Read: Freakonomics

 People’s actions are a result of incentives. In areas with declining birth rates, obstetricians are more likely to perform expensive cesarean section surgeries. Real estate agents on average leave their homes on the market for 10 days longer and sell them for 3% more than their clients’ homes, because the extra work is not worth the tiny amount more they will make on client houses. That principle, that incentives are the cornerstone of life, is the fundamental idea of this book, and it applies that principle in various situations. Another principle is that “experts” use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda. This applies to everyone from real estate agents to criminologists. 

There are economic incentives, moral incentives, & social incentives.

In response to the high-stakes testing that started around the year 2000, teachers started illegitimately bringing their students scores up in droves. 

John Kenneth Galbraith coined the phrase “conventional wisdom” and meant by it that society associates truth with convenience. That which accords with our self-interest & personal well-being, avoids awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life, and that which contributes to self-esteem. Economic and social behaviors are complex, so we subscribe reasons that are convenient, comfortable, and comforting. 

People are terrible risk accessors. From mad cow disease vs dirt in the kitchen to swimming pools vs having a gun in the home to flying vs driving a car, people don’t feel the difference between a 1 in 10,000 risk and a 1 in 1,000,000 risk. Many “dangers” that cause outrage/panic are ridiculously unscary statistically. “The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do - Parents Matter Less than You Think and Peers Matter More” argued that the influence of parents on their children is overwhelmed by the brunt force applied everyday by their peers.

It had a section on names, where names go through a lifecycle, with names used by wealthier people being copied by poorer ones, and then being associated with the lower classes, and then falling out of favor entirely. Based on that idea it listed 24 names that might break into the mainstream over the next decade but were currently unheard of it. Quite a few were right. It included, Ava, Avery, Ella, Emma, Grace, Isabel, Kate, Sophie, Anderson, Carter, Cooper, Jackson, Liam, & Will.

Seth Roberts was the old self-experimenting guy I liked who died.

This book was interesting, but after “A People’s Trajedy” it felt very short. It’s lack of a central theme was also very obvious. It felt very random.