Think Like a Freak is not based on hypothesis, but on facts vetted through experimentation, and offers a new look at conventional thinking
Think Like a Freak: How to Think Smarter about Almost Everything
Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner
Penguin
R499
Pp 268
WHEN ONE picks up a book by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner, which has the word ‘freak’ in the title, one knows what to expect. Think Like A Freak is the third book in the trilogy and encourages us to think out of the box, or think like a freak. Often, we prefer to go along the trodden path, which is okay, but thinking like a contrarian may help differentiate ourselves and, more importantly, can make a difference to our working lives. If we go by what the authors believe, thinking like a freak often provides better solutions.
The book is 211-pages-long, with over 40 pages of notes, which include discussions with various people and the experiments carried out to prove their point. Therefore, it is not based on hypothesis, but on facts vetted through experimentation. This, in fact, is one of the areas that the authors talk a lot about—why is it that the three most difficult words to say are: I don’t know? Starting from the point where there are no clear answers (like the question on who caused the 26/11 Mumbai blasts, for which answers would be different for people in different geographies), they go on to attack the group of economic and business forecasters.
The authors believe that no one can tell the future and all the predictions made by various forecasters in the market resemble a ‘chimp throwing darts’. The probability of going wrong is high, but normally these errors don’t matter because no one remembers them. This makes one think that all the prizes and accolades won by various luminaries could have been just due to chance. Here, they single out Thomas Sargent, who won the Nobel Prize in economics. Sargent said ‘I don’t know’ when asked about how CD rates would behave in the future. All of us fall into a trap, something that’s called ‘ultracrepidarianism’, which means that we all think we are experts on everything, including things we do not know. One is not sure how brokers, investment bankers and fund managers will react to this conclusion, as they spend most of their time making forecasts and compelling investors to believe in them.
The authors also talk about advertising, asking as to how can one be sure if a campaign has worked. They give examples to show that even when there is no advertising, sales are not really affected. This may sound blasphemous to advertising executives, but companies are still hesitant to end advertising, as it has become a tradition to advertise notwithstanding the uncertainty of the results. Similarly, their story on wine tasting is quite remarkable, where experiments carried out for wine tasters did not quite show that they rate the most expensive ones as the best wines. In fact, contrary to expectations, they put a higher price tag on lower-priced wines, which just goes on to show that most of these are just marketing gimmicks. Their conclusion is that we need to have experiments to prove or disprove any theory we have.
At another level, they also point out that often we do not know the problem and while we always think we have answers, we go the wrong way, as we don’t understand the problem. Here, they give the example of a hot dog bun contest, where the winner put his mind to the task and developed an innovative way to win the competition by eating more than 20 hot dog buns than the earlier record-holder by separating the bun and dog and dipping the former in hot water with oil to allow for easier transmission into the alimentary canal. This is what one would do if they thought like a freak.
By telling various stories the authors emphasise that we need to always ask questions and then search for the answers through experiments and not remain ‘dogmatic’, which is what we normally tend to be. The 40 pages of notes help drive home the point. While some stories are light, they also show that we need to get to the root of the problem. Here, they give the classic case of governments giving food to the poor, which does not quite alleviate poverty. We need to give them incomes and, for that, job creation is necessary. Here, we can juxtapose our own poverty alleviation pogrammes, which do not create value.
Let us look at some other cases of thinking like a freak. The authors urge us to think like children and look for easy answers. Here, they give the case of improving the performance of children in schools in China by merely providing spectacles to them, as it was found that most of the children had visual defects and hence were not able to study. Also, to improve savings in the US, their solution is that instead of over $60 billion being channelled through lotteries, such money should be put in banks, where a part of the interest on these savings is used as lottery and distributed. This would help the person preserve the capital value and also add to the savings of the economy.
On incentives, they tackle the problem of saving electricity and show how different approaches can get disparate responses. Surprisingly, the moral code comes first (save environment) followed by social (helps society), economic (saves money) and herd (others also do so).
