Freakonomics

Although Levitt and Dubner do not have a unifying theme in this book, they have questioned the concept of conventional wisdom. They would like their readers to be more open about how people behave in the real world, and not start accepting conventional wisdom, at least to the same extent they have been used to. The fact that the book does not have a unifying theme makes it more of a library of books rather that one book with a theme running through it.
The book challenges conventional wisdom and also cites examples in many places that shows normal conventional wisdom to be inaccurate. But the question that does arise after we read the book is that, what one is supposed to do with all these facts. It definitely is fascinating to know that there is a negative relation between abortion and crime, or the rise and fall of baby names over a period of time. But can we come to any conclusion with all that information? We cannot control crime rate in the future. Neither can we decide which name would actually be popular thirty years from now. We cannot stop the growing population fearing that they would become criminals in the future. If unwanted children are the rise to crime, the government can actually start taking up family planning to programs to avoid crime rise in the future. The idea though is farfetched and if even if one starts believing in what Levitt and Dubner are trying to convey, their thoughts would represent conventional wisdom. It would just override the conventional wisdom that previously existed. Parents would start choosing names that are in fashion. The preset Government parties would start blaming earlier parties for the increase in crime rate in the current times. The book puts out numbers, facts that you can’t argue with. Numbers that during your normal course of action would not even matter. It would be similar to the top ten celebrity rich list that one gets in there Sunday papers. They are numbers, facts but those do not impact a normal person in any form whatsoever.
Levitt and Dubner do not come to any conclusion in the book, although they do find a lot of correlations in tons of data. One is unsure about the point they are trying to convey across because the authors themselves deny having a theme in the book and not actually having any conclusion to his theories. Curiosity without a specific direction seems to be the theme of this book. The point however that should trouble a lot of people is the chapter where the author states that parents can’t really do much about how their kids turn out. The authors say that if you are smart, hardworking, and married to someone who is as successful as you, then the probability of your child’s success is more. Which means that if you are not smart and poor, your kids would not even stand a chance. To this statement the only example that I can think of that makes his entire theory look like a table of neatly stacked numbers is Abraham Lincoln, the child born to two uneducated farmers in a log cabin, who turned out to be arguably the greatest president of, in most probability, the greatest nation of the world.
Again, if we do start to accept Levitt’s theory that parents can’t really have a huge impact on what their child will become. Will lead to a disaster, if people start accepting his theory then parents would technically have to stop worrying about their kids because, according to him if the parents are smart the child born has a higher chance of success So does that mean ‘smart’ parents just let their children live without much guidance because ‘research’ has shown that they have a higher rate of success. That in my eyes would mean only one thing. More crime rate because unsupervised are as similar to unwanted kids. Which according to Levitt would eventually cause crime. Correct or was that my conventional wisdom kicking in?
Again, starting to accept Levitt’s theory that parents cannot have a huge impact on what their child become will lead to disaster. If people start accepting his theory then parents would technically have to stop worrying about their kids because, according to them, if the parents are smart the child born has a higher chance of success. So does that mean ‘smart’ parents just let their children live without much guidance because ‘research’ has shown that they have a higher rate of success.
In conclusion, the study, the research, and the theories show that we are in a state where we are unsure about the reasons behind why things happen the way they do. One thing is for sure is that we cannot argue with numbers, but does that lead us to a valid point or a conclusion is something that I have yet to figure out.