[extropy-chat] FWD [forteana] Why bagels could hold the key to human behaviour

[Terry W. Colvin]

<http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,6000,1510857,00.html>

Why bagels could hold the key to human behaviour

Sumo wrestlers, Chicago school teachers, drug dealers who live with
their mothers and even the humble bagel - rogue economist Steven Levitt
says it's the little things in life that help explain the way the world
works. The author of Freakonomics, the book that has taken the US by
storm, talks exclusively to Gary Younge

Tuesday June 21, 2005

Steven Levitt's three-year-old daughter, Amanda, had not long finished
potty training when she decided she actually preferred nappies. Levitt's
wife, Jeannette, used all the methods she knew to convince the toddler
otherwise but to no avail. Levitt, the author of hit book Freakonomics,
intervened. He promised Amanda some M&M's whenever she used the potty.

For the first few days it worked well with sweets changing hands in
return for timely toilet visits. On the third or fourth day Levitt, 38,
took Amanda to the toilet. She passed just a dribble and took the
sweets. A few minutes later she was back on the toilet, passing yet
another dribble and putting her hand out for yet more sweets. She'd
rumbled the system. Levitt smiles.

"I never thought my three-year-old daughter could outwit my incentives
in just three or four days," he says. "But it's a great example of how
incentives can have unpredictable effects."

Welcome to Levitt's world - the unintended and unexpected outcomes
arising from various initiatives and incentives; the peculiar
relationships between things one would generally not relate. His methods
are intriguing - comparing the behaviour of some Chicago school teachers
to sumo wrestlers (both have incentives to cheat) and the Ku Klux Klan
to estate agents (they both derive their power from secret information).
His subjects are original - examining a study of a crack-running gang on
Chicago's South Side to see why drug dealers live with their mothers.

His conclusions are, to some, offensive. In one chapter in Freakonomics
he argues that the crime rate in the United States plummeted in the 90s
because more liberal abortion laws in the 70s meant fewer potential
criminals were being born. In another, he claims that children born to
uneducated poor parents are more likely to be unsuccessful, regardless
of how they are brought up. "It isn't so much a matter of what you do as
a parent; it's who you are." Both are arguments that could be used to
justify eugenics.

[rest at site]
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-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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