The good thing about Levitt and Dubner is that they are willing to recognize their mistakes or misgivings and more willing to make amends; that’s why they issued a revisited an expanded edition of Freakonomics: they acknowledge a certain self-satisfaction that shouldn’t be in the book in the first place, since they admitted lack of rigor in vetting the sources of their investigation.
Anyway, if Freakonomics was a blast, Superfreakonomics can live it up to its predecessor. If you play enough with data, you can achieve true insights over certain topics overplayed by Captain Obvious a/k/a common knowledge, and even find easy solutions to big problems, real quick fixes that triumph the way simple solutions and quick fixes are held in disdain by common knowledge worshippers.
It’s incredible how many real-world problems this book tackles (and attempts to solve).
For example:
1) Pregnant women should be dispensed from fasting in any religion (p. 58) – It’s crystal clear why it should be that way, but in some cases devotion demands the opposite. And devotion afflicts unborn children of fasting women.
2) If doctors wash their hands after procedures, they can cut deadly disease contagion to a ninth of the current rate (p. 133-139) — even now (p. 205).
3) The American with Disabilities Act actually impedes people with disabilities to get more jobs, and the Endangered Species Act may be endangering even more the endangered species.
4) Safer cars promote more reckless driving (p. 242).
5) The bad news is that Levitt and Dubner assume anthropogenic climate change as a real thing — so real it could be called by its real name, i.e. geoengineering. If there’s real global warming, it could be reversed with a simple “chimney to the sky” (p. 200-201) pumping liquefied sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. We could even have the global cooling the scientists predicted in the 70’s if we like it!
6) Kitty Genovese’s tragedy (p. 97) started a myth, and the press (NYT, p. 128) is responsible of perpetuating it by swallowing whole what the police told them.
7) “Doubling the amount of carbon dioxide while holding steady other inputs – water, nutrients and so forth – yields a 70 % increase in plant growth, an obvious boon to agricultural productivity” (p. 185).
8) A trash tax, i.e., an extra charge for excess garbage, can and will improve garbage related problems in a city (p. 139).
9) Providing the best and simplest solution to a problem could not make you beloved by Paul Erdős and the public but get you into a mental institution (p. 204).
10) Monkeys are people, too (p. 211).
11) There is a simple and elegant solution to hurricanes (p. 162).
12) Trying to achieve perfection may jeopardize what's already good.
I strongly recommend this book (and its antecessor). Duh, indeed.
Anyway, if Freakonomics was a blast, Superfreakonomics can live it up to its predecessor. If you play enough with data, you can achieve true insights over certain topics overplayed by Captain Obvious a/k/a common knowledge, and even find easy solutions to big problems, real quick fixes that triumph the way simple solutions and quick fixes are held in disdain by common knowledge worshippers.
It’s incredible how many real-world problems this book tackles (and attempts to solve).
For example:
1) Pregnant women should be dispensed from fasting in any religion (p. 58) – It’s crystal clear why it should be that way, but in some cases devotion demands the opposite. And devotion afflicts unborn children of fasting women.
2) If doctors wash their hands after procedures, they can cut deadly disease contagion to a ninth of the current rate (p. 133-139) — even now (p. 205).
3) The American with Disabilities Act actually impedes people with disabilities to get more jobs, and the Endangered Species Act may be endangering even more the endangered species.
4) Safer cars promote more reckless driving (p. 242).
5) The bad news is that Levitt and Dubner assume anthropogenic climate change as a real thing — so real it could be called by its real name, i.e. geoengineering. If there’s real global warming, it could be reversed with a simple “chimney to the sky” (p. 200-201) pumping liquefied sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. We could even have the global cooling the scientists predicted in the 70’s if we like it!
6) Kitty Genovese’s tragedy (p. 97) started a myth, and the press (NYT, p. 128) is responsible of perpetuating it by swallowing whole what the police told them.
7) “Doubling the amount of carbon dioxide while holding steady other inputs – water, nutrients and so forth – yields a 70 % increase in plant growth, an obvious boon to agricultural productivity” (p. 185).
8) A trash tax, i.e., an extra charge for excess garbage, can and will improve garbage related problems in a city (p. 139).
9) Providing the best and simplest solution to a problem could not make you beloved by Paul Erdős and the public but get you into a mental institution (p. 204).
10) Monkeys are people, too (p. 211).
11) There is a simple and elegant solution to hurricanes (p. 162).
12) Trying to achieve perfection may jeopardize what's already good.
I strongly recommend this book (and its antecessor). Duh, indeed.
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I hate these days. People are telling you to STFU. Just say it, no matter how stupid or offensive it is.