SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

I enjoyed this even more than Freakonomics, mainly because they covered more ground. Super Freakonomics is well written, fun to read and good food for thought. Levitt and Dubner still rely on data to back up their statements (handwashing in hospitals saves lives) but also make some assertions (injecting sulfuric dioxide into the stratosphere might solve global warming) that are, well, crazy but viable. I loved reading about the group of accomplished scientists and engineers (Intellectual Ventures out of Seattle) that work on inventions to solve world problems like malaria and global warming. It was also interesting to learn that the feminist movement partially explains why prostitutes make less money now than they did 100 years ago and show more that female ER doctors are better at keeping patients alive than their counterparts. show less

A delightful and enlightening follow-up to Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Like how the earliest Fermi problems seemed to drift to the salty ("What is the volume of human blood in the world?") these two authors offer colorful real-world microeconomics around prostitution, suicide bombers, etc. A lot of currency here with fairly extensive material around climate change with innovative geoengineering visions to fight climate change and though I have heard of it before, I really enjoyed the overview in the epilogue of human-like behavior (including prostitution, again) arises with chimps introduced to a specie-based economy.

How can you say something so controversial and yet so mundane? Levitt and Dubner's sequel to their economics-orientated pop-think book is as interesting and as intellectual as ever. They shed light on the hidden sides to the everyday economics of decisions - but this book isn't about economics. It's a multidisciplinary approach to tackling one key thing: Why do people make the decisions we make? In a way, everything is purchasing - time, effort, the environment. Everything is a transaction, and our duo write an amazing explainer of the subtleties that make mass murderers, or prostitutes, or seatbelt-wearers, or suicide-bombers, or doctors who don't wash their hands. Or... Monkeys that engage in prostitution.


Everything is economical, show more but not everything is rational. And this book will show you why. show less

Whether you agree or disagree with the authors' conclusions, this book and the prequel, Freakonomics, encourage the reader to challenge "conventional wisdom" and to apply scientific analysis and data-driven critical thinking to real world issues. As an educator (and as someone with degrees in both science and the humanities), this is a cause I have devoted huge chunks of my life to championing. The book sheds light on just how easily and often we humans allow ourselves to be manipulated by ignorance, complacency, innate behaviour/psychology or deliberate malfeasance into making decisions that harm our self-interest, our communities, our environment, and our world.

On the other hand, the book spends approximately the same amount of show more time/space exploring how, with the application of scientific method and critical thinking, ignorance can be surmounted and solutions - sometimes shockingly simple and obvious solutions - to problems both inconsequential (walking while drunk) and profound (global warming) can be identified.

All this, and a completely entertaining read to boot! The authors eschew convoluted language and make extensive use of humor to hammer their points home. Highly, highly recommended ... in fact, if I ruled the world, this would be a required reading in every U.S. high school! show less

I loved this book, just like I loved Freakanomics. I read Freakanomics in one sitting and this one I finished in a day. (However, I've realized that others don't find it THAT compelling and think I'm a little nutty for reading it all in one go).
The book is written by microeconomists "They seek to understand the choices that individuals make, not just in terms of what they buy but also how often they wash their hands and whether they become terrorists"
I love data and odd facts, so chapters that include topics like "The Worst Month to have a Baby" "The Perils of Walking Drunk"and "Big Ass volcanoes and climate change" just make me happy.
I enjoyed this book just as much as the first. They obviously used the success of the first book to show more meet with people they would probably not have otherwise known... the group Bill Gates funds that are coming up with ways to stop global warming and combat malaria, high price prostitutes (chapter: How Is A Street Prostitute Like A Department Store Santa), and other great economists that have refuted the "proven" notions of altruism. I also think the authors did a better job of tying their topics to the terms of microeconomics and how they were using economics and data in their research.
I hope there is another freakanomics on the way. I wonder what it would be like to be in the mind of one of these authors or one of those scientists at "Intellectual Ventures" show less

If you've read the first Freakonomics book, you can expect this to be basically more of the same: odd applications of "economic thinking" to various unexpected aspects of society. In this case, as the subtitle indicates, those include discussions of the economics of prostitution, profiling terrorist suspects based on (among other things) their financial activity, and the possibility of cheap and simple means of reversing global warming.

As is probably obvious from that list of subjects, the authors deliberately aim to be a little controversial and provocative. They even say in the introduction that they expect readers to find things in the book to argue about and would feel disappointed if they didn't. Well, in that respect, they are show more successful, as there were several things I certainly wanted to argue with, most notably a few instances which left me wanting to shout, "Look, just because something makes sense in terms of economic statistics, that doesn't automatically make it ethically acceptable!" Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's thought-provoking, which no doubt is the desired result. And the writing is very breezy and readable. Almost a bit too breezy in places, perhaps, as its treatment of some topics feels rather slight, but entertaining enough. show less

If you liked their first book, you'll like this one too. More usages of "economics" in odd, human situations, like prostitution and terrorism, etc.

Of course, is it economics if it isn't about the economy? If it's about human behavior, isn't it something different? "Psychology/sociology with mathematics and statistics"? "Microeconomics"? (p. 211). Or "freakonomics"? But what if it isn't freaky? Just normal?

Anyway, I don't always agree with the idea that numbers can tell us everything about human beings. Numbers are rational and human beings are often irrational. And sometimes even the biases of the author show. As good liberals, the authors have to say women are discriminated against, even in pay (pp. 20-22). (Of course, they make the show more simple economic mistake of adding up male salaries and adding up female salaries and dividing by workers.) But then they admit later that most women have different priorities than men which accounts for most, if not all of the supposed pay gap (pp. 43-46).

But, eye-openingly, is their chapter on global warming (chap. 5). They accept that the globe is warming and that it is probably warming partially because of human actions. Okay. But they point out that humans only contribute about 2% of atmospheric carbon dioxide. And that requiring the US and the developed world to stop carboning and letting developing nations (like China and India) to keep polluting is unfair and wouldn't work. And getting everyone to quit carbon would not be fair to the nations that haven't had the chance to develop yet is unfair and wouldn't work. They point out that volcanoes pollute more. And lower the temperature. So the authors don't really buy the proposals most people have to "fix" the issue. The ideas, like Gore's (or in 2020, the Green New Deal) would cost quadrillions of dollars. And probably wouldn't work. They offer a bunch of relatively cheap solutions to global warming, all of which cost less than $1 billion and would be pretty easy to do. A good chapter.

The epilogue on monkeys was cute and interesting. Notes and index. show less