Another interesting experiment was carried out by Brian Mullalay, who started the process of plastic surgery for children under the banner, Operation Smile, where the team went around performing free surgeries. When they realised that the demand was higher, they diverted funds to train doctors across the world to perform the operations, which helped save a lot of money. This is innovation used for better results.
The company Zappos has a unique way of dealing with new employees. They pay them wages as low as $11 an hour, but the employees still have a high level of satisfaction. In fact, when they join and are trained, they are offered $2,000 to leave if they want to. The idea is that they don’t like to keep an unhappy person who would strain their financial resources. This is again a way a ‘freak’ would look at the issue. In fact, they feel that all recruitment forms should be lengthy, so that only those who are genuinely interested apply. But companies are averse to doing such freaky things, as they will get fewer applications.
But there are repercussions to an incentive system, which was witnessed when the World Bank gave incentives for destroying environment strainers. China began a drive to claim these incentives, which were analogous to the ‘cobra effect’ during colonial India, where incentives were given for cobra skins—people started breeding them to claim the incentive.
Probably, the most intriguing freak-like story narrated here is of the legendary rock group Van Halen, where they had a 53-page rider that their organisers had to read to prepare for their show. One never figured out why the group was against M&M browns. A lot of discussions went into whether they were eccentric or had something against the product. It was revealed by their main singer, Lee Roth, later that this clause was put in the list as a test. If the browns appeared at the show, it meant the organisers had not read the rider properly.
Now this one is really good: the freakiness in thought comes out when the authors get into the mind of a football player who is taking a penalty kick. Normally, everyone kicks to the side, as this is where the goalkeeper dives by instinct. If you are a freak, then you should aim at the centre because no one expects it. But there is a risk, as if you fail, everyone will scream at you. Therefore, one tends to get ‘selfish’ and shoot at the corner.
Think Like A Freak is a pleasing book to read. It is more a collection of stories, where people think differently and hence it is in praise of the contrarian. Sure, there are pitfalls, as things do not always work. But then the authors feel that one should not feel hesitant to quit, as they had done when they thought of being golf players or musicians, but ended up writing books instead.
Think Like a Freak: How to Think Smarter about Almost Everything
Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner
Penguin
R499
Pp 268
WHEN ONE picks up a book by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner, which has the word ‘freak’ in the title, one knows what to expect. Think Like A Freak is the third book in the trilogy and encourages us to think out of the box, or think like a freak. Often, we prefer to go along the trodden path, which is okay, but thinking like a contrarian may help differentiate ourselves and, more importantly, can make a difference to our working lives. If we go by what the authors believe, thinking like a freak often provides better solutions.
The book is 211-pages-long, with over 40 pages of notes, which include discussions with various people and the experiments carried out to prove their point. Therefore, it is not based on hypothesis, but on facts vetted through experimentation. This, in fact, is one of the areas that the authors talk a lot about—why is it that the three most difficult words to say are: I don’t know? Starting from the point where there are no clear answers (like the question on who caused the 26/11 Mumbai blasts, for which answers would be different for people in different geographies), they go on to attack the group of economic and business forecasters.
The authors believe that no one can tell the future and all the predictions made by various forecasters in the market resemble a ‘chimp throwing darts’. The probability of going wrong is high, but normally these errors don’t matter because no one remembers them. This makes one think that all the prizes and accolades won by various luminaries could have been just due to chance. Here, they single out Thomas Sargent, who won the Nobel Prize in economics. Sargent said ‘I don’t know’ when asked about how CD rates would behave in the future. All of us fall into a trap, something that’s called ‘ultracrepidarianism’, which means that we all think we are experts on everything, including things we do not know. One is not sure how brokers, investment bankers and fund managers will react to this conclusion, as they spend most of their time making forecasts and compelling investors to believe in them.
