During the Trinidad and Tobago postal strike, one of the books I picked up locally was Freakonomics - I'd heard about it but had stayed away from the buzz; it seems everyone these days has some new form of looking at the world and a book deal to prove it1. And so I read the book in a context outside of what was probably intended by the authors, Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I read it from my own context which lead to my own entry on Crime in Trinidad and Tobago.
The book takes off rapidly, dispelling commonly accepted 'truths' with deeper data and a clear view of the underside of reality. It provokes the critical thinker, who it seems to have been written for2. It dispels commonly accepted ways of looking at things and provides new and interesting ways to connect seemingly disparate information for useful purposes. But within it's folds, there are some things that struck me as peculiar.
Take, for example, the discussion on education. I accept socioeconomic status as a factor - globally - for better education levels, though there are many children of rich parents who seem destined to try to keep this balanced. Even so, I find it hard to swallow that there is any data that would support intelligence as a genetic trait; I don't recall that this was written within the book, but there were points where it seemed that there was an assumption based on data that I could not see. This is something I had wrestled with before and continue to3. If there is data like that out there, I'd love to see it.
The chapter on names did seem pedantic, as other reviews indicated, but it was interesting nonetheless to read since it demonstrated some American traits - but in a global context it would be difficult to discern if the same rules apply. Consider India, or Africa, where Anglo-American names would be less common. Consider a mixing pot like Trinidad and Tobago, where people have and continue to believe that socioeconomic status is associated with having an English name as opposed to a name more indicative of cultural roots - and that even now some believe that having a name that earmarks one as being of Indian or African descent comes with pros and cons depending on which government is in power. While the comparisons with the relevant data are clean and thoughtful, to extrapolate that data would be difficult without taking into consideration concerns such as which minorities are more major. Consider that I did get one job in the United States, at least, as a computer programmer simply because my name had Indian roots4.
As a book that was written for an American market, I found the book informative and worthwhile - but in a global context, what does it all mean? Are there interactions at national levels driven by what one's name is? Does a student from India or China have a better or worse life because of their cultural names in the United States? Certainly, hispanics and African-Americans enjoy more status as minorities, but they are not minorities alone. What about those in between races?
In the end, I'll Freakonomics a KnowProSE.com score of 7. It isn't that I didn't like writers or the content, it's simply that I think the book could have been better by looking further around the world. Of course, this might require Levitt to turn his intellect on the book publishing industry and asking whether it is that the business decisions are made to keep a book in a market or to enlarge the market of the book. This sort of thinking and writing should not be contained to what is only a local market - albeit a large one - but should be exported as a commodity for others to enjoy.
Had I read the book written in a context of the United States, the book would have scored higher. But I picked up the book in a local bookstore in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago. And that, by itself, demonstrates that the book was to be read globally. The trouble, of course, is that the data isn't always there for these sorts of analyses... but I imagine some of it is.
Even so, I'll follow the Freakonomics blog as time permits. Would that there was more of a global context in a world which has continued to shrink in size but remains shielded behind walls of data...
1Except me, of course.
2There are a few of us left, it seems.
3See Race And Intelligence Isn't Black And White. It's Invisible and Society and Intelligence as examples.
Fortunately, I'm a pretty good programmer and have been professionally so for about 20 years.
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