Think Like a Freak

by Steven D. Levitt

Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, we

Is a college degree still “worth it”? (Short answer: yes; long answer: also yes.) Is it a good idea to pass along a family business to the next generation? (Sure, if your goal is to kill off the business—for the data show it’s generally better to bring in an outside manager.*) Whatever happened to the carpal tunnel syndrome epidemic?

The fact is that solving problems is hard. If a given problem still exists, you can bet that a lot of people have already come along and failed to solve it. Easy problems evaporate; it is the hard ones that linger. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to track down, organize, and analyze the data to answer even one small question well.*

Sometimes in life, going straight up the middle is the boldest move of all. If asked how we’d behave in a situation that pits a private benefit against the greater good, most of us won’t admit to favoring the private benefit. But as history clearly shows, most people, whether because of nature or nurture, generally put their own interests ahead of others’. This doesn’t make them bad people; it just makes them human.

How are you supposed to get everyone to pull in the same direction when they are all pulling primarily for themselves? We wrote this book to answer that sort of question. It strikes us that in recent years, the idea has arisen that there is a “right” way to think about solving a given problem and of course a “wrong” way too. This inevitably leads to a lot of shouting—and, sadly, a lot of unsolved problems.

The modern world demands that we all think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally; that we think from a different angle, with a different set of muscles, with a different set of expectations; that we think with neither fear nor favor, with neither blind optimism nor sour skepticism. That we think like—ahem—a Freak.

Definition of think like a freak

Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. And understanding them—or, often, deciphering them—is the key to understanding a problem, and how it might be solved. Knowing what to measure, and how to measure it, can make a complicated world less so.

The conventional wisdom is often wrong. And a blithe acceptance of it can lead to sloppy, wasteful, or even dangerous outcomes. Correlation does not equal causality.