HW 9 - Freakonomics Response

In Freakonomics, correlation vs. causation is mentioned a lot, but in most cases people who argued both sides had no real resolution in the end. In the first section of the movie where it focused on how names affect a child's life. One person who studied the subject argued that having an "African American" name does not affect the child's life growing up, it is how the child is raised that determines their outcome. Another person who also was studying the subject discreetly disagreed with the other