Think Like a Freak

by Steven D. Levitt

A growing body of research suggests that even the smartest people tend to seek out evidence that confirms what they already think, rather than new information that would give them a more robust view of reality.

It’s also tempting to run with a herd. Even on the most important issues of the day, we often adopt the views of our friends, families, and colleagues. (You’ll read more on this in Chapter 6.) On some level, this makes sense: it is easier to fall in line with what your family and friends think than to find new family and friends! But running with the herd means we are quick to embrace the status quo, slow to change our minds, and happy to delegate our thinking.

The absurdly talented George Bernard Shaw—a world-class writer and a founder of the London School of Economics—noted this thought deficit many years ago. “Few people think more than two or three times a year,” Shaw reportedly said. “I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”

Every time we pretend to know something, we are doing the same: protecting our own reputation rather than promoting the collective good.

when it comes to solving problems, one of the best ways to start is by putting away your moral compass.

But there is a third, grimmer explanation for this general reluctance toward experimentation: it requires someone to say “I don’t know.” Why mess with an experiment when you think you already know the answer? Rather than waste time, you can just rush off and bankroll the project or pass the law without having to worry about silly details like whether or not it’ll work.

Most people don’t have the time or inclination to think very hard about big problems like this. We tend to pay attention to what other people say and, if their views resonate with us, we slide our perception atop theirs.

Furthermore, in some countries—Finland and Singapore and South Korea, for instance—future schoolteachers are recruited from the best college-bound students, whereas a teacher in the United States is more likely to come from the bottom half of her class.

teacher skill has less influence on a student’s performance than a completely different set of factors: namely, how much kids have learned from their parents, how hard they work at home, and whether the parents have instilled an appetite for education.

As you can imagine, Fryer’s theory isn’t universally popular. Many people are uncomfortable talking about genetic racial difference at all. “People e-mail me and say, ‘Can’t you see the slippery slope here!? Can you see the perils of this argument?’” Fresh medical research may prove that the salt-sensitivity theory isn’t even right. But if it is, even in small measure, the potential benefits are huge. “There’s something that can be done,” Fryer says. “A diuretic that helps your body get rid of your salts. A little common pill.”

Alas, you would be wrong. The human body is a complex, dynamic system about which a great deal remains unknown. Writing as recently as 1997, the medical historian Roy Porter put it this way: “We live in an age of science, but science has not eliminated fantasies about health; the stigmas of sickness, the moral meanings of medicine continue.” As a result, gut hunches are routinely passed off as dogma while conventional wisdom flourishes even when there is no data to back it up.

Although ulcer patients didn’t make out so well under the standard treatment, the medical community did just fine. Millions of patients required the constant service of gastroenterologists and surgeons, while pharmaceutical companies got rich: the antacids Tagamet and Zantac were the first true blockbuster drugs, taking in more than $1 billion a year. By 1994, the global ulcer market was worth more than $8 billion. In the past, some medical researcher might have suggested that ulcers and other stomach ailments, including cancer, had a different root cause—perhaps even bacterial. But the medical establishment was quick to point out the glaring flaw in this theory: How could bacteria possibly survive in the acidic cauldron of the stomach? And so the ulcer-treatment juggernaut rolled on. There wasn’t much of an incentive to find a cure—not, at least, by the people whose careers depended on the prevailing ulcer treatment. Fortunately the world is more diverse than that.

Just how many microbes do each of us host? By one estimate, the human body contains ten times as many microbial cells as human cells, which puts the number easily in the trillions and perhaps in the quadrillions. This “microbial cloud,” as the biologist Jonathan Eisen calls it, is so vast that some scientists consider it the largest organ in the human body. And within it may lie the root of much human health . . . or illness.

If there is one mantra a Freak lives by, it is this: people respond to incentives. As utterly obvious as this point may seem, we are amazed at how frequently people forget it, and how often it leads to their undoing. Understanding the incentives of all the players in a given scenario is a fundamental step in solving any problem.

1. Figure out what people really care about, not what they say they care about. 2. Incentivize them on the dimensions that are valuable to them but cheap for you to provide. 3. Pay attention to how people respond; if their response surprises or frustrates you, learn from it and try something different. 4. Whenever possible, create incentives that switch the frame from adversarial to cooperative. 5. Never, ever think that people will do something just because it is the “right” thing to do. 6. Know that some people will do everything they can to game the system, finding ways to win that you never could have imagined. If only to keep yourself sane, try to applaud their ingenuity rather than curse their greed.

What sort of signal does a college diploma send to a potential employer? That its holder is willing and able to complete all sorts of drawn-out, convoluted tasks—and, as a new employee, isn’t likely to bolt at the first sign of friction.

Our best advice would be to simply smile and change the subject. As hard as it is to think creatively about problems and come up with solutions, in our experience it is even harder to persuade people who do not wish to be persuaded.

What the Encyclopedia proved, at least to Steve Epstein and his Pentagon colleagues, is that a rule makes a much stronger impression once a story illustrating said rule is lodged in your mind.