is simply your mind expanding and enjoying its power.

For those who need more explanation about the neurology here is the link to the podcast. It’s an hour long so consider yourself warned :D