Collective Consciousness
I read a lot of blogs. Mostly those of people I know. Coworkers, classmates, family, etc. In the span of 6 days, two of these blogs both asked the question “when is a date a date?”
Admittedly, it’s not exactly a mind bending or thought provoking reflection but it’s an interesting coincidence nonetheless. Needless to say, I only call it a coincidence because neither of them know each other or read each other’s blogs.
I recall a story (which I never bothered to confirm the validity of) about a study done on the theory of the world population having a “collective consciousness”. The “study” attempted to explain why major discoveries in our race seem to occur almost simultanously from independent researchers across the globe. Today, you can explain that quite easily with the vast distribution of data on-line but there’s evidence of this phenomenon dating much further back than modern communication. The researchers measured the performance of a collection of people completing the day’s New York Times crossword puzzle. Subsequently, they measured the same people’s performance in completing an NYT puzzle released the day before. The results were dramatically different, with the average performance being significantly (I want to say 30% but I have no backing for saying so) higher than when completing a new one. Supposedly, the conclusion you can draw from these results is that, because the world has seen and solved the second NYT puzzle, it was much easier for the subjects.
