Perspectives on chance related to the I Ching

[wandelaar]

In other topics the point of perspectives on chance related to the I Ching has repeatedly come up, but without any discussion about what those perspectives amount to. I would like to know.

[wandelaar]

My hope is that others who do know something about the alternative perspectives on chance related to the I Ching will have their say here. I cannot do so because I don't know anything about it, but I am willing to learn...

[Harmen]

I would like to offer a piece on ganying 感應, 'resonance/response', a Han dynasty perspective that is sometimes linked to the Yijing (see Richard Smith, Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World, p. 101-102.) These pages are from Licia Di Giacinto, By Chance of History: The Apocrypha under the Han (dissertation). Events that we would regard as happening by chance were regarded as a response to the functioning of the emperor. Likewise the answers from the Yi were (by some philosophers) seen as responses from a higher principle (though not necessarily a god, deity, ghost etc.)

ganying.pdf

[wandelaar]

Ah! So according to the ganying doctrine everything happens harmonious and regular as long as (important) people don't cause disturbances by acting immoral or outrageous, but when (important) people do act immoral or outrageous than catastrophic events will happen that we in the modern western world would consider as chance-events. And that's why events that deviate from the known regular and harmonious patterns were looked upon - in Han-China - as possible messages. Do I understand correctly?

Edited July 14, 2018 by wandelaar

[Harmen]

4 hours ago, wandelaar said:

Ah! So according to the ganying doctrine everything happens harmonious and regular as long as (important) people don't cause disturbances by acting immoral or outrageous, but when (important) people do act immoral or outrageous than catastrophic events will happen that we in the modern western world would consider as chance-events. And that's why events that deviate from the known regular and harmonious patterns were looked upon - in Han-China - as possible messages. Do I understand correctly?

 

Yes - when it was in the messenger's interest to proclaim the portent to the emperor. When the emperor needed to be reprimanded the people saw a lot of portents. When everything went okay there were 1) not much portents and/or 2) nobody took care to notice them and a collapsing wall was just a collapsing wall. For more info on portents in ancient China see Rafe De Crespigny, Portents of protest in the later Han dynasty - the memorials of Hsiang K'ai to emperor Huan and Tiziana Lippiello, Auspicious Omens and Miracles in Ancient China : Han, Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties.

[wandelaar]

OK - but now as regards the consultation of the I Ching by ordinary people about day to day problems. How are those results explained by the ganying doctrine?

[wandelaar]

https://www.amazon.com/Development-Decline-Chinese-Cosmology/dp/0982321244

 

Maybe this book is relevant?

[Harmen]

34 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

OK - but now as regards the consultation of the I Ching by ordinary people about day to day problems. How are those results explained by the ganying doctrine?

 

I fail to find actual sources for this so maybe I am not quite right with the context of ganying and the Yi. My memory tells me that the response of the Yi was seen as a ganying to the situation of the questioner - an inherently bad situation (or attitude/character) would result in an inauspicious outcome. But maybe I am wrong. Nevertheless, this comes quite close to the usage of oracles during the Shang dynasty. When an oracle predicted that a battle would be lost the king would give as many offerings as necessary to get the ancestors on his side. If after the offerings the oracle predicted that the ancestors approved he knew he could not lose any more.

[Harmen]

6 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

https://www.amazon.com/Development-Decline-Chinese-Cosmology/dp/0982321244

 

Maybe this book is relevant?

Hmmmm.... no, not really.

[wandelaar]

Is there also a modern perspective on chances that would account for appropriate answers of the I Ching.

[Harmen]

1 minute ago, wandelaar said:

Is there also a modern perspective on chances that would account for appropriate answers of the I Ching.

 

I'll leave that question to others - I'm not in to the modern stuff 

[wandelaar]

OK - thanks so far.

[wandelaar]

One could perhaps reason that individual chance events such as a hexagram found by throwing the I Ching happen in the context of the question asked and the current situation and so the hexagram that best resonates with that question and situation becomes the most likely answer of the I Ching on that occasion.

 

But a theory without empirical backing is just a speculation, so is there any empirical reason to believe resonance explanations to be correct?

Edited July 15, 2018 by wandelaar

[Michael Sternbach]

That sounds a lot like C.G.Jung's interpretation of what was going on as acausal but meaningful synchronicity.

