Who Speaks For God?

The Second Test Of Politics: Community
In this section, the author blames many sources for the gap between the rich and poor. One of the sources he points to is gamblers. He refers to them as "socially irresponsible and greedy gamesmen". I don't think that gamblers are a source that is causing this large class discrepancy. Calling gamblers a source of the problem is like calling professional sports players a source of them problem as well. In most cases, people who become rich from gambling have put the time and effort into their skill that is necessary to earn their winnings. They may be greedy, but so is the rest of the world. As far as irresponsible goes, the only gamblers who are irresponsible are the many that lose their money habitually. In that case, most gamblers are only widening the gap by putting themselves on the poor side of the spectrum. Some gamblers also stumble upon big winnings without any skill. If this was bad then so would the lottery. The author says that gamblers shouldn't be admired. I find it somewhat admirable that people have enough confidence in their skill to put their own money on the line to earn more. It isn't much more different than the stock market.
The author also addresses homosexuals in this section. As a pastor that quoted the Bible numerous times in this book, I was expecting him to quote a passage in which it says marriage was established by God between one man and one woman. Instead, he refers to standard ideas of marriage as a "longstanding and deeply rooted concept of marriage as being between a man and a woman". I find it a tad odd that he couldn't find a single passage to quote referring to marriage. Instead, he calls our ideas of marriage simply a "deeply rooted" idea that is just society's norm, minimizing fact that it is God's law. the author also speaks about abortion. He claims that there is a "middle ground" between pro-choice and pro-life women. There differences between the two seem to be a little too extreme to find a middle ground between them.

TOTAL READING TIME: 36 hrs.

Page: 143

Who Speaks For God?

The First Test of Politics: Compassion
I find it interesting that the pastor has not yet specified his religion or exact beliefs in the book. It seems he is stressing more the idea of religion in politics than Christianity. Although he often refers to the Bible, it seems he advocates the basic morals that are inclusive in almost all religions, excluding Satan worship and religions of that nature. Considering different religions have different gods, the question "Who speaks for God?" may mean different things to different people.
I think it would be hard for any Lutheran to disagree with the goals the author is after. Although I think Lutherans would have to disagree that any positive religion is a good thing, knowing religions apart from Christ lead to hell. As a citizen, I understand that the morals religions hold are beneficial to our society as a whole. In today's society I think religion is a good thing for modern living. Of course in the ideal world, we would all be Lutherans. This can't be said of all time frames. Back in the day of human sacrifices and what not, I'd have to say that religion was not a general good for society.
The author also brings up welfare and the prison system. It is easier to just imprison criminals without trying to find the source of the criminal behavior. Fortunately, we live in a curious world were we have plenty of scientists and psychologists to study the source of crime. It would appear that we know the source of crime: single mothers, teen mothers, neglectful parents, general poor living conditions, and such. It is easier for the government to simply ignore these problems and sweep them under the proverbial rug. The author gives some good ideas to solve these routine problems in the book that would require some genuine cleaning.
I doubt that the solution given in Freakonomics of simply legalizing abortion is going to fly with the religious community though.

TOTAL READING TIME: 34 hr.

Page: 83

Who Speaks For God?

The first chapter of the book speaks a lot about the Religious Right or the Christian Coalition. It's not surprising that a political group would try to benefit from the strong faith that many Christians have. It's hard to say whether the leaders of this group were knowingly trying to profit off of the "God bump", or if they truly believe that their policy would please God. It is harder to argue in favor of the latter because of the definite contradictions between their policies and the Bible. Of course some people can become so ingrained in their beliefs that it is almost impossible to see things differently, such as in the case of prejudice. It just seems unlikely that a group that supposedly promotes the importance of biblical morals in today's policies would ignore the Bible for policies. The book does make it clear that most Christians have recognized this and don't follow the coalition. It seems reasonable that each person should judge each issue on their own moral code. It also seems ignorant to blindly agree with one side of the political spectrum unanimously. There may be some Democratic policies about issues I'm not very informed on that I'd agree with over the Republican side. Of course, things like abortion and gay marriage are specifically mentioned in the Bible, so my view on those topics lay on the Republican side.

