Psychic experience?

[losfomot]

Thought I would share this with you all.

 

A couple of days ago I had a dream. A single wasp came at me and landed on me. It was so vivid that I woke instantly, jumping up and brushing myself off. When I finally convinced myself that it was just a dream and there was not a wasp hiding in my bed somewhere, I went back to sleep.

 

I should note that I am generally not scared of wasps. And the last time I was stung by any sort of bee was over 20 years ago as a youngster.

 

Anyway, the day I woke up from that dream, I was stung 4 times by wasps. I was in the woods hunting for mushrooms and I must have disturbed their nest. Freaking things chased me all the way back to my car.

 

Coincidence?... well of course, but it sure makes you think.

[Marat]

I have often had the experience of thinking of some peculiar thing on a given day, and then finding that on the following day someone starts talking to me about it, or I hear some news story about it, even though it is a rather obscure topic. But I think the apparent 'psychic experience' effect here is just a case of observer bias, since I think of thousands of things every day, and every day thousands of things are presented to me, and I only notice the coincidental pairings between the two, which may actually be quite few, although they seem frequent because I give them such emphasis and ignore all the misses. This may be described in part by Poisson Clumping, since the number of pairs of impressions between my thoughts and impressions from the outside world is much larger than the number of thoughts I have.

[ewmon]

Anyway, the day I woke up from that dream [about a wasp], I was stung 4 times by wasps.

I'm not dissing you (I also might get weirded out if the same thing happened to me), but objectively, I would tend to think that the cause-and-effect are the other way around.

 

You knew wasps frequented where you hunt mushrooms, or you knew it was wasp season, or you (unconsciously?) overheard talk about someone getting stung by a wasp, or someone mentioned wasps recently. Knowing that you planned to go into the "wilds" to hunt mushrooms the next day, wasps were "on your mind", and so, you dreamed about one. If you had dreamed about seeing a bat in the middle of the day or about problems with your computer, then the memory of it would have been unremarkable and forgotten, and you would not perceive a pattern. I think our sleeping brains mull over many unresolved issues.

 

Consider Michael Shermer's The pattern behind self-deception about so-called "patternicity" and perceiving false patterns.

[losfomot]

I'm not dissing you (I also might get weirded out if the same thing happened to me), but objectively, I would tend to think that the cause-and-effect are the other way around.

 

You knew wasps frequented where you hunt mushrooms, or you knew it was wasp season, or you (unconsciously?) overheard talk about someone getting stung by a wasp, or someone mentioned wasps recently. Knowing that you planned to go into the "wilds" to hunt mushrooms the next day, wasps were "on your mind", and so, you dreamed about one. If you had dreamed about seeing a bat in the middle of the day or about problems with your computer, then the memory of it would have been unremarkable and forgotten, and you would not perceive a pattern. I think our sleeping brains mull over many unresolved issues.

 

I disagree. I have never had a problem with wasps in 20 years of mushroom picking/hunting... I wouldn't even have made the association between the two until my recent encounter. I have run into plenty of deer, moose (meese?) and bear during my treks, but I don't even worry about them much.

 

Perhaps there was some subconscious event that triggered the dream, but the encounter I chalk up to pure coincidence... just very interesting coincidence. Even more interesting is the reaction I get from friends that I mention this too. Almost everyone uses it as evidence to try to convince me of some paranormal explanation "see! How does your science explain that one!" or "see, God was trying to warn you"