Super Freakonomics

Chapter 1: How is a street prostitute like a department-store santa?

• they both take advantage of short-term job opportunities brought about by holiday spikes in demand (some are normal girls but do some prostitution only on holdays such as july 4th where prices spikes as demands goes up as relatives-visitors come to visit big cities)
• hookers salary went down throughout century went down because casual sex and oral sex became more socially acceptable...
• free casual sex is the biggest competitor to paid sex (prostitution)
• oral sex was once a religious sin that only hookers would do...but as it became more common and less of a stigma, men were able to get it from their girlfriends or wives
• hookers make more more money working with pimps than alone as pimps are like real estate agents...they market the hooker's services...even with the pimps cut taken off, hookers make more and need to turn less tricks to make more money
  
• pimps also provide protection from cops and beatings from johns but since they take about 25% off the price, its also a price hookers need to decide to take...turns out its worth it...
  
• high priced prostitutes make lots of money because they can market themselves using the internet nowadays
• many reasons for why men make more money than women...one is that money is not as big a motivator for women as it is for men...women take more days off because of kids and pregnancy and period...women once they have a family or marry well, leave their jobs
• rarely are hookers or johns arrested for prostitution...very rare...
• most sex is not with a condom but also very low chance of HIV...less than 3%
  
• discount for sex: paid with drugs ($7 off), sex outdoors ($6.50 off), use condom ($2 off)
• average price for sex acts: manual stimulation (26.70), oral sex (37.26), vaginal sex (80.05), anal sex (94.13)
• % of sex act: oral (55%), vaginal (17%), manual (15%), anal (9%), other (4%)
• better way to curb prostitution is to toughen the penalty to johns, not hookers...punishing hookers only drives down supply which increases the price of sex but not decrease the demand....if target the johns such as castration for the john, the demand will drop hugely which will make prostitution less desirable for women to partake in
  

Chapter 2: Why should suicide bombers buy life insurance?

• terrorists DON'T COME from poor, uneducated backgrounds...they tend to be people who care about politics...they care about the vote
• terrorism is very scary not because of how many people they can kill but by the possibility of it happening anywhere...
• terrorism is strongest when its unpredictable and everyone feels they can be targeted...reason why we not scan every passenger and require people to take off shoes even though the probability of it happening is very very little
• beauty of terrorism is that u can succeed even by failing...the shoe bombing failure causes so much time lost of americans to take off shoes through the scanner, that its actually a success
  
• genius is not born, its created....its the amount of "deliberate practice" that ones does
• deliberate practice has 3 key components: setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback, and concentrating as much on a technique as the outcome
• people who become excellent at a given thing aren't necessarily the same ones who seemed "gifted" at young age...this suggests that when choosing a life path, people should do what they love because if they don't love what u are doing, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good at it.
• an algorithm based on exhaustive data is the best way to predict the odds of an ER patient will die soon after being admitted as well as help spot a terrorist just from his bank account
• in this algorithm, many things u think would relate to the subject is not and there will also be some surprising commonalities amongst some trivial facts...
• most important thing is knowing that an algorithm is very very effective, much more so than other methods we currently use for ER patients and terrorist spotting
  
• why should terrorists buy life insurance? because it will allow them to more easily slip through the scans as it is a strong indicator that they are terrorists if they don't buy life insurance
  

Chapter 3: Unbelievable stories about apathy and altruism

• story starts and ends about the Kitty Genovese murder in queens where there were supposedly many innocent witnesses who did nothing to help, not even to call 911, even as the killer assaulted her twice...not just once
• turns out that the story is a fake...more people were said to be witnesses than not...and some actually called but police was slow on the responce...turns out that it was fabricated by the police so as to not take the blame for the murder
• altruism was once believed to be a real human nature thing...and even more so in americans...turns out to be false...humans work with incentives...if the incentives are big enough to help, we will, if not, we won't...research was originally wrong as it did not isolate altruism

Chapter 4: The fix is in - and it's cheap and simple

• many times, the best solutions are the cheapest and simplest....but many times also not loved by the public as they want a complex solution
• childbirth death rates were huge because of puerperal fever but the solution was very simple and easy...washing and sanitizing hands after playing corpses during autopsies did away with the problem...very cheap...very easy
• food production used to take much time and people and space...it was a worry that the world can never produce enough food to take care of the rising world population....ammonium nitrate was the key...cheap and effective crop fertilizer that made for higher yielding crops.
• law causes many unintended consequences...ex. is american with disabilities act which was made to protect the diabled from getting fired...result was that companies didn't hire them because it would be so hard to fire them.
• best safety device in cars is the seat belt...cheap and efficient...but not made for kids...but performs just as well vs car seats and much cheaper...from 3-6 yr olds...all the same...for younger, its not very good...
• now all states and the EU require child safety seats til 6yr old...
• in a study, it does help out a lil bit in terms of 30mph crashes of 3-6 yr olds...and this lil bit is enough to make parents buy it...peace of mind is important
• child safety seats say they help prevent deaths by 50%...but thats vs no seatbelt...nearly identical if vs seatbelt
• hurricanes are caused becuase of warm water on surface of oceans...simple idea is to build an innertube device with long cement pillars that go down to the ocean 600 ft deep and thereby replaces surface water with cold water below when waves go over it...its a way to cool down the surface water...costs way less than the amount of damages a hurricane can cost...

