Freakonomics and Rational Argument


Abstract:
When I'm discussing something at a party, and someone spouts off about air travel being safer than highway travel, I can whip out one of the many novel ways of looking at an issue that Levitt demonstrates: "sure, fewer people die in airplanes - but they don't spend as much time in airplanes either.

Body:
I have been reading Freakonomics on our vacation. It is a fun romp. Levitt and Dubner thoroughly enjoy overturning conventional wisdom and interrogating obscure data to make interesting points about how human beings negotiate things of value.

Something bugged me though, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it until page 148, when the authors began getting reflective on the roles of pundits and parenting experts. They were criticizing the way so many experts come up with impressive-sounding rationalizations for their opinions and the way "experts" often simply pull questionable data out of their nethers. For example, parents are far more likely to freak out over children being killed by guns in the home than by swimming pools - even though the latter kill far more kids than the former. Levitt and Dubner write:

An expert must be bold if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into conventional wisdom. His best chance of doing so is to engage the public's emotions, for emotion is the enemy of rational argument.

It's that last bit that jumped out at me. Here is a tenacious bit of conventional wisdom: emotion is the enemy of rational argument. This is why Mr. Spock, in the original Star Trek, was supposed to be without emotion. Emotion is the enemy of reason, logic, rational argument. Only - where is the data that support such a claim? I would go so far as to argue that strong emotion is the only reason to engage in rational argument. If people have no stake in a question, why bother seeking an answer?

I even believe that part of the appeal of Freakonomics is emotional - which I suspect Levitt would happily acknowledge. It is fun to uproot conventional wisdom. When I'm discussing something at a party, and someone spouts off about air travel being so much safer than highway travel, I can whip out one of the many novel ways of looking at data that Levitt demonstrates: "sure, fewer people die in airplanes - but they don't spend as much time in airplanes either. If you look at the risk of dying per hour, air travel and highway travel are about the same." Now everyone else in the room whispers to each other (I assume) about how smart I am. I bask in their admiration, and mentally add t tally mark to my social points for the evening. (I learned long ago that what I lack in wit and social skills I can almost make up for with obscure trivia.)

Of course, the authors mean strong emotions, like fear. They mean the general public overreaction to minor risks like terrorism and underreaction to major risks like swimming pools. They resent the inertia of conventional wisdom, which is simply enough people repeating an idea often enough that they all assume it to be true. I sympathize - much the same way that I sympathize with Dawkins' attacks on religion - even though he has no actual data to support the claim that religion has a negative influence on society. What he does have are strong opinions, a set of sophomoric prejudices, and a penchant for inflammatory speech - which makes him something like the atheist's Rush Limbaugh. Come on, scientists. Support your strong opinions with data, please!

What I really love about Freaknomics is the way that Levitt uses operational definitions and scientific method to look at social policy and the way human beings actually behave. It's the stuff that made me enjoy my research design, psychology, and economics classes in college. There are places where philosophy and number-crunching connect, where scientific method breaks open new ways of understanding ourselves.

Posted: Thu - November 16, 2006 at 10:16 PM           |

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