FREAKONOMICS - Response

#2:
The directors seems to pretend that correlation is causation, when that is a fallacy, simply there needs to be correlation to have causation. I believe the directors know this but illustrate their data in a manner that correlation is causation to over-simplify their data so that the viewers can understand their points easily. I believe their arguments would have been stronger if they demonstrated the correlation and then the actual causation, and then if the correlation is correspondent to the causation, explain and if not why? At times they do prove that there must be a correlation to have causation but they illustrate such as “correlation is causation”. Such as a realtor is helping you sell your house, the price is 30k and you receive an offer for 29k he tells you to take it, he then sells his house which is the exact same, and gets 30k. The correlation is the realtor is selling your house and receiving a profit. The causation for him receiving more with the same opportunity is because the realtors job receives a profit of how much you make, but the quicker he can makes the money the better it is for him, because 1k won’t make difference worth his while. So he just wants to sell the house the quickly for his own interest. In one part of the movie they contradict their demonstration that correlation is causation, they state that the correlation is not the causation. They did a study on how you name your child, and where that child will end up in life, and it turns out that the name of our child has no effect upon weather they will be successful in life or not, it is how the child is raised. The cause for a name affecting your child is an outside factor such as someone who is racist and assumes that a person with an African-American name will not be qualified for the job. They explicitly show that the correlation between the child and the name is not the causation for their success or not.

#3: The sources of evidence that the Freakonomics directors rely on the most is statistics and finding patterns in those statistics and from their making conclusions, at times leading to theories. This is seen over and over in the movie with sumo wrestling results, Kind of name and resume call backs, incentives with children, and abortions correlation with violence rates. This is an innovative method when there are other sources of evidence to back up the patters as seen with the sumo wrestling. I think that this is not an innovative technique when there isn’t much evidence supporting the pattern besides the statistics like with legalizing abortion and violence rates. I think the patterns need to be backed up with causation and cannot only rely on the correlation of the statistics and the pattern.

Class correlation: Andy stated, "Freakonomics serves as an inspiration and good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social Practices." I agree with this statement, Freakonomics is a good example of the oddity accepted as normal in dominant social practices because it unveils multiple social practices and shows the true weirdness of it. Such as a real estate agent whom one hires to help you receive maximum profit from the sale of your house when it does the opposite. I think that Freakonomics itself is a strange movie and left me with un-settling thoughts. I think they stated their theories and the causation in odd manners and not very clearly for the viewers. I do think they did a good job at getting the point across that every human as a citizen of a country should not accept all that is happening around them and simply live by what the dominant discourse tells them to see. It is important to see everything from a different viewpoint to truly understand it. I don’t believe the movie is a great "inspiration" because they don’t seem to get to the core of humans emotions and what someone may hold dear but I believe it is a good example of why we need to question everything. Honne and tatamae seem to really explain our society and how we hide things from our people, but at least the Japanese have words stating it exist. We don’t! I think that food production in the United States simply works because of their tatamae tactics backed up with the propaganda, literally changing people’s lifestyles. Honne is disregarded so that they can make money and in doing so they use tatamae to act as if the consumers best interest is in mind so life can be simpler and cheaper for them.