How I Feel About This Project: I think it's a pretty good project. I've started to enjoy reading more than I have in the past. The project gives me an incentive to read, and hopefully I will exhibit a behavioral change and the incentive will no longer be needed (as is your goal). I also think it's good to write about what you read to comprehend it more and receive more insight since you're forced to reflect on what you just read. I think if you do the project faithfully, it will be very productive.

TOTAL READING TIME: 33 hr.

Page: 41

The Wisdom Of Crowds: Conclusion

The last part of the book is mostly about the wisdom of crowds idea in business. Since I'm not interested in business, this section was pretty dull for me. It seemed he just kept repeating his rules for a good group in different words. He writes in a straightforward style, saying his points directly. I wasn't much of a fan of this book. There were only a few interesting parts in the book that I enjoyed. The author didn't really convince me or inform me of anything new. Basically I took away from the book that under proper circumstances, a group will make a better decision than its individual members. I didn't really like the organization of the book either. There wasn't very much structure at all to what he was writing about. I prefer there to be structure in a book so it's easier to follow their mode of thinking, not random stories that incorporate the rules in no order. This book makes me appreciate the writing style and abilities of the authors of the Freakonomic books.

TOTAL READING TIME: 31 hr.

Page: Complete 271 Pages

The Wisdom Of Crowds

The author talks about the Columbia space shuttle accident in the section I read. It pointed out the NASA group that dismissed the possibility that any severe damage could have happened from the debris that hit the shuttle. He explains that this was an example of small a small group becoming dumber as a group instead of smarter. He also explains that being in a small group can actually cause polarization, which would the opposite idea of what a group is trying to accomplish. After explaining all this, he says there is a temptation not to use small groups at all because of the possible negative effects. There is a lot of responsibility that leaders and members of a small group have.

TOTAL READING TIME: 29 hr.

Page: 192

The Wisdom Of Crowds

I finished up the first part of the book. The end of the first part of the book dealt with coordination and cooperation problems. The coordination problems seem easier to solve since they are mostly solved naturally. Whether by established social norms or a self-invented technique, it seems we instinctively come up with solutions to coordination problems. On the other hand, cooperation problems seem to require much more moral and logical consciousness. Although cooperation is seemingly the obvious path to best results, it isn't the, as the book says, (economically) rational thing to do. It's no wonder why it takes so many years for innovations and inventions to come about in society. Things we take for granted and feel are necessities to life maybe could have been around years ago if some people were willing to collaborate and cooperate with one another. Things like racism could very well have stunted our societies growth over the years.

TOTAL READING TIME: 28 hr.

Page: 145

The Wisdom Of Crowds

There was a small section that used football as an example that I found intriguing. The example was which was a better decision: going for it on fourth down, or kicking a field goal/punting. The conclusion that was drawn was it is almost always smarter to go for it in a usual close call situation, depending on field position. The book points out that it is now conventional knowledge among coaches to take the 3 points whenever they can get them. It also points out that a recent coach has taken up the more aggressive and bold strategy, Bill Belichick. I doubt that many NFL coaches have read this book, and I highly doubt that many would change their coaching strategies from this type of book anyway. Although if a coach would here this mathematical proof that it is better to go for it, one would think a coach confident in his team would start to be more aggressive. Maybe we'll start to see the conventional wisdom to shift towards aggressiveness, especially after this year's Super Bowl (the onside kick to start the half by the Saints).

The was also a section on decentralization. The idea is that more specified groups seeking certain information is effective only when a successful way to aggregate the information is present. This led me to think of a newspaper editor. They work as a way to aggregate the information of fellow reporters on their specialized beats.

TOTAL READING TIME: 26 hr.

Page: 90

The Wisdom Of Crowds

The beginning of this book was pretty dull, but hopefully it will get better as it gets into deeper detail and different topics. I recognize some of the ideas from other books, including an experiment on conformity in which people are told to choose an obvious wrong answer out loud to see if the test subject would choose the obvious wrong answer to please the group. In this book, that experiment was used to stress the need for diversity in a group.

