Think Like a Freak

This chapter introduces how Freaks use game theory to induce people to identify themselves. The authors give this a name in the form of a proverb: “Teach Your Garden to Weed Itself” (143). They use King Solomon, king of Israel in the Old Testament, and David Lee Roth, lead singer of the rock group Van Halen, as examples to show how game theory works. The story of King Solomon is well known: when two women claimed to be a baby’s mother, he ordered that the baby be cut in half with a sword and one half given to each woman. One woman objected, saying the other should get the child. Solomon then gave her the baby on the grounds that only the real mother would save the child’s life, even if that meant giving it up.

As for David Lee Roth, the authors describe the very detailed contract Van Halen had with each venue they played. Their show was elaborate and required a great deal of structural support and electric power to pull off. Since some of the venues were outdated, the band feared not getting what they needed to perform their act safely. Roth’s answer was an M&M clause: When the band checked in, there was to be a buffet of junk food waiting for them, including M&Ms—except for brown ones, which were to be removed. Most people thought this was just rock star hubris, but it was actually a clever scheme. If the band arrived and found brown M&Ms, they knew the people running the venue hadn’t paid attention to the details, likely including more important things like power requirements. It told them they needed to do a thorough check themselves to ensure everything was prepared correctly.

Both King Solomon and Van Halen had to somehow discover the guilty parties by enticing them to inadvertently identify themselves. The online shoe company Zappos created a version of this for hiring employees. In this case, the party to identify wasn’t so much guilty as simply unlikely to last in the job. When candidates successfully completed the hiring process and a couple weeks of the job, they were suddenly offered a chance to quit, with full pay for the training period plus one month’s salary. Though it may sound like a waste of money, the offer was intentionally somewhat enticing so as to be self-selecting. The company figured it was a small price to pay to weed out employees who hadn’t completely bought into its mission. An employee who would rather take the easy money and leave would likely not be a loyal employee and would end up costing Zappos more money in the long run.

Levitt and Dubner include another example from their book SuperFreakonomics. In that, they describe work they did with a British bank to create an algorithm that would identify likely terrorists from the bank’s customer data. The algorithm had to be nearly foolproof to avoid false positives. One thing stood out from the data: Terrorists virtually never bought life insurance because if they died in some kind of suicide attack, the policy would not pay out. The scheme with the bank produced a certain number of names, which were handed over to the authorities.

That was the end of the authors’ involvement, but they described this whole dragnet in their book and wrote that one certain way terrorists could avoid detection was by purchasing life insurance from their bank. This resulted in a lot of angry mail and interview questions about revealing this to would-be criminals. However, their book was actually meant to set a trap—to weed the garden, so to speak. Though banks offer life insurance, virtually no one buys it there. Therefore, anyone who did would be identifying themselves as a likely terrorist.

The topic of this chapter is persuasion—specifically, how difficult it is. The authors review some reasons for this and then give advice for what to try “if you are hell-bent on persuading someone” (167). First, you should know what you’re up against. Both people who are well educated on a topic and people who are uninformed resist changing their opinions. One study asked subjects questions pertaining to math and science, then asked their opinion about climate change. Contrary to what the researchers expected, those who did better on the math and science questions actually saw less of a risk in climate change. The reason might be that educated people are used to thinking they are right and are thus less likely to change their mind about something. However, there is not much evidence to suggest less-informed people are malleable either.

In trying to persuade others, people often focus too much on having foolproof logic. More often than not, this has no bearing on people’s opinions; they rely more on ideology and following others (“herd mentality,” as the California study about energy conservation showed in Chapter 6). Moreover, no argument is perfect, and people too often pretend theirs is. Refusing to admit to any shortcomings only makes people more likely to remain unconvinced. Here the authors use the example of driverless cars. Some have bought into the notion that this technology is a panacea for all car-related problems. But playing devil’s advocate, Levitt and Dubner pose potential problems that a debater would be wise to concede. For example, driverless cars might lead to more public drunkenness since people would no longer have to watch their alcohol intake to drive responsibly. Because we don’t know the future, it’s best to be clear-eyed about the undesirable possibilities a policy might cause—and admit them.

By the same token, your opponent’s ideas should be taken seriously and acknowledged. Many people not only forget this but let their emotions get the better of them in a debate and say something negative or insulting. This certainly closes the door to persuasion, as the authors note research showing that “bad is stronger than good” (180). In other words, people remember negative things more than they do positive things.

The most powerful method of persuasion is using stories. The authors distinguish stories from anecdotes, which are one-off events of limited value. Stories, on the other hand, use data and cover a certain time period to show either change or stasis. They make relationships between events clear to illustrate causes. By capturing people’s attention, stories can make even the driest subjects memorable. Steve Epstein, for instance, is a Defense Department lawyer who was tasked with reviewing rules for employees and who learned that simply reciting the rules was useless. Instead, he wrote a book of stories for each category based on events that actually happened. Because it was entertaining, it got the point across better.