Super Freakonomics

The book "Superfreakonomics" is not about traditional macro-economics but actually more of an exploration of human motivations relating to money and micro-economics. It is also about proving theories and gauging human behavior based on the scientific method. The premise of this book is that we often believe ideas that do not bear out statistically. Their first book was quite controversial as it suggested that when the Roe v Wade ruling came down, there was a drop in crime in subsequent years. They suggested that was because many future criminals were no longer being born.

This book was equally controversial. There were several interesting chapters about prostitution and the debunking of the mythology around the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder. But the really interesting ideas covered in this book relate to global warming. They were not suggesting that global warming is not real nor that is is not that man-made. Instead, they pointed to an innovation group that is led by Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft.  

This group, "Intellectual Ventures" is proposing some very inexpensive solutions to solve global warming and the point of the book is that sometimes sacrifice is not the only answer. They suggest that if we implement the Al Gore proposals to lower carbon emissions, it will negatively impact those billions of our fellow world citizens who are just now climbing out of poverty. But instead, there are these relatively inexpensive ideas we could try. It is an interesting point but in either case, we will at some point run out of carbon based energy.

I always notice when I read these types of books, which really are the inspiration for this blog, that even if the topics seem completely un-related, there is always some recurring theme that emerges. One of those themes is that when facing complex problems as our planetary population is currently facing, we have to make sure our beliefs about how to solve them are grounded in truth. One of the memes that was in the Watchmen's Rattle post was "Counterfeit correlation"  

 

The other emerging truth is that there is often a simpler solution that will emerge at some point and thus, optimism is called for. That solution can come suddenly and become a complete game changer in a fairly short span of time. We can all hope that is the case when it comes to the major challenges we are facing, climate change, poverty, inequality, and injustice.