Not that I wanted to whip out a dictionary, but being a skeptic person, and needing something to write about, I have come across the "Law" of Attraction for the nth time where n is a number larger than 2. Why is the "Law" in the "Law" of Attraction is quotation marks? Well, because it is not a law. We'll discover how physics and the legal code have absolutely nothing to do with the "Law" of Attraction and why you shouldn't trust anyone selling a book.
The "Law" of Attraction has nothing to do with magnetism
Science and Pseudoscience
But let's be fair. We shouldn't simply dismiss an idea just because it is different. Maybe there is credence to this idea. Maybe somebody has performed years of experimentation and written research papers or even a nonfiction book about the topic. Maybe there are mathematical equations and proofs that demonstrate the validity of these tests and show that this supposed law is simply a principle that governs the universe. Unfortunately, this hypothesis is not tested through the scientific method, but it terms of a bizarre spiritual empiricism and life experience.
There was a time I believed in ghosts. I watched examples of evidence and I was hooked. I continued to look into and research more evidence for the paranormal. I was in 8th or 9th grade. I do not believe in ghosts now. Why? When we see the standard of testing the hypothesis, we see that too much is attributed to coincidence. I'm sure that random noise was a disembodied voice and that flashlight was an spiritual orb. Where's the skepticism? Nowhere.
But you may argue that I'm too confident in science. I'm an engineer. I've used induction via magnets to generate a current. That's real science. Your car and your house are built using different elements of science. Science also has mathematics to back it up. These are rules that have shown to work consistently. Ghosts are not consistent at all. And neither is this "Law" of Attraction.
Why is the "Law" of Attraction pseudoscience? What is the underlying principle? That positive energy attracts other positive energy and negative energy attracts other energy. Unfortunately, the opposite is true in physics. But let's ignore that. Maybe they are on to something. If you are positive, then other positive stuff is automagically attracted to you. Positive people are able to attract money and success if they are positive enough. Which might have some credence to it, until you look at what is actually happening. People are working hard and getting rewarded for their hard work. What does positivity have to do with that? Sure, if you believe something, you are more likely to follow through, but there is no "mystical" energy attracting that success to me. You are taking a mental state and trying to attribute some mystical force within the universe to it. It is unnecessary bullshit.
Don't Trust People Who Sell Books
You might have heard of the book called "The Secret." It is about the "Law" of Attraction. Man, why not write a book about something real? Because people want convenient answers for their personal problems. Positive thinking gets positive results. That's nice but not always true. But people want to buy into that truth, so they eat these books up and preach them like the gospel. But who wins at the end of the day? The author of the book.
You know what all these self-help gurus have? They have books or programs. Read these books and learn the secret to my success. Read these books and become successful. At least with a Physics textbook very little marketing is done. You want to be successful. Just do the stuff you want to and stop caring what everyone thinks. That's it. Really. You don't to buy these dumb books that utilize marketing techniques that leave you a few dollars poorer. Those successful people are successful because they have convinced enough people of the importance of their ideas and consequently their books.
What is the "Law" of Attraction? An effective marketing campaign. There will be preachers, but what do they want? What are they trying to sell? These are the questions you should be asking. They pretend like their knowledge is science and even try to convolve their information with scientific ideas. Smells like deception and it's misleading. You don't need to be positive to get what you want. It helps with dealing with people, but action leads to success. That and a little luck. Not convinced? Maybe I should write a book. It seems like an effective strategy.