The premise of this book intrigued me. Along the lines of that everyday magic sort of thing. The notion that there is something bigger going on beneath the surface appeals to me.
Here's the publishers blurb.
"Coincidence? Or something beyond coincidence? Is someone playing with us? Could it be God? Or are we, as some scientists have suggested, hyperaware of our hyperconnected universe whose weblike workings we can only dimly discern?" From magic and religion to subatomic particles and the laws of probability, Beyond Coincidence deeply explores the roots of luck, odds, and circumstance, while telling amazing stories that will have you shaking your head.
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I was very very dissapointed in this book. Maybe i was expecting too much. Maybe I shouldn't have let my hopes rise so high, maybe I had set the bar at such a level that not book, no matter how extraordinary could have made it. Nah, it was just a crappy book. The whole coincidence, intuition, some greater underlying thread, everything is connected thing, really appeals to me. This book even promised in it's summary to look for greater patterns in all the coincidences. The teaser "Coincidence? Or something beyond coincidence? Is someone playing with us? Could it be God? Or are we, as some scientists have suggested, hyperaware of our hyperconnected universe whose weblike workings we can only dimly discern?" is exactly what I'm looking for.
But I feel robbed. I think that the publisher who wrote that teaser has a a better understanding than the authors.
A great stretch of this book was spent explaining why coincidences aren't really coincidences. They are statistical improbabilities. And since human intuition can't grasp the mathmetics behind statistics, the things that we feel are odd coincidences beyond explanation, are really not that unlikely.
There was also a big chunk of the book dedicated to luck. Not only did I find this off topic, but the approach was invalid.
The study took a group of people and asked them if they are lucky or unlucky, and seperated them into two groups based on that. And surprise surprise they found that the people who labelled themselves as unlucky had lower self esteem. And the people who considered themselves lucky were confident and had high self esteem. Duh. A further revalation was that if they could raise peoples self esteems they would also feel luckier. Double duh. but that's not a comment on luck. That's a comment on self esteem. I've always wondered if luck is quantifiable. if it's something that a person really has or doesn't have. Does it ever leave them? How could you measure it? Lots of questions that even if off topic, are interesting. But this book didn't touch any of them. If anything it belittled the phenomenon.
The rest of the book was filled with unconnected little stories of coincidences. Some were documented, most were urban legends, and other than grouping them into categories, there was no attempt to connect them.
I can't think of anyone I could recommend this book to. If your interested in luck or coincedences you should read soemthing else. Or write your own book, you'll de a better job. If you're looking for urban legends involving coincidence. There are better books. Or snopes.com.
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