I listened to this book on audiobook over the summer. In many ways, it was very entertaining. It was very well narrated.
I had seen Steven Leavitt speak after the publication of Freakonomics and he talked about the importance of incentives in influencing human behavior. It was a great talk. Leavitt began by talking about his experiment in speeding up potty training by using M & Ms as an incentive. His wife predicted it wouldn't work. His wife was right.
But I have a couple of problems with this book. I have to offer my thoughts with a grain of salt: because I listened to the book on audio, I may well have lost the thread several times.
My first big problem with the book is that the last chapter, on global warming, was completely opaque to me. I really didn't understand the points Leavitt and Dubner were trying to make, and it sounded as if they were saying, "Everything you know about global warming is wrong," which might actually be happy news, but they seemed to then go on to espouse a ridiculous, Rube Goldberg solution for addressing global warming. Who knew? I guess I feel that they didn't make their case, and what's worse is that my confusion prevented me from enjoying the chapter merely as a really good story. I don't like it when someone messes with my story!
It also happens that through sheer luck, I found myself driving at high speeds when I finished the CD with the story of the high end call girl who offered her story to the authors. I was forced to listen to it a second and then, a third time. This gave me an opportunity to observe how cliched the story was and to wonder what the real point was. I suppose that it's another example of how people's economic behavior can be influenced by incentives but even that story doesn't show that everyone can be incentivized to follow a particular behavior.
But I loved learning that drunk walking is even more dangerous than drunk driving -- isn't that fact really counterintuitive? In general, I continued to find that learning about the "hidden side of everything" was entertaining if not entirely persuasive.
I had seen Steven Leavitt speak after the publication of Freakonomics and he talked about the importance of incentives in influencing human behavior. It was a great talk. Leavitt began by talking about his experiment in speeding up potty training by using M & Ms as an incentive. His wife predicted it wouldn't work. His wife was right.
But I have a couple of problems with this book. I have to offer my thoughts with a grain of salt: because I listened to the book on audio, I may well have lost the thread several times.
My first big problem with the book is that the last chapter, on global warming, was completely opaque to me. I really didn't understand the points Leavitt and Dubner were trying to make, and it sounded as if they were saying, "Everything you know about global warming is wrong," which might actually be happy news, but they seemed to then go on to espouse a ridiculous, Rube Goldberg solution for addressing global warming. Who knew? I guess I feel that they didn't make their case, and what's worse is that my confusion prevented me from enjoying the chapter merely as a really good story. I don't like it when someone messes with my story!
It also happens that through sheer luck, I found myself driving at high speeds when I finished the CD with the story of the high end call girl who offered her story to the authors. I was forced to listen to it a second and then, a third time. This gave me an opportunity to observe how cliched the story was and to wonder what the real point was. I suppose that it's another example of how people's economic behavior can be influenced by incentives but even that story doesn't show that everyone can be incentivized to follow a particular behavior.
But I loved learning that drunk walking is even more dangerous than drunk driving -- isn't that fact really counterintuitive? In general, I continued to find that learning about the "hidden side of everything" was entertaining if not entirely persuasive.
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