Steven Levitt and Stephan Dubner approach the truths and eccentricities of society through a number of ways: accidents and pure research. Unknowingly exploring incentives, Levitt had embarrassedly found that his own offspring of 6 years had outsmarted him. In persuading or rather tricking his daughter to use the lavatory, Levitt provided a constellation of sweet M&Ms but, only if she were to use the toilet willingly, a bribe that all parents at one point or another present to their kids. Young miss Levitt was thrifty: realizing acquiring her all-time favorite candy was no longer a hassle and tricking her father was even easier. Soon after, Levitt, flabbergasted, could not believe his daughter had beat his scheme but, through this accidental experience, he had evaluated incentives. The right incentives allow someone to flourish and allow us to predict a plausible outcome of situation and the amount of effort the person will put into something. Incentives are what drive one to carry out a promise, a duty, morals, and ethics among other things.
To evaluate truth and clarify topics, Levitt and Dubner use comic book-like visuals and real life situations. The visuals presented in front of us during the movie were beautiful, not riveting but, luring nonetheless. Each transition from topic to topic, a new place and setting was humbly welcoming with its vibrant color and comic book animations. The comic-book like cut out people were humorous and drew my attention to the conveyed main idea when Levitt portrayed his daughter as a tiny rudimentary drawing animated on looseleaf. In doing the simplest task, he had come to find that even a 6 year old could trick a well educated economist into acquiring M&Ms easily. Each reenactment of a situation was played almost perfectly allowing watchers to live what they saw on the big screen. Reenactments could be seen when the protagonist was comparing how a real estate agent would wait longer to sell his house for a higher price compared to how he would go about advising his customer to decide to select an offer earlier than the agent would have chosen based on his different incentives. These different approaches to society sparked the most interest and therefore allowed me to gain a new perspective of incentives.
The Freakonomic's author's rely on statistics and not is what observably "obvious." They seek patterns that repeat over and over again in the statistics and only then make a conclusion. In trying to unveil the existence of yaocho in the sumo world of Japan, Levitt and Dubner needed factual data and they found exactly that in the winning to losing scores of each competitor. In the family of sumos, the winner was always chosen before the match had even started because one sumo would fall to let his opponent advance but, when both encounter again, the opponent is in debt to the sumo. The entirety of yaocho contains corruption and in turn, there are rigged matches therefore the purity of sumo has faded. This analysis of statistics is innovative because several other researchers in Japan didn't dare to question the sumo world because it was a sanctuary of purity, where one fought to gain respect and the quavering of this abundant idea would be nothing but, chaos. Levitt and Dubner found the factual data of the existence of yaocho while others could not see what was right in front of them.
Freakonomics can serve as an inspiration and a good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices because as conscious members of this society, we all try to uncover the mysteries that haunt us and spark inquiry. In society, we have created the ideal person, family, society, environment, morals, and values in order to stray away from foreign things. But now as we watch Freakonomics, we can see ideal does not trail far away from weird. Questioning the morals and ethics of cheating in the Sumo World isn't eccentric, it's our natural instinct to become wary of things "unmoral". Although, in questioning such things has brought among several theories, research, and evidence about society and its social practices. As we evaluate things on a number of variables such as morals, we can see how the idea of Freakonomics can directly correlate to Michael Pollan's Omnviore's Dilemma. Our food ways reveal what is acceptable and unacceptable in society. Our research and attempts to reconnect with nature in a forest of factories and chemicals will help us understand why we choose the foods we eat. Research will not mitigate our knowledge but, instead expand its depths straying away from ignorance. Yet, we cannot escape ignorance because we cannot see everything hidden in plain sight nor understand the reasons behind them.
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