TOTAL READING TIME: 24 hr.

Page: 40

Superfreakonomics

Intro


This was a very good introduction to the second book, as well as a continued ending from the first. The paragraph in the intro explaining the importance of the, as I formally considered somewhat trivial, statistics and norms of situations helped me see the importance in learning these things. As it says in the book, it's valuable to know the baseline of how things usually occur to understand why unusual things happen. So far so good on the second book.

How Is a Street Prostitute Like A Department-Store Santa

I thought the term "pimpact" was incredibly clever and should be trademarked by the authors of this book if it isn't already. Just wanted to make sure I wrote about that because it really made the chapter special for me. I also thought this topic had to have been a business decision by the authors. I'm sure they wanted to start their first book off with the most shocking and motuh-dropping topic possible, excluding maybe religion. I'm guessing that the most responded to segment of their first book was the crack dealers chapter, which I honestly thought was the best chapter as well. I obviously have many problems with the idea of prostitution, but that's not what the chapter is about. It's about the type of incentives out there that would make a woman decide to pursue prostitution. So I liked this chapter because of the frequent humor and insight into a world I have no real information about, aside from movie depictions that are most likely false.

Well here is the first of the five pictures on this particular blog.

While reading this chapter, right about when it measured the pimpact versus rimpact (rimpact just wasn't nearly as clever as pimpact, disappointing), I thought of the Spike TV show called Manswers. If you haven't seen the show, the idea is to answer questions dudes want to know the answers to (How many light beers would you have to drink to get drunk?). I could imagine this being one of the Manswers' questions, "Which has more power, a pimp or a real estate agent?"

Why Should Suicide Bombers Buy Life Insurance?

This chapter starts out with the accumulative advantage of age in sports, which we already went over in sociology, so this section wasn't too thrilling. I thought that this topic was forced into this chapter. The authors do admit that they intended to have a separate chapter for the topic, but was seen as unneeded due to other books that cover the topic in much more detail (Outliers). They also do a poor job of transitioning from topic to topic in this particular chapter. One minute I was reading about being born in January to gain advantage in sports, the next I'm reading about terrorism. The only transitional sentence written was "Some families produce baseball players. Others produce terrorists." I'm not a learned English professor, but I do believe smooth transition is desired when writing. This chapter was also a little dull because the hospital statistics didn't intrigue me as much. I believe a factor causing me to be bored by the topic of "who is the best doctor?" is I know doctors have a very minuscule role in saving people's lives. (I know this week's theme isn't Christian application, but I guess I'm an overachiever) God is the one who decides whether someone is going to live or die. That's not to say that doctors are useless and we should only pray for our health (like Scientologists, Tom Cruise{above}), but we shouldn't put our full faith in humans, who are sinful as well.

Unbelievable Stories About Apathy And Altruism

This chapter begins with the story I previously read about in The Social Animal, 38 witnesses who did nothing to help. The first half of the chapter was leading toward the conclusion that humans are innately altruistic and this murder case was just an unconventional anomaly, which I voiced my opinion about in my blog on Freakonomics. I actually was so opposed to this idea that I took notes on specific things in the book I disagreed with. For example, I wrote multiple possibilities for why the Dictator game could have produced inaccurate data, which the book thankfully covered later (many of those reasons were also covered in The Social Animal). The ultimate conclusion the authors come up with is that "people are people" and respond to incentives. I have no problem with people responding to incentives, both books do a superb job of proving that statement. I do however have a problem with "people are people". An obvious question that people would ask would be what all is involved with being a "person". I'm assuming that they say that "people are people" to further stress that people are not merely "good" or "bad" naturally. Well I won't go into deep detail, but yes mankind is naturally bad and is evident in their actions. People can be enticed by incentives to do good, as well as bad, which is said in the book. It would seem that we, as Christians, are enticed by an incentive to live our lives better. This incentive of course isn't a manipulative or evil one, its the act Jesus performed on the cross, taking our sins away. This topic about incentives in Christianity seems to be a deep topic that a book could be written about. If none exist, as I've said before, keep an eye out for a cleverly titled book by Michael Reginald Anderson. This was the best chapter I've read in both Freakonomics books so far.

