Think Like a Freak

by Steven D. Levitt

Sometimes in life, going straight up the middle is the boldest move of all.

Our first two books were animated by a relatively simple set of ideas: 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. There is nothing like the sheer power of numbers to scrub away layers of confusion and contradiction, especially with emotional, hot-button topics. 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.

that it’s easy to let your biases—political, intellectual, or otherwise—color your view of the world.

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,

Another barrier to thinking like a Freak is that most people are too busy to rethink the way they think—or to even spend much time thinking at all.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was famous for saying: “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts.”)

The results of Tetlock’s study were sobering. These most expert of experts—96 percent of them had postgraduate training—“thought they knew more than they knew,” he says. How accurate were their predictions? They weren’t much better than “dart-throwing chimps,” as Tetlock often joked.

Heh. Sobering thought for the week

When asked to name the attributes of someone who is particularly bad at predicting, Tetlock needed just one word. “Dogmatism,” he says. That is, an unshakable belief they know something to be true even when they don’t.

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

But when serious people talk about education reform, they rarely talk about the family’s role in preparing children to succeed. That is in part because the very words “education reform” indicate that the question is “What’s wrong with our schools?” when in reality, the question might be better phrased as “Why do American kids know less than kids from Estonia and Poland?” When you ask the question differently, you look for answers in different places.

All of us face barriers—physical, financial, temporal—every day. Some are unquestionably real. But others are plainly artificial—expectations about how well a given system can function, or how much change is too much, or what kinds of behaviors are acceptable. The next time you encounter such a barrier, imposed by people who lack your imagination and drive and creativity, think hard about ignoring

we had identified abortion as a mechanism for the crime drop but not the actual root cause. So what is the root cause? Simply this: too many children were being brought up in bad environments that led them to crime.

If you meet someone who fancies himself a thought leader or an intellectual, one of the nicest compliments you can pay is to call him a “big thinker.” Go ahead, try it, and watch him swell with pride. If he does, we can virtually guarantee you he has no interest in thinking like a Freak.

Any kind of change is hard, but the chances of triggering change on a small problem are much greater than on a big one.

When you think small, the stakes may be diminished but at least you can be relatively sure you know what you’re talking about.

Here’s another cardinal rule of thinking like a child: don’t be afraid of the obvious.

starting from complete ignorance, we asked a question that an insider would never deign to ask. Just as many people are unwilling to say “I don’t know,” nor do they want to appear unsophisticated by asking a simple question or making an observation that was hidden in plain sight.

As Albert Einstein liked to say, everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

the people involved seem to be having a good time as they learn. Freaks like to have fun. This is another good reason to think like a child.

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.

The key is to learn to climb inside other people’s minds to figure out what really matters to them. Theoretically, this shouldn’t be so hard. We all have a lot of practice thinking about how we respond to incentives. Now it’s time to sit on the other side of the table, as in a good marriage, to understand what someone else wants.

designed to move people in societally desirable directions by telling them how many people are behaving in undesirable directions.

It’s very human but it’s a wrong-headed strategy, because the subtext message is that a lot of people just like you are doing this. It legitimizes the undesirable behavior.”

Mullaney had come to believe that too many philanthropists engage in what Peter Buffett, a son of the über-billionaire Warren Buffett, calls “conscience laundering”—doing charity to make themselves feel better rather than fighting to figure out the best ways to alleviate suffering. Mullaney, the archetypal yuppie, had become a data-driven do-gooder.

But if there is one thing we’ve learned from a lifetime of designing and analyzing incentives, the best way to get what you want is to treat other people with decency. Decency can push almost any interaction into the cooperative frame.

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.

Teach Your Garden to Weed Itself.

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.

being confident you are right is not the same as being right. Think back to what Philip Tetlock, who studies the predictive ability of political pundits, found to be a sure sign of a bad predictor: dogmatism.

you want your argument to be truly persuasive, it’s a good idea to acknowledge not only the known flaws but the potential for unintended consequences.

Have we mentioned that name-calling is a really bad idea if you want to persuade someone who doesn’t wish to be persuaded? For evidence, look no further than the U.S. Congress, which in recent years has operated less like a legislative body than a deranged flock of summer campers locked in an endless color war.