Mark Twain’s Mind Waves

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/08/25/mark-twains-mind-waves/

by apollinaire • 6 years ago

40 16 6 years ago

Rapzid• 6 years ago

I don't really buy the setup. Often the situations in these style articles seem completely contrived; same as puff peices.

MrLeap• 6 years ago

I am building a.. uhh.. parody.. text editor.. game.. toy called Mark Twain Simulator(1), and I did not know this. This is too great not to absorb into my project at a foundational level. It's now in my DNA and will never leave.

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZlz_T_9aaU

techbio• 6 years ago

Just yesterday I was thinking of the difference in the perceived sounds of many clock radios tuned to the same, or to different, radio stations.

Last week I came across a comment on HN having the quote "History never repeats itself, but it does tend to rhyme", perhaps attributable to Mark Twain.

Now this. That there is any significance to these coincidences remains as unclear as the thesis of this article.

yesenadam• 6 years ago

Apparently the line about history never repeating itself, but rhyming, comes from about 1970:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/

https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/his...

kirse• 6 years ago

I had this happen recently with such incredibly strong coincidental timing (a few hours after years of no contact) that I had to do some research. One word is "synchronicity", but it's a somewhat disparaging term that does not really allow for a possible physical explanation.

Skipping over any quantum entangle-y coolness, my personal guess is that since we are strongly cyclical creatures, if two people have experienced a strong memory together (or some unity of mind/spirit), their minds likely re-process those memories on similar receding timelines. It's well known that the brain has a forgetfulness curve, and I'm sure it has a "remembering curve" just as well.

It'd be interesting to do a study where you pair up random people and have them experience some really unique memory together and then for 5-10 years have them write down the date/time(s) they re-experience it. That of course might mess with the curve since it would aid in memory, but I'm not the scientist here...

Konohamaru• 6 years ago

Cool theory!

hyperpallium2• 6 years ago

I think a common trigger may play a role, e.g. evocative weather/smells, a related news event, similar life changes. The key is a subtle trigger, so you don't consciously register the connection.

adventured• 6 years ago

These are always unsettling when they occur, even if they are ultimately mere coincidences.

When I was in my early 20s, my older brother (and only sibling) was overseas in the military and we had rare contact. We almost never exchanged emails or phone calls. One day our father died suddenly of a massive heart attack. I found out shortly after it happened, and proceeded to attempt to contact my brother, calling his house in Germany repeatedly across many hours (while attending to other family matters). While I was doing that, unbeknownst to me he was simultaneously sending me five or six emails out of the blue while at work, spanning various topics (he was entirely unaware our father had died). I didn't get the emails until after we spoke - I was busy trying to call him and with everything going on I didn't think to bother to check my email. He probably hadn't sent me an email in years. What are the odds he'd be trying to reach me at that particular moment, while I'm trying to call him about something so critically important to both of us.

In my early 20s, my mother died of small-cell lung cancer (30+ years of smoking), after about a 15 month fight with it. The disease progressed very rapidly in the later stages. In the last weeks, her drift toward death was essentially being managed, as there was nothing else that could be done (a hailmary round of intense radiation therapy dropped her off a final cliff, she died quickly after that). She was being cared for at home in the final two months, which is what she wanted. I would occasionally go visit and spend time with her, although she was out of it mentally in the final weeks, as her organs were gradually shutting down. I hadn't gone to visit her in a week or so. I unintentionally fell asleep the evening I planned to go visit, waking up late, a bit after 11pm; that was far too late to go visit unannounced, but I did it anyway, I felt compelled that night. So I drove to her house and I spent several hours with her, just the two of us. The TV or radio was always left on for her through the night (she couldn't communicate at this point), with an assumption that it might be comforting if she was still receiving input in some regard. I left at maybe 2am, turning off the TV as I left (I was supposed to leave it on, it was just an automatic action), and she died a few hours later that morning. Where did the strong compulsion to go see her that specific night come from? It was particularly odd, somewhere in my brain I knew I needed to regardless of how late it was, it couldn't wait until the next night.

I'm an atheistically and scientifically inclined type, non-religious, without a mystically-oriented mind, and these types of coincidences or oddities always throw me a bit regardless. If you live long enough you inevitably see many of them and they're always surreal. For the most part I chalk it up to the sheer volume of events (micro or otherwise) that occur across a lifetime, such that unlikely coincidences and strange events are bound to be produced.

The most common one seems to be where you're actively thinking about someone you haven't spoken to in a long while, and suddenly they call or text. It's always freaky and I don't think I've ever met someone it hasn't happened to.

I think our brains are subconsciously capable of rather remarkable calculations, estimations, extrapolations and timings that are still vastly underestimated. Roaming this planet with so many other people, the collisions of these capabilities produce remarkable coincidences as our daily lives unfold and cross paths. It makes sense, as we're all clones in the same human family (I don't mean that literally), we probably have the same impulses derived from a subconscious timer: both parties feeling a similar thing in the same rough time frame. It makes sense that we'd have similar bounds and reactions to reaching them, based on a shared relationship. And I think that mostly explains Twain's concept of mental telegraphy.

dunmalg• 6 years ago

I'm an atheistically and scientifically inclined type, non-religious, without a mystically-oriented mind, and these types of coincidences or oddities always throw me a bit regardless.

Personally, I've had enough weird things happen to me in my life that I've left that entire thing open to explanations simply aren't covered by our current body of scientific knowledge. I'm a non-mystical atheist also, but I'm not willing to completely write off the unexplained as simply "coincidence" just because a lot of folks ascribe it to religion or other magic. I mean, what did people think of bacterial/viral infection 200 years ago? A lot of crazy mystical stuff, for sure, all laughably inaccurate. What sort of stuff will they laugh at US about in 200 years?

waterheater• 6 years ago

I'm an atheistically and scientifically inclined type, non-religious, without a mystically-oriented mind

I believe that events such as these can be explained by science if we allow for other mediums beyond purely the physical.

What is quantum mechanics? What if there's another medium by which information can travel, one which we don't fully comprehend? Does mysticism attempt to put a name to these concepts, which have been observed but are not always repeatable because humanity doesn't comprehend these ideas yet?

Just some questions. I think they're worth seeking the answers to.

fuzzybear3965• 6 years ago

"turn clown"? I tried searching and using context. Nothing.

Does it mean, "make a lot of money", "write fantastical stories", or "become like someone else (the clown)"?

browserface• 6 years ago

David Malouf writes about similar phenomena. I think he even uses a similar term "waves of thought emanating out from somebody around the room" or something, effecting other people.

temp0826• 6 years ago

Also fun is Jung's work on synchronicity and of course this gem-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_effect

kpozin• 6 years ago

Just wanted to mention, tangentially, that I'm currently halfway through Twain's Roughing It, which comes up in the article. If you enjoy wry humor, I heartily recommend the book (as well as Grover Gardner's narration, included with Audible subscription).

IAmGraydon• 6 years ago

I’m a believer in only science, but I don’t think it’s too metaphysical to at least entertain the idea that we may be one consciousness experiencing itself from 7.8 billion different perspectives. These events would make sense in this context.

anon9001• 6 years ago

Well of course we're all one consciousness experiencing itself. How else would you run the simulation?

Mark Twain’s Mind Waves

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