This picture obviously shows exaggeration, which was written about in this section of the book. The authors further investigate the actual facts of the bystanders murder. There were not supposedly 38 bystanders watching for over 30 minutes without helping. They discovered that some of the possible half dozen witnesses called the police, while others yelled from their windows. It is probable that the news exaggerated this story to fit certain peoples' agendas. In one specific example outside the book, the author of The Social Animal used this story to its full exaggeration to explain the "bystander effect" and other acts of conformity. Since the story supported these theories so well and was so widely believed, it was easy for the author to take the story to maximize the support.


The Fix Is In - And It's Cheap And Simple

This chapter is about the importance of simple and cheap solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. They give several examples of simple solutions, including the polio vaccine, Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, and seat belts. This was an interesting section that cited many ways great minds came up with simple answers to complex questions. It was a nice section that didn't arouse any disagreement from me.

This picture symbolizes one of the last ideas expressed in this chapter. The idea is that government officials always look for the big expensive solution to a complex problem, while outside persons or agencies are usually the ones that come up with the simple, cheap, and effective solution. On an unrelated note, this picture also reminds me of the book on the marker board, "The wisdom of crowds" or something similar to that. Haven't read the book, but this picture seems to fit with the premise of that book as well.



What Do Al Gore And Mount Pinatubo Have In Common?


This chapter talks about more simple and cheap solutions to complex problems, specifically global warming. I personally don't worry to much about the topic because I believe of all the fear that "experts" try to instill in everyone isn't anything to worry about, especially when I already know how the world is going to end. How can scientists predict the weather years from now when meteorologists can't predict rainfall the next day? I don't put much faith in all these "experts" trying to scare people into changing their behavior (which in The Social Animal, the author explains that the best way to persuade human behavior is through evoking strong emotional behavior, fear, while providing specific directions, cutting down on driving). I also find it amusing how celebrities think it's their job to also change the entire world's behavior to save the planet. they should stick to acting rather than preaching on topics they do know the first thing about. It is comforting to know that there are people in the world that have real solutions, conveniently cheap as well, that we can fall back on. The solution of building "chimneys to the sky" does have some interesting difficulties. One difficulty mentioned in the book is who would control the chimneys? Who would we put in charge of essentially playing God on the weather? How would the U.S.A.'s reputation be changed, positively or extremely negatively? I don't see this actually happening anytime soon, but it is an interesting situation to think about. Go Green!

This is a cartoon about none other than Al Gore. I came extremely close to posting a Man-bear-pig picture but decided it wasn't in my best interest to do so. The cartoon shows how global warming is another, not hoax as it may appear being next to "the sky is falling", but at least an exaggeration. Global warming possibilities are real, but I don't see it as the monster most people make it out to be.


Monkeys Are People Too: Epilogue

Another ininteresting little section about monkeys adapting as it seems humans have. This type of research is somewhat offensive when the results show that we apparantly are nothing but a minute step above monkeys. disheartening for some I'm sure, but entertaining to me.
This was another good book about a wide variety of things that peaked my interest. I enjoyed the first book as a whole a little more just because it dealt more with human behavior instead of hospital stats and global warming, which were also good topics, just not as interesting to me.

TOTAL READING TIME: 23 hr.

Page: Complete 219 Pages

Freakonomics

Teachers Similar To Sumo Wrestlers: Cheating

I thought this was an interesting comparison to make concerning professions. It does a good job showing that cheating goes on in all areas of life, no matter how unlikely it may seem to be. The incentives that they talk about would be referred to as external justification for actions in The Social Animal. I did actually learn something from that book.


