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This otherwise interesting book has fatal flaws Nov 2, 2009 (224 of 299 found this helpful)
As a fan of Freakonomics, my initial reaction to this book was something along the lines of: a friendly but wild read that keeps the mind flexing at a steady pace. Like in their previous book, it seems impossible that the authors can assemble so much diverse information into a seamless and absorbing narrative, and they keep it going in this book to a point.
When their discussions turn to child safety seats and climate change, the book unexpectedly veers off course and essentially plunges off a cliff. These areas sour the book with blatant poor research. Their conclusion that child seats don't save childrens' lives any better than seatbelts is troublesome. That statement in itself would be fine, even useful, if it was based upon good research. However, the authors base this opinion on a study that looked at the past thirty years as a whole! Most everyone knows that child safety seats have come a long, long way, and all the data I've seen suggests that seats made in the last decade are far superior to seatbelts.
It appears the authors casually chose climate change as another topic to spout off on since it's a hot button that will help them sell books. Being fun and irreverent is great if the topic is whether or not sumo wrestlers cheat, or at least their research is sound. Levitt and Dubner cheapen their thinking by presenting a few dozen pages that are littered with obvious mistakes and even the perpetuation of myths, such as the scientific consensus in the 1970s predicted global cooling. Anyway, the "expert" they cite has already publicly renounced them for misrepresenting his ideas, and the whole thing is a shame.
If you're looking for good non-fiction, I really enjoyed Emotional Intelligence 2.0
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First one was thought-provoking, second is simply contrarian Nov 15, 2009 (11 of 15 found this helpful)
The first Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) was somewhat thought-provoking and made a few interesting arguments. By contrast, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance seems contrarian simply for the sake of being contrarian. It makes grand statements about issues without backing them up with data. The worst example of this is the discussion of climate change. Levitt and Dubner promote a strategy to seed the atmosphere with sulfur in order to reverse the warming of the planet. But this presumes that the strategy would a) work, and b) have no malign effect. Unlike these economists, climatologists are more humble in admitting that we simply do not understand the climate in enough detail to mess around with it on a mass scale. For example, during the early 1990s, the U.S. set up a emissions trading scheme to deal with a pollutant that was causing acid rain. That pollutant - sulfur dioxide? We also wouldn't want to seed the wrong amount of sulfur and inadvertently cool the earth too much. Levitt and Dubner might feel comfortably playing God, but there's simply too much at stake to treat these two and this book seriously.
For a more thorough review of this book, check out the November 15 Washington Post book review section.
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A tired formula. Oct 21, 2009 (302 of 440 found this helpful)
I gave a positive review to the first Freakonomics. That book distilled some 10 years of academic research by Mr. Levitt, and it was already stretched a bit thin. Levitt does not have another 10 years of research to convert into a second book, so instead we get a collection of magazine articles with cutesy "counterintuitive" angles to them. I know a popular book like this can't be expected to be completely rigorous, but what I've learned about Levitt since the first book has left me less willing to take him at face value. For example his famous study of the link between abortion and crime was later shown to suffer from a programming error in which he neglected to properly normalize a series of crime statistics. When the error was corrected, the trumpeted correlation went away. Levitt responded by re-jiggering his assumptions in a complicated way so he could keep his original conclusions intact. He certainly doesn't make his readers aware of how much subjectivity is in his analysis, and he gives short shrift to legitimate alternate interpretations. Without the penumbra of credibility Levitt enjoyed from his work in econometrics, he's just another moderately amusing magazine writer who shouldn't be taken too seriously.
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Shouldn't ask too much of a sequel Nov 15, 2009 (10 of 14 found this helpful)
Sequels disappoint; don't ask too much of this one. Perhaps you cannot blame authors for wanting to cash in on their popularity, but if Super Freakonomics had been written before Freakonomics, few people would have bought it. The authors are trying very hard to shock and amaze, but the organization is scattered and the research seems questionable.
Their standard formula is to begin with a counterintuitive statement and before your very eyes show you how clever they are. I, for one, do not see how prostitutes are patriotic, and thought that the comparison between Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo forced and unconvincing.
There are many excellent reviews here already, so I will concentrate on an issue that bothers me. The authors propose taming hurricanes or typhoons. I live in a mountainous jungle that is hit by several typhoons in a typical year, and I can see very clearly how typhoons clear out the deadwood, flush clean streambeds, fill up the water supply, and even spread species (which explains how I spotted a snake from our mountains very far downstream along the bank of the river in downtown Taipei). Without typhoons, Taiwan would not have enough water to drink, so every year everybody hopes we get some typhoons: mild typhoons are nicer, but even strong typhoons are necessary.
This August Taiwan was hit by a medium typhoon that dumped nine feet of water on the mountains in three days, burying villages and killing many people. Recent catastrophes of this nature are due not so much to typhoons as to investors (not locals) chopping roads into mountains, planting betel nut trees, and other human activities. So what we need is not fewer typhoons, but more care in dealing with the mountains.
Every year we usually get several typhoons larger than Katrina, but they do little damage, because people have the sense not to build below sea level. Also, everything that can blow away, blew away long ago. Again, my point is that disasters from typhoons or hurricanes are due in large part to short-sighted human development, not the weather.
But suppose people started controlling typhoons. IMHO, that would be a real can of worms. Say Taiwan needed water, but the Philippines and Okinawa did too. A great tug-of-war would result, as each tried to channel the typhoon home. The opposite would hold true, too. If Taiwan didn't want a typhoon, it would have to go somewhere, but where? The neighbors might not want it, either.
The authors seem to have forgotten the Butterfly Effect. Even something so negligible as a butterfly flapping its wings may have far-reaching effects. Unless we can guarantee the long-term consequences of fiddling with typhoons, I say, Let's not!
The authors seek provocation and titillation at the cost of deliberation and far-sightedness. It may sell books, but many of their ideas need a lot more thought.
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Not very good Oct 30, 2009 (21 of 31 found this helpful)
Nothing like the last book, it seems to be poorly researched material, going more now for shock factor than actually informing you on anything. Take a few years and compile some real information, guys.