The Logic of Miracles: Making Sense of Rare, Really Rare, and Impossibly Rare Events

by Laszlo Mero

Overview

“Consistently surprising…The Logic of Miracles breaks new ground in the relationship of probability, fate, and the ability of human beings to behold them."—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human
 
We live in a more turbulent world than we like to think. Yet the science we use to analyze economic, financial, and statistical events mostly disregards the world’s essentially chaotic nature. We need to get used to the idea that wildly improbable events are actually part of the natural order.
 
Here, a renowned mathematician and psychologist explains how the wild and mild worlds (which he names Wildovia and Mildovia) coexist, and that different laws apply to each. Even if we live in an ultimately wild universe, he argues, we’re better off pretending that it obeys Mildovian laws. Doing so may amount to a self-fulfilling prophecy and create an island of predictability in a very rough sea.
 
Perched on the ragged border between economics and complexity theory, the author proposes to extend the reach of science to subjects previously considered outside its grasp: the unpredictable, unrepeatable, highly improbable events we commonly call “miracles.”
 
“It's hard to see how miracles and math fit together. But if you accept László Mérö's invitation, you will enter a world where miracles are normal and the predictable sits side-by-side with the unpredictable. Along the way, he unveils the mathematics of the stock market and explains, in a playful yet mathematically accurate way, the roots of market crashes and earthquakes, and why ‘black swans’ are not just calamities but opportunities.”—Albert-László Barabási, author of Linked

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300238488
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	08/11/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	615,517
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

László Méro is a professor at the Institute of Psychology at Eötvös Loránd University and cofounder of the marketing firm Darwin’s Marketing Evolution, Inc. He is the author of several books, including Moral Calculations.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgments xi

Part 1 Secular Miracles

1 On the Existence of Miracles 3

2 The Mild World and the Wild World 20

3 The Source of Miracles: Gödel's Idea 42

Part 2 The Mild World

4 The Power of the Normal Distribution 67

5 The Extremities of Mildovia 84

6 The Sources of Equilibrium 102

Part 3 The Wild World

7 The Mathematics of the Unpredictable 125

8 Scale-Invariance 141

9 The Levels of Wildness 161

10 Life in Wildovia 183

Part 4 Preparing for the Inconceivable

11 Adapting to Wildovia 199

12 Antifragility 214

13 Convertible Knowledge 234

Epilogue 251

Notes 255

Bibliography 261

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

A fascinating book.”—Ian Alexander Cuthbertson, Reading Religion

“It's hard to see how miracles and math fit together. But if you accept László Mérö's invitation, you will enter a world where miracles are normal and the predictable sits side-by-side with the unpredictable. Along the way, he unveils the mathematics of the stock market and explains, in a playful yet mathematically accurate way, the roots of market crashes and earthquakes, and why ‘black swans’ are not just calamities but opportunities.”—Albert-László Barabási, author of Linked

"Engaging, accessible, yet consistently surprising, Laszlo Mero’s The Logic of Miracles breaks new ground in the relationship of probability, fate, and the ability of human beings to behold them."—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock
 

“This is a masterpiece. Laszlo Merö, with intelligence and wisdom, summarizes knowledge of mathematics and statistics, philosophy and psychology, natural and social sciences, to explain the nature of ‘miracles’ of life. Scientific methods are explained brilliantly, spiked with anecdotes and dry humor.”— Erich Kirchler, University of Vienna, Austria
 

From the Publisher