The only problem I had with this section was the idea of the bagel dude displayed at the end of the chapter: most people are basically good. In The Social Animal, that author also expressed the same feelings, that people are generally, or naturally, good. This is completely contrary to a book that is a little more truthful than any I'll be reading in the future, which tells us that every single person is sinful from birth. The idea that people are naturally good is completely backwards. Data may prove (like the 87% of people pay for bagels) that people are generally good, but how did they get this way? They definitely didn't come out of the womb being pleasant and respectful. You could say that it was the parents that made the child generally good (possibly by passing on Christianity) with their superior parenting techniques (this could very well be discussed later in this book, not sure yet). So all I'm saying is that I don't side with Socrates or Paul Feldman, bagel selling extraordinaire, that people are generally good.

Ku Klux Klan Similar To A Group Of Real-Estate Agents: Information Asymmetry

This was another interesting chapter. There's some pretty funny parts about the KKK in the chapter I enjoyed. I kinda got the feeling after two chapters that the authors were somewhat of pessimistic guys warning against all different sorts of conspiracies, but I realize that this kind of stuff undoubtedly does happen more than I know of or would like to think. They use a lot of interesting stories and statistics to convey their theme of each chapter. I'm looking forward to read why drug dealers live with their mommies. My guess, their moms really enjoy dancing with Mary Jane and don't want their providers o far. Not using their paper for writin', but for rollin' doobies.


Why Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms: Crack

Turns out I was off with Mary Jane, its cocaine that draws in the dough. The story he starts with was very well told and easy to read. There are also some funny parts in this part of the book too. I like how everything preceding this chapter starts to fit in, opposed to my earlier thought that this book was going to be a bunch of odd parallels between different groups of people. They do a good job of creating a sense of eagerness to learn how all these things correlate with one another.

Where Have All The Criminals Gone?: Abortion

In this chapter the authors claim that the biggest reason for the decline in crime in the 1990s is legalized abortion. While reading the bulk of the chapter it was pretty obvious that that was the solution being presented (along with the introduction including the Roe v. Wade story). I also obviously disagreed with that being a good solution to reducing crime, thinking that was what the authors were going to endorse. Contrary to my thinking, the authors distance themselves, as they has been doing in previous chapters, from conveying their personal opinion. They give the reader the information and allow you to process it in whatever way you choose. So far this book has proved to be an interesting source of, as the cover of the book plainly states, "exploring the hidden side of everything".

What Makes A Perfect Parent: Schooling

This chapter was a bit dull for me. The several statistics that were rattled off from one set of school data were a bit boring and repetitive for me. There were a few key points that seemed to be worthwhile, like the difference between casualty and correlation. Basically all I took from the section was that a child's intelligence comes more from heredity and the way parents are than their actual parenting skills. The only books that I'd consider necessary when raising a child are books regarding the baby's health. I won't spend a dime on any one's opinion on how to mold my child into a certain figure.

A Roshanda By Any Other Name: Names

All the name statistics were interesting and fun to look at, especially the Shuh Teed mishap. Once I got to the end of the book, I really enjoyed the epilogue. I thought this was an excellent ending to the book. The epilogue stated what I was pretty much thinking throughout the entire book, that all of these statistics are nice (in my opinion somewhat trivial) possibilities, but they can't determine what an individual will turn out to be. They stress the "random factor" (or as we call it, GOD). The Unabomber reference was great (I did actually have to look up who Ted Kaczynski was again). It wraps up the book by again sayin that the point of the book is to ask question, which is a good skill to have.

Overall I enjoyed reading this book. It wasn't my favorite book I've ever read (sorry Strusz), but it was good.

TOTAL READING TIME: 17 hr.

Page: Complete 207 Pages

The Social Animal: Conclusion

I finished up chapter nine, the last chapter of The Social Animal.


The final chapter deals with the topic of social psychology as a science. In the chapter, the author pretty much explains what goes into developing a successful experiment, social scientists' responsibilities (primarily toward test subjects), and the importance of social psychology. It was a nice wrap up chapter pretty much stressing the main points of the book.


