Malcolm Gladwell on Freakonomics
Submitted by jim on Thu, 03/09/2006 - 08:57
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I know we have fans of both around here, so: Malcolm Gladwell on Freakonomics. Update: Freakonomics' Dubner on Gladwell.
If you read just one blurb all year make it the one that Seth Godin wrote for Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert:
That's good blurb. It is bundled with many others by Gladwell, Levitt et.al. and includes the most subversively counter-productive endorsement I've ever read: Now go out and buy this book?Scott Stossel writes a mostly positive review in the NYTimes of Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (the book has one of the best covers I've ever seen.) Stossel calls it a "paean to delusion" and warns of the cringe factor for someone who considers himself a comedic academic (or vice versa.)
There is also an entertaining excerpt of the first chapter which contains the lethal combination of running on a beach, knees, "Frisbee[s®]" and sand crabs along with The Sentence that "The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future." But evidently not when it comes to her knees.
...at least until such time we see fit to give chimps three weeks off every August to head to the beach and sensibly eat their taffy apples.Hmm, might have to check that one out. Some of the Amazon customer reviews give me pause (like the one that describes it as "a solid three" (why oh why is it impossible to link to specific Amazon user reviews?)).
Good question. That would be extremely simple for Amazon to incorporate, and only encourage more people to link to their site.
I don't disagree with either Freakonomics or The Tipping Point/Blink. I just remain unconvinced. Unconvinced and a little let down because I have yet to see a defense of their theories that isn't a repetition of them. My disappointment is actually a compliment. Well, I think it is. I think those guys are awful smart and even more enjoyable to read. I'd love to listen to them try and convince me. Or read about it. Or see the Off-Broadway production of the musical... play the home game.
I'd love to meet Messrs. Gladwell, Levitt and Dubner in a bar. We'd get along famously. In front of a chalkboard, not so much.
e.g. I can think of at least one other hypothesis as to why crime rates declined in the 90s in NYC: 13th Gen aged out of the prime crime years. Not that you can draw a bright line between cohorts but the oldest "GenXers" began to hit their thirties in the 90s. The youngest completed their teen years. Time to get a job at the video store... a chance for one last gasp at Woodstock '99. Everybody out of the pool.
Another theory, and it's touched on but only glancingly, is people's inner reality as opposed to outside influences. I saw the rise of Mothers against Drunk Driving in the United States and the corresponding decline in drunkenness. Not just a decline, it drove off a cliff. So instead of the absence of guns in bar fights it could be the decline of bar fights that cools everything out. I'd love to hear those guys's thinking about the decline of public drunkenness as a cause and not a result of the envirronment. They could argue that the voting age went down while the drinking age went up. Or something.
I love how they say it but as to what they say... a thing that makes me go "Hmmm." I think that there's a difference between Madonna and Britney Spears, The Breakfast Club and Clueless, Conan O'Brien and Carson Daily, D&D and Donkey Kong... I'm just getting started. Do you really expect the "Baby on Board" kids to rival the children of "Keep on Truckin'" in a life of crime? Just a theory.
The focus on outside influences, conditions and incentives seems incomplete to me. A sculptor will produce vastly different art when working on sandstone as opposed to clay... You heard me, Gen X. I said sandstone.
I really must invite Bernie Harcourt out for cocktails.
Very interesting, I'd love to hover on the periphery of the bar talk.
What are the prime crime years, and do the GenXers aging out of them really coincide? I feel like I'm still young enough today to take up a life of crime (what am I waiting for?), and we're now a good number of years after the crime drop years.
Flash research seems to show that crime peaks at the age of seventeen (thank you very much, Stevie Nicks) and drops fairly rapidly while violent crime peaks slightly later before it also falls off of the table.
The Encyclopedia Britannica says that an "aspect of criminality about which there is a reasonable measure of agreement is that crime is predominantly an activity of the young. In both Britain and the United States, for example, the peak period for involvement in relatively minor property crime is adolescence-from 15 to 21. For involvement in more serious crimes the peak age is likely to be rather higher, from the late teenage years through the 20s. Criminality tends to decline steadily after the age of 30."