Chapter 5: what do al gore and mount pinatuno have in common?

• many exaggerations in an inconvienent truth
• carbon dioxide is not the major big greenhouse gas...its water vapor...but no good numbers on water vapor thus yet
• in fact, the 70s climate temp went down as carbon dioxide was high and temp went up as we started to clean up the air recently...the carbon dioxide blocks the strength of sunrays hitting earth
  
• carbon dioxide was way higher before....but is rising rapidly lately due to humans...its the rapid rise thats bad, not the amount of carbon dioxide...plants actually grow faster and more efficiently with more carbon dioxide...need less water
• sea levels are rising and have been since ice age stopped...but most of the rise has already happened and early on...lately, in past century, only risen 8 inches (total rise is 425 feet)...
• best estimation is water level will rise 1.5 feet by 2100
• global warming models now are crude...will take many years to have computer good enough to give us smaller and more accurate grids to be able to include actual weather into the equation...
• now all models give same results because they are not good enough to give specifics
• trees actually make for warmer climate as its dark leaves absorb more heat than grasslands, ice, etc.
• increasing number of airplanes in the sky reduces climate temp...during 9/11 when all USA flights were downed, the temp went up several degrees
  
• huge volcanoes like mount pinatubo cool down the earth by shooting surfur dioxide into the stratosphere...pollution in the stratosphere blocks the sun so cools the earth...
• can imitate a huge volcano by piping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere...leverage is key...putting it into the stratosphere with its winds, it can circle the earth which will block out much of the heat...budyko's blanket will take 10 days time to circle entire earth because of earth's 100 mph winds
• sulfur dioxide is refrigerator coolant...and it is nearly free in canada where they extract oil from sand.
  
• seems bad as its polluting the earth to stop a problem that started with pollution of the earth, but experts agree that it will work...and won't cause more damage to the earth...and if it doesn't work, they can stop the pipeline immediately
• would cost fraction of how much it costs each year to try to stop global warming
• another option is to extend smokestacks all the way up to the stratosphere and having that pollution cool the earth...this way, for sure we are not adding more pollutants into the earth
• another way would be to grow clouds on top of the oceans by the use of boats and a salt water spray which would in turn reflect back much of the heat back out of space...as the ocean now since its dark absorbs much heat...
• all these seem like great ideas but hard to have people buy the idea...
• problem with al gore's solution is that there is little reward for companies to limit consumption and very weak penalties even if they don't comply...it doesn't make sense in terms of incentive to lighten consumption
• as with doctors and making them wash hands before surgery, its a tough thing to sell as the doctors don't feel the bad effects of them not washing hands...its the patients that suffer...same with polluters now as they don't feel the pollution problems
• what do al gore and mt pinatubo have in common? the answer is that gore and pinatubo both have a way to cool the planet, but costs are an universe apart...
• with aids, its nearly impossible to make men wear condoms as its very hard to change behavior...instead of changing behavior, the solution was circumcision for the men as they could keep their behavior...all they need is a 1 time fix...
• therefore if u think about the global warming solutions, it should be way easier for the world to accept a volcano simulated solution than to make then stop polluting...
• intellectual ventures based near seattle is the name of the company that came up with the hurricane thing and the global cooling ideas
  

Epilogue: Monkeys are people too

• study that when money was introduced to monkeys, they learned how to use money...they knew how to exchange for food
• also when prices went up for one item, they learned to buy other items..and when it went down, they bought more...pure supply and demand at work
• gambling problem: 2 gambling games. first, he is shown 1 grape and dependent on the coin flip, either got only that grape or won a bonus grape as well...2nd game, he sees 2 grapes, but if coin flip went against him, the researchers took away 1 grape and the monkey got only one...
• on average the monkey will get same number of grapes no matter which game decided...but the first game is framed as potential gain and 2nd as a potential loss
• monkeys, like humans, and daytraders prefered the 1st option of a potential gain.
• in a freak accident where money was tossed to all other monkeys (ones who were not taught about money), through observation they grabbed all the money and would not give it back til they were bribed..they learned easily that the money had value...
• funny thing is at one incident, 1 monkey gave another the money and they had sex...pure prostitution..then the receiver monkey used the money in exchange for food.

Rating:

• book ok but not great...fun read and learned some stuff but still not great...dunno why
• felt too short...preferred first one for having more stories
• but always enlightening to hear about how incentives drive everything and how conventional wisdom is many times not best
• also great new moral is that there usually is a cheaper, simpler solution...