The one thing that the entire book misses is the idea of religion, specifically Christianity. Many of the theories and findings can be inaccurate if the individual is a Christian. For example, the cognitive-dissonance theory says that if someone hurts another person, the attacker will dehumanise the attackee to lessen his guilt. If the attacker was Christian, (hopefully) he wouldn't have attacked in the first place, but since we are sinful, the attacker would then repent instead of using natural, or sinful, instincts. Personally, I think that any study of human behavior should take religion into consideration as a type of asterisk. I'm sure there are studies have do take religion into consideration, maybe religion is all the study is on, but this book should have made some type of mention toward religion (preferably Christianity). I don't know if the author was Christian or not so it may be unfair to say he should have given a bump to Lutherans. Solutions? Find a Christian author, or write my own book. So keep your eyes our for an undoubtedly clever and savvy title written by Michael Reginald Anderson.




The book as a whole was a decent book. It serves its purpose as an introduction to the area of social psychology. While reading the book, I thought of several follow up questions that aren't answered in it. So it was successful in increasing my interest in the area. Although some parts of the book were a little dull, there was quite a bit of interesting and useful information. He uses a lot of examples of different experiments which I thought was pretty interesting. He also does a good job of explaining ideas clearly, partly due to the experiment examples. It was an alright book, I wouldn't highly recommend it but if you're interested in the topic, go for it.







TOTAL READING TIME: 12 hr.







Page: Complete 291 pages

The Social Animal

I finished up chapter eight.

Chapter eight dealt with sensitivity-training groups, or as he calls them, "T-groups". I thought it was a fitting topic to discuss since he just discussed prejudice and attraction. The T-groups is one of his solutions to reducing prejudice and increasing attraction, or at least toleration.

A T-group is a period of time, a weekend or longer, where a person is in a room or area with people for up to 9 hours a day. The idea of the T-group is to get people to interact openly with each other. The goal of the T-group is to gain an understand of your own feelings, consequences and effects of your actions on others' feelings, and to gain an overall more sensitive and understanding attitude about yourself and others. The T-group leader must be an experienced leader to truly be effective. The leader has to know when to intervene with interactions between members and when to observe. The leader isn't supposed to be a psychiatrist, but more of a member of the group.

The whole chapter talks about how to talk openly to avoid misinterpretations of feelings and judgements. He explains how many times people express their judgements about a person to them without properly explaining how they came to that conclusion about the person (feelings). This results in defensive behavior or hurt feelings from the attackee. So communicating properly can allow people to learn more about others. He also stresses the fact that speaking openly is easier in a T-group because that is the norm in that environment. Everyone is encouraged to speak openly to others in the group. So in the real world, telling everyone how your feeling won't always be welcomed. It will often be made fun of and ridiculed. The real world benefits of T-groups is the understanding people receive about how their actions make others feel.



TOTAL READING TIME: 11 hr. 30 min.

Page: 270

The Social Animal

I finished up chapter seven
Chapter seven dealt with what makes people attracted to other people. The author first talks about the effects of praise and favors. Praise and favors are effective to some extent. If the person benefiting from the favors and/or praise suspects the favor-doer has ulterior motives, the efforts are neutralized or counterproductive. People enjoy receiving rewards for little cost. If the favor-doer's motives appear to be clean, praise and favors can have positive effects.
Then he talks about personal attributes. The main point of the section of the chapter is that we tend to like people who are nearly perfect. We would like a highly competent person who we have seen make a mistake more than a highly competent person who we have never seen do wrong. The seemingly perfect nature of the second person puts him higher on a pedestal, reducing some of his attractiveness. He also talks about how we tend to like beautiful people more than ugly people. He discusses how relying on outward beauty can deter us from find the beauty within and what not.
Finally he introduces another theory, the gain-loss theory, that talks about attractiveness. Its main point is that we would be more likely to like somone who started out with a negative attitude toward us and gained a more positive veiw than someone who liked us all along. In the same way, we would dislike someone more who started out liking us and grew to dislike us.
This was a fairly informative chapter and I wasn't disappointed by the information provided.

TOTAL READING TIME: 10 hr.

Page: 242