Think Like a Freak
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain is the third non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. The book was published on May 12, 2014 by William Morrow.
Overview
- In one of the many wonderful moments in Think Like a Freak, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner ask the question: Who is easier to fool—kids or adults? The obvious answer, of course, is kids. The cliché is about taking candy from a baby, not a grown man. But instead of accepting conventional wisdom as fact, the two sit down with the magician Alex Stone—someone in the business of fooling people—and ask him what he thinks. And his answer? Adults.
- Think Like a Freak is not a book about how to understand magic tricks. That’s what Dubner and Levitt’s first two books—Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics—were about. It’s about the attitude we need to take towards the tricks and the problems that the world throws at us. Dubner and Levitt have a set of prescriptions about what that attitude comes down to, but at its root it comes down to putting yourself in the mind of the child, gazing upwards at the double lift: free yourself from expectations, be prepared for a really really simple explanation, and let your attention wander from time to time. —Malcolm Gladwell reviewing Think Like a Freak on Amazon.com
Synopsis
The introduction states that one should avoid preconceived notions and prejudices when approaching societal issues and related questions. The examples given include the controversial study of Robin Goldstein of an experiment that he conducted in which 500 subjects, in a blind taste test, preferred cheaper to more expensive wine.
The first chapter, entitled What Does It Mean to Think like a Freak?, explains the premise of the book. It gives examples including penalty kick tactics and concludes with the authors recounting a meeting with David Cameron before he became prime minister of England.
The second chapter discusses the difficulty that people have in admitting "I don't know". This chapter has a discussion of the wine tasting studies by Robin Goldstein.
Criticism
- The title of their new book, the third in the series, is evidence of the falling off. Gone is the economics part of the equation. Now it's simply about thinking like a Freak. But without the hardcore economics, thinking like a Freak just means being willing to think outside the box, and there are plenty of people doing that already. Too much of this book is taken up with routine problem-solving advice and over-familiar stories repackaged by Dubner as though they were revelations. —David Runciman, The Guardian
