It's fun to play with numbers. Most of us learn this early on in life when we make our first attempts to assess the value of things. But numbers can deceive us as easily as help us. How? Because the conclusion that one draws from statistics is only valid if those statistics are valid. And while we can write numbers on a board, without connecting them to anything in the real world, and know, for certain, that our numbers are correct -- they are, after all, our numbers --, this kind of logic cannot be extended out into the real world. It's impossible to account for every variable, every piece of data, when sizing up a social issue like, say, prostitution in Chicago which is covered in this book. And without all the numbers, how can a proper conclusion be drawn from them? Mr. Dubner, a journalist, and Mr. Levitt, an economist, have teamed up to publish two, extraordinarily successful novels about economics which tackle everything from human behavior to Climate Change. But while they excite, and while their narratives are compelling, I'm left wondering if they are merely as blind as every other economist is when it comes to drawing conclusions from data.
superfreakonomics is, at root, an admirable attempt to swim against the tide of popular thinking. As the authors explore issues like prostitution, technological innovation, and the unintended consequences of various government policies, they use a number of entertaining case studies to exemplify how our world's problems often seem insurmountable until a shift in the paradigm occurs -- doctors washing their hands before handling babies, automobiles replacing horse-drawn buggies --, eliminating what seem, at the time, problems of apocalyptic importance. Sprinkled throughout are studies in behavioral economics and the inventive men and women conducting them, attempts to quantify human behavior and distill morality down into a formula that can then be applied to the world. But this is where Superfreakonomics starts to run aground.
The book's entire argument is that innovative, against-the-grain thinking will change and even save our planet. The book's final section on Climate Change is a perfect example of this. It makes the contention that Climate Change can be solved by mimicking a volcanic eruption. Sulfur is rocketed up into the atmosphere and, because particulates of sulfur reflect sunlight, Earth's temperature would cool because less sunlight would be making it through the shield of sulfur. Makes sense, right? Just one problem. Without a corresponding effort to lower CO2 levels in the atmosphere, the sulfur is a stopgap which means more and more sulfur has to be extracted and sent into the atmosphere, creating a new dependency, not to mention further acidifying our oceans when that sulfur inevitably falls back to Earth and onto a planet that's 75 percent water. Without a single test run of the theory, Mr. Dubner and Mr. Levitt seem incredulous that this relatively cheap effort to geo-engineer the planet hasn't been adopted as the main weapon in our arsenal fighting Climate Change.
Numbers aren't everything. We can study human behavior all we like; we'll probably never know quite why we do what we do, or how we decide what we decide. We can make educated guesses, sure, but know every detail, every step along the way? Understand every firing neuron? Not in the near future. There are times that paradigm shifts do happen and change our world completely, but they aren't the norm. And we can bet that they were tested out before they were executed, and that their efficacy was based on concrete knowledge, not statistical modelling.
I admire the effort and the work. I like out-of-the-box thinking as much as, it seems, Mr. Dubner and Mr. Levitt do, but drawing conclusions from those numbers is a dangerous game. Trying to effect change based on those conclusions is, at best, dubious and, at worst, irresponsible. It appeals to the human desire for quick fixes and eureka moments and the world, as I understand it, simply does not work that way. Change is hard and it is almost always unanticipated. For Mr. Dubner and Mr. Levitt to act as though it's otherwise disturbs me. 4/5 Stars for the narrative, 2/5 for the science. (3/5 Stars)
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