SuperFreakonomics

Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner SOAPstone When economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner published Freakonomics, many asked the authors, how do they think like this? How can one think like this? In response, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner wrote Think Like a Freak, a how-to guide on extreme outside of the box thinking. By asking obvious questions, thinking like a child, and many other strange behaviors that can only be explained with the…

Book Report Naked Economics is a book in which author Charles Wheelan provides insight into economic concepts and foundations through his comprehensible firsthand accounts and vivid examples. He avoids explanations involving graphs, charts, and formulas in favor of appealing to the majority of readers that are not economists and prefer his use of plain English and amusing anecdotes. Naked Economics provides a broad overview of how economics explains why certain things work and others don’t work…

People are altruistic when helping is profitable. In chapter 3: “Unbelievable Stories About Apathy and Altruism” of their book SuperFreakonomics (2009), Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner state that people are not pure altruistic. (125) Furthermore, people are altruistic when there are beneficial incentives for them. On my high school’s Hallowmas back in China, some students have booths for selling things. One friend who wanted to sell lottery tickets asked me for help because he didn’t have…

person that is genuinely kind to others permit a person to sense a better feeling about themselves because they know that they have done a good deed, which the good could come back to assist them in the future. Even so, according to the novel, Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, they address different situations about the people who do good for the world, which is known as altruism; however, most will only do good deeds for a prize or an incentive. Usually, a person will do…

Individuals are adapted to different behavior. In Chapter 4 of SuperFreakonomics, the authors, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner present the idea of wearing seat belts can avoid car accidents, however, it requests individuals to change their human behavior and get used to the habit of wearing seatbelts. A change in human behavior can prevent disasters but each individual has different habit and routine, which could not be changed easily. Human behavior is a barrier of a simple solution of…

specifically, incentives. It turns out terrorism, unlike crime, is not committed out of self-interest and survival, but out of desire for influence and change. Therefore, describing terrorism as “civic passion on steroids,” Steven D. Levitt suggests in Superfreakonomics that it is easier to instead match a terrorist’s incentives to that of a voter. Educated individuals are more likely to engage with the political activity in their country and therefore become the demographic for potential…