Edited July 15, 2018 by Michael Sternbach

[wandelaar]

The problem I have with that is the lack of solid empirical support. If such resonances exist it should be quite easy to demonstrate them. For instance one could throw a die in a room decorated with pictures of the number 5. In that case one would expect to throw the number 5 more often than expected on the basis of pure chance. Or if that doesn't work one could use six rooms decorated with the respective numbers 1 to 6 and change the room used on the basis of a random experiment itself, and see whether the you get a correlation between the numbers that decorate the room during a throw and the numbers that are found by throwing the die.

 

Have such experiments or something like it already been done?

[wandelaar]

Another idea for an experiment: One could write a computer program that keeps on printing the number 5 except for say the 10th, the 20th, the 30th etc. number that are randomly chosen from the numbers 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Resonance would than predict that the randomly chosen numbers are more often 5 than expected on the basis of pure chance. The randomly chosen numbers in this experiment have to be derived from a real random source (such as noise) that has the freedom to "resonate" with the surrounding 5's, not from a pseudorandom algorithm that is purely deterministic.

[Michael Sternbach]

3 hours ago, wandelaar said:

The problem I have with that is the lack of solid empirical support. If such resonances exist it should be quite easy to demonstrate them. For instance one could throw a die in a room decorated with pictures of the number 5. In that case one would expect to throw the number 5 more often than expected on the basis of pure chance. Or if that doesn't work one could use six rooms decorated with the respective numbers 1 to 6 and change the room used on the basis of a random experiment itself, and see whether the you get a correlation between the numbers that decorate the room during a throw and the numbers that are found by throwing the die.

 

Have such experiments or something like it already been done?

 

Not to my knowledge.

 

What would matter most is the experimenter's focus on the number. Decorating a room with it would be conducive to that, but it is really the mind of the individual involved which is key, IMO.

[wandelaar]

7 minutes ago, Michael Sternbach said:

What would matter most is the experimenter's focus on the number. Decorating a room with it would be conducive to that, but it is really the mind of the individual involved which is key, IMO.

 

Could well be, but than you have another theory. As I understood it resonance would be a natural process that takes place whether or not someone notices it. Except of course when it is someone's mind that is resonating with something else.

 

But I like to know your explanation of the working of the I Ching also. So please tell us about it.

[Michael Sternbach]

On 15.7.2018 at 1:58 PM, wandelaar said:

 

Could well be, but than you have another theory. As I understood it resonance would be a natural process that takes place whether or not someone notices it. Except of course when it is someone's mind that is resonating with something else.

 

But I like to know your explanation of the working of the I Ching also. So please tell us about it.

 

My sense of what is happening when I am doing a n Yijing consultation is that I connect to that intuitive part of me which has access to the answer and also seems to know exactly when to let the coins go.

[wandelaar]

I don't know if you want to test whether that is actually happening, but it should be easy to do so. When you use a deterministic process (such as an algorithm or the binary representation of pi) instead of throwing coins than the I Ching should no longer give you the right answers. That is what should happen if your explanation is correct.

Edited July 16, 2018 by wandelaar

[Michael Sternbach]

Well, even using a non-randomized algorithm, the result would still vary depending on the initial state and input, right? 

 

I believe that answers can come in different ways, and no matter what I do, I can hardly take myself (my intuitive self) out of the equation. So I doubt that the results of such an experiment would be that conclusive, actually.

 

Though I prefer throwing coins or  some similar action that directly involves me when consulting an oracle (e.g., I would not usually let a random generator compute the result for me online), that is not to say that such an approach doesn't work. It's more a matter of personal preference, really, and each reader tends to find a way they feel comfortable with.

 

I happen to be the co-founder of a forum for Tarot and other forms of divination, and as such, I observe people getting good results using a variety of methods.

[wandelaar]

When personal involvement in the process of throwing the I Ching isn't necessary, than such personal involvement cannot be the crucial factor that explains the surprising results of using the I Ching.

[Michael Sternbach]

Here's the thing... I don't think there can be no personal involvement even in the process. Quantum mechanics got that right.

[wandelaar]

But excluding personal involvement in the throwing process is possible! I already proposed such an experiment here: 

The "process" in the above proposal is pseudo-random and completely deterministic, no quantum mechanics is involved.

 

Edited July 17, 2018 by wandelaar

[Michael Sternbach]

But it would still be me deciding that this is going to be my answer to a certain question (without knowing in advance what exactly the answer is going to be, of course). I suspect that from the level of the intuitive self I was talking about, this would be no different from opening a book at a "random" page (yeah, that works too!) or from throwing coins at a certain moment and in a certain way in order to get an accurate reply.