What is Thinking Like a Freak? Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is a book with the self-proclaimed purpose of engaging their readers to “retrain their brains. ” They say that to think like a Freak is to think more productively, more creatively, and more rationally. The authors of this book were effective in accomplishing their purpose by engaging readers with various examples of interest and out-of-the-box thinking methods. In Chapter One, titled “What Does It Mean to Think Like a Freak? “, Levitt and Dubner use the example of a penalty kick in soccer to make their point.
Although most players who take a penalty kick aim at the corners, it makes more sense to kick the ball where the goalie is standing at the time of the kick. This may not seem like the best option, but when considering that goalies almost always try to anticipate the direction of the kick, the odds that the penalty kicker will be blocked are lower if he should choose to kick in the center of the goal. This brings across their point that thinking like a Freak may not necessarily mean working harder or looking at complex issues. Sometimes the right answer or solution is he most obvious one.
Thinking like a Freak is noticing an obvious solution. In addition, they describe their thinking to be inspired by the economic approach, relying on data to understand the ways in which the world works. Thinking Like a Freak in Political Science and Real Life Each of the succeeding chapters outlines specific real-world examples of people thinking like a Freak. Perhaps their most striking example is that of Kobi in Chapter Three, a professional hotdog eater. Initially, he decided to become a professional eater because he and his girlfriend needed money.
Eventually, e became world famous, as far as professional eating goes, and not only beat records, but obliterated them. The way he did this was not by focusing on how to eat more hot dogs, but by focusing on how to make hot dogs easier to eat. When thinking about this point, asking the right questions, in the field of political science, it is easy to make an application. Since political science sometimes lacks respect as a discipline, it is important for political scientists to be asking the right questions, ones that will at least garner the respect of other disciplines, and hopefully pique their interest.
When trying to solve a problem, or explain a phenomena, sometimes redefinition helps, and that is something important for political scientists to keep in mind. Examples such as Kobi are effective in application, not only to political science, but also to life. In particular, Chapter Two, on saying “I don’t know,” is especially useful in real life situations. Additionally, it helps achieve their purpose, which they outlined in the first chapter. In real life situations, unless someone knows absolutely everything, people get presented with questions they may not know the answer to.
Sometimes it may eel like everyone is expected to have an answer to any question, but the reminder in this book that people really don’t know it all and should not be ashamed of using the words “I don’t know” with the option of finding out the answer later. Not only does this promote being an honest person, it also promotes going out and looking for the right answer. In regular situations, this produces more informed people, and in a place where research is being performed, it can result in better questions and research that people care about.
Another way this book addresses its point of teaching people to think like a Freak is in the chapter titled “What Do King Solomon and David Lee Roth Have in Common? ” Both are known for using strategic thinking to solve problems they were faced with. They each knew that people who were liars or cheaters would respond differently than the honest party. King Solomon knew that the child’s real mother would want him to stay alive, and David Lee Roth knew that the tour promoters who read their rider would take all of the brown M&M’s out of the bowl.
Both of them looked like jerks when they did it, but they were “teaching their gardens to weed themselves. ” By anticipating how the guilty arty would act, Solomon was able to find the real mother when he proposed the solution to cut the kid in half and give one half to each woman. Although he seemed blood-thirsty and unreasonable, he was effective. David Lee Roth was able to make sure that a tour promoter actually read the rider when there were no brown M&M’s in the bowl.
When there were brown M&M’s, he knew to make sure all of the equipment was set up correctly because the tour promoter hadn’t read the rider carefully. Sometimes, when solving a problem, a person may have to ask questions or make suggestions that seem nreasonable or morally questionable to come to the right conclusion. Thinking like a Freak in this way helps in everyday life and in political science. Again, the authors have achieved their goal of retraining the brain. Reviewing Like a Freak One criticism of this book is the way that it didn’t tie together at the end.
On page 211, there is a brief paragraph which consists of the authors hoping the readers enjoyed the book and got something out of it, but other than that, there isn’t a nice bow that ties the whole book together. The authors covered a lot of opics in the 200 pages they had, and many of them were not directly related to others. While the separate chapters did need different examples to bring home the main points, in a book of this nature, the final chapter, or even final few pages, should help the reader feel like loose ends were wrapped up and the authors’ thoughts are made complete.
One way the authors of this book could have accomplished this is by providing a bulleted or numerical list of all of the chapters with their respective titles and main points outlined underneath in a couple of sentences. Yes, there were summaries of each aragraph at the beginning of the book, but most readers will not want to go back to the beginning of the book to get the summary that should be at the end. Additionally, the summaries at the beginning of the book are ineffective because they are just a melting pot of thoughts with no cohesion at all.
While it may be a new way of summarizing, sometimes a simple two sentence summary works best, which any Freak would know. One final criticism of this book is the mention that “correlation does not equal causality” on page 8. Although this was not a central theme of this book, it is important to point out rom a political science standpoint that when someone has a sound research design and there is an absence of compounds and a presence of statistical significance, correlation does equal causality.
When research is exceptionally executed, there is no reason to say that one behavior does not cause another behavior. In this respect, Levitt and Dubner are mistaken, and should have provided examples of when correlation equals causality, or at least stated that “correlation does not always equal causality. ” Conclusion For the most part, this book will be beneficial to whoever is reading it. It provides “life hacks” that promote innovative thinking and furthering one’s knowledge.
Many of their points are applicable not only to life in general, but political science as a discipline as well. Their examples were interesting and made the readers pay attention and engage with the text. Any individual could read this book and understand it, and quite honestly, better himself in the process. Aside from a few structural problems, this book accomplishes its purpose, to “retrain your brain” and encourages everyone to think “more productively, more creatively, and more rationally,” in essence, like a Freak.