As for the extent of the crime drop in New York (and elsewhere) Steve Malanga writes in the 2006 Winter issue of the City Journal that, "While New York’s violent crime rate declined by 65 percent in the 1990s, most of these other cities saw only small decreases in crime, and in a few cases violent crime actually rose. Chicago, for one, ultimately passed New York as the place with the highest total of murders per year, even though Chicago’s population is only 38 percent of New York’s."
Not only does this quantify the drop-off in crime, which neither Gladwell nor Levitt and Dubner seem to do with any regularity... or at all, it also shows the weakness of their reasoning. Chicago's crime goes up. Now that I think of it, I haven't seen a comparison of crime rates in states/cities where abortion was legal previous to Roe to crime rates in states/cities where abortion was illegal.
California has the first set of solid numbers weighted by population that I could find:
Violent crime arrest rates per 100,000 population by age, three-year averages
10-12yrs. 87-89: 91.5 __ 90-92: 108.4 __ 93-95: 98.6 ___ 96-98: 97.3
13-17yrs. 87-89: 679.6 _ 90-92: 1014.1 _ 93-95: 999.3 __ 96-98: 876.4
18-29yrs. 87-89: 964.4 _ 90-92: 1154.9 _ 93-95: 1156.6 _ 96-98: 1117.2
30-49yrs. 87-89: 495.3 _ 90-92: 546.7 __ 93-95: 584.3 __ 96-98: 579.2
As for 13th Gen (b. 1961-1981?) the leading edge hits 30 years-old in 1991 and is 38 when they party like it's 1999. The trailing edge is 9 years old at the start of the decade (10 years-old in 1991) and is 18 years-old when Y2K hits. This is the "Baby Bust" generation and births decline from 1961-1981. (Actually, I think there is an uptick beginning in the late 70s as the despicable Boomers begin to spawn.) Nevertheless, the vast majority of "Gen Xers" have aged out of the prime crime demo by 2000 and all of them are on the downward slope.
A crime-causing career usually follows a bell-curve. So if you're in your mid thirties you can expect to peak in your early 40s and tail off down to your 60s when AARP comes a-callin'. Good luck starting that second career. It's more difficult to do from a statistical point of view if you're married and have kids, a house, two cars, recycling bins, a pet, a retirement account... But the statistics don't apply to someone who isn't arrested (actually, they do) and you have no plans to get caught. Or do you?
It looks like I could win a couple bar bets. Perhaps I'm overlooking something.
The closer you look at anything, the more complicated it becomes. Every influence is diluted, inconsistent, and bidirectional. I'm starting to think no single cause may account for even 20% of the 1990s drop in USA violent crime.
This is the perfect chance to tell you to not wash your hands of Dubner, Levitt, Gladwell et.al..
There also seem to be psychological reasons for noncompliance. The first is what might be called a perception deficit. In one Australian medical study, doctors self-reported their hand-washing rate at 73 percent, whereas when these same doctors were observed, their actual rate was a paltry 9 percent. The second psychological reason... is arrogance. “The ego can kick in after you have been in practice a while,” explains Paul Silka ... Furthermore, most of the doctors at Cedars-Sinai are free agents who work for themselves, not for the hospital ... Their incentives, in other words, were not quite aligned with the hospital’s. Causes, consequences, motivations and data-collection methods all might be "diluted, inconsistent, and bidirectional." Solutions, on the other hand, can often be very simple and very effective.
It's that compelling presentation that I find so valuable/enjoyable in Freakonomics, Tipping Point, Blink etc.Gross. Sounds like a job for SquidSoap!
I bet you're all right.
(Sorry about the delay. I often find I shelve your posts until I have time to contemplate them further, and then upon further contemplation I realize that what I have to say is totally banal.)
... so, rather than contribute something original myself, I'll point you to this recent post on the Freakonomics blog: "Let's Do The Crime Drop Again". I have not read Levitt's paper yet, but in it he does discuss the aging of the population. I expect not in generational terms though. Dubner also points to this Jihad of Umar post, which is excellent.
I just read the stuff, blogging myself all the way. I've got a cold can of grump just waiting in the ice box. Let me just point out that the FBI says that youth crime did not fall when the 90s kicked off. Great going... with a capital grrrr.
I enjoy arguing with Levitt et.al. by proxy. Don't sweat the ba/origi-nality... besides which, Mania v.Time Pressure was a unanimous decision. 9-0, you lose.