But I know they lie!

I finished Freakonomics (Levitt and Dubner 2005) this morning. It's a book by a NY Times writer and a relatively famous economist. In general, it's an expansion of the rather news-generating 2003 NY Times magazine article by the same authors that showcased some of Levitt's rather unorthodox (by economic standards) question-asking techniques. He's a creative thinker who uses economic tools to illustrate the peculiarities of just about everything. What was introduced to me as the difference between perceived risk and actual risk in environmental policy circles, he expands on significantly to include knocking out the whole of what he refers to as 'conventional wisdom' and replacing it with economically tested suggestions (or at least starting to do so).

For example, you may have heard of the theory that US violent crime dropped (just as it was really getting going) in the 1990's partially because of the legalization of abortion during the time when that criminal cohort would have been born. Conventional wisdom told us that increased police and better policing strategies were the major contributors to this drop, but Levitt led the economic line that argued the lack of criminal teens resulted from the lack of babies that would be prone to being criminals. That theory has been used (poorly, in my opinion) by a number of racist assholes since it's publication, but Levitt, in classic economic style, only presented the theory and the evidence, he didn't pass judgment on it. His evidence, that is. Which is where he started to lose me. I actually buy his argument on the drop in crime, and several of his other arguments in the book - not only because he is a skilled thinker and theorist and has an understanding and knowledge of economics that is so far beyond my formal academic understanding I shouldn't even be writing this - but also because it's just what I believe, and he's just offering me more evidence. Having said that, he almost blew his whole formal education, great reputation, and my general awe when he commented, early in the book, that conventional wisdom may lie, but the numbers don't.

Not only do numbers lie, but they actual exist in a natural state of lying. It's not intentional. After all, numbers aren't actually sentient and making the choice to lie. I would also argue that the purveyors of numbers are (generally) not intending to lie, but are unable to gather all the information necessary to force the numbers to tell the truth. That's just a factor of the information age, and I don't see a way to improve it. What we can do, is improve how we categorize findings - that is, we can develop (or use one already around) a metric that shows the amount of uncertainty. Something that would be constantly joined to every knowledgeable sentence you utter. In a bugs bunny world, a number from 1-10 (ten indicating that the statement is backed up by multiple well done studies by a variety of people, using a variety of techniques, and one indicating that you were eavesdropping and heard the statement out of context from a person at a bar) would pop up over your head every time you spoke. In essence, it would be a quantification of differing lengths that Pinocchio's nose would grow, based on the egregiousness of the statement. Even so, we'd never actually have a "fact," we'd just know how far off we were from ever having one.

It's not that 'conventional wisdom,' isn't based on the summation and review a number of experiences, but that it's based on a different way of looking at those experiences. Maybe without computers. For that reason, although I really enjoyed the book, it's real benefit to me was to get me thinking about how we view the world and to remind me that the answer comes out of how you ask the question. I think that was a large part of the message the authors were trying to send, I just wish they hadn't also propagated the "numbers don't lie," lie.

Also, with respect to recommending it, it's a fast, humorous and interesting read.