The authors also talk about advertising, asking as to how can one be sure if a campaign has worked. They give examples to show that even when there is no advertising, sales are not really affected. This may sound blasphemous to advertising executives, but companies are still hesitant to end advertising, as it has become a tradition to advertise notwithstanding the uncertainty of the results. Similarly, their story on wine tasting is quite remarkable, where experiments carried out for wine tasters did not quite show that they rate the most expensive ones as the best wines. In fact, contrary to expectations, they put a higher price tag on lower-priced wines, which just goes on to show that most of these are just marketing gimmicks. Their conclusion is that we need to have experiments to prove or disprove any theory we have.
At another level, they also point out that often we do not know the problem and while we always think we have answers, we go the wrong way, as we don’t understand the problem. Here, they give the example of a hot dog bun contest, where the winner put his mind to the task and developed an innovative way to win the competition by eating more than 20 hot dog buns than the earlier record-holder by separating the bun and dog and dipping the former in hot water with oil to allow for easier transmission into the alimentary canal. This is what one would do if they thought like a freak.
By telling various stories the authors emphasise that we need to always ask questions and then search for the answers through experiments and not remain ‘dogmatic’, which is what we normally tend to be. The 40 pages of notes help drive home the point. While some stories are light, they also show that we need to get to the root of the problem. Here, they give the classic case of governments giving food to the poor, which does not quite alleviate poverty. We need to give them incomes and, for that, job creation is necessary. Here, we can juxtapose our own poverty alleviation pogrammes, which do not create value.
Let us look at some other cases of thinking like a freak. The authors urge us to think like children and look for easy answers. Here, they give the case of improving the performance of children in schools in China by merely providing spectacles to them, as it was found that most of the children had visual defects and hence were not able to study. Also, to improve savings in the US, their solution is that instead of over $60 billion being channelled through lotteries, such money should be put in banks, where a part of the interest on these savings is used as lottery and distributed. This would help the person preserve the capital value and also add to the savings of the economy.
On incentives, they tackle the problem of saving electricity and show how different approaches can get disparate responses. Surprisingly, the moral code comes first (save environment) followed by social (helps society), economic (saves money) and herd (others also do so).
Another interesting experiment was carried out by Brian Mullalay, who started the process of plastic surgery for children under the banner, Operation Smile, where the team went around performing free surgeries. When they realised that the demand was higher, they diverted funds to train doctors across the world to perform the operations, which helped save a lot of money. This is innovation used for better results.
The company Zappos has a unique way of dealing with new employees. They pay them wages as low as $11 an hour, but the employees still have a high level of satisfaction. In fact, when they join and are trained, they are offered $2,000 to leave if they want to. The idea is that they don’t like to keep an unhappy person who would strain their financial resources. This is again a way a ‘freak’ would look at the issue. In fact, they feel that all recruitment forms should be lengthy, so that only those who are genuinely interested apply. But companies are averse to doing such freaky things, as they will get fewer applications.
But there are repercussions to an incentive system, which was witnessed when the World Bank gave incentives for destroying environment strainers. China began a drive to claim these incentives, which were analogous to the ‘cobra effect’ during colonial India, where incentives were given for cobra skins—people started breeding them to claim the incentive.
Probably, the most intriguing freak-like story narrated here is of the legendary rock group Van Halen, where they had a 53-page rider that their organisers had to read to prepare for their show. One never figured out why the group was against M&M browns. A lot of discussions went into whether they were eccentric or had something against the product. It was revealed by their main singer, Lee Roth, later that this clause was put in the list as a test. If the browns appeared at the show, it meant the organisers had not read the rider properly.
Now this one is really good: the freakiness in thought comes out when the authors get into the mind of a football player who is taking a penalty kick. Normally, everyone kicks to the side, as this is where the goalkeeper dives by instinct. If you are a freak, then you should aim at the centre because no one expects it. But there is a risk, as if you fail, everyone will scream at you. Therefore, one tends to get ‘selfish’ and shoot at the corner.
Think Like A Freak is a pleasing book to read. It is more a collection of stories, where people think differently and hence it is in praise of the contrarian. Sure, there are pitfalls, as things do not always work. But then the authors feel that one should not feel hesitant to quit, as they had done when they thought of being golf players or musicians, but ended up writing books instead.
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