Freakiness

I did a marathon through SuperFreakonomics yesterday, and took it to work and showed it off to the interest of my coworkers today. Well, it may not be the ideal coffee table book, but it does provide food for over coffee conversations.

The Freakonomics guys as always, tackle the strangest of ideas and come up with the strangest of conclusions. While I take issue with several of their conclusions, I can't argue that they've made the dryest subject in the world just a little more interesting.

One of their results I object to, is the one that they have proving that among doctor's there's not a whole lot of difference between the best and the worst in a given hospital. The whole story is a long and involved one, and one that I'm definitely going to use in my MBA interviews, as an example of early technology properly applied being a boon to operations management.... but my point is... these conclusions they drew- it works for the sample set they had, but I don't see that you can apply it to every set. It would depend for example, on the principles on which hiring of doctors was based, for example.

Then, there's the global warming thing which has already generated much contreversy read here , and here.... well ... lets say I've overcome my (natural) aversion to deliberate largescale geo-engineering, but there are so many untested consequences. What is suggested is that Sulphur di-oxide be released into the atmosphere in imitation of vocanic eruptions that create global cooling (to counter global warming obviously)... well what happens to the SO2? Does it then sink down from the stratosphere producing more acid rain? Does it undergo chemical change in the stratosphere over a period of time maybe depleting the ozone layer?

There's a similar quick fix solution to hurricanes in Florida, which deals with preventing the build up of hot water that generates energy for these hurricanes cyclically... but what happens to that hot water? Are there any currents that maybe bear away some of that water to affect the weather somewhere else?

Where it didn't touch on pure science, the results were more convincing. I enjoyed the chapter on altruism and apathy with the experiments of List... the behaviour of terrorists explained and an analysis of seatbelts and booster seats... the effect of television in rural India (though there's not enough cause and consequence there for me... there could be other contributing factors for both...)

Anyway, its a thinking book definitely, not one you can just passively read, and though its conclusions may be incomplete, its methods are definitely interesting.