1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910811126303321

Autore

Mérő László

Titolo

The logic of miracles : making sense of rare, really rare, and impossibly rare events / / László Mérő ; edited by David Kramer

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, Connecticut ; ; London, England : , : Yale University Press, , [2018]

©2018

ISBN

0-300-23848-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (288 pages)

Disciplina

519.2

Soggetti

Probabilities

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- PART ONE. Secular Miracles -- 1. On the Existence of Miracles -- 2. The Mild World and the Wild World -- 3. The Source of Miracles: Gödel's Idea -- PART TWO. The Mild World -- 4. The Power of the Normal Distribution -- 5. The Extremities of Mildovia -- 6. The Sources of Equilibrium -- PART THREE. The Wild World -- 7. The Mathematics of the Unpredictable -- 8. Scale-Invariance -- 9. The Levels of Wildness -- 10. Life in Wildovia -- PART FOUR. Preparing for the Inconceivable -- 11. Adapting to Wildovia -- 12. Antifragility -- 13. Convertible Knowledge -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

We live in a much more turbulent world than we like to think, but 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. The renowned Hungarian mathematician and psychologist László Mérs' 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, Mérs' proposes to extend



the reach of science to subjects previously considered outside its grasp: the unpredictable, unrepeatable, highly improbable events we commonly call "miracles."