Mellifera economics.

20Jan08

A lot of people know Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. The economist/writer pair the write the Freakonomics column for the New York Times and put out a bestselling book by the same name; I took some time over the holidays to read it.

What I loved most about it was the simple assertion that by reading the book, you’re not going to take anything specific away in your head, like you might take a set of rules away towards bettering your life from a self-help book. As the writers made clear, the best thing one can take away was a new way of looking at the ordinary questions we ask in our life, from why we get upset that bicyclists use both the roads and the sidewalks, to why college professors choose or choose not to review test questions with students after a test.

These are not questions asked in the book (the biggest questions are along the lines of “what really caused the crime drop in the 90’s” and “how do you catch a cheating elementary school teacher–in fact, why would they be cheating to begin with??”), but the theme of the book is not to answer certain questions, rather to take a new approach in answering them. Which, as I came to think, is the real reason I liked the book in the first place. The authors beg their readers to ask bigger questions, the right questions, the questions that every question we are trying to answer has behind them.

This idea came out later in an unrelated discussion I had, where I ended up saying something to the effect of “every question has a bigger question as it’s answer.”

I think it’s an absolutely insightful, rather than pessimistic, way to look at asking questions.

I am really curious to know what the authors think of the bees that keep disappearing.

Filed under: Asking the right questions, How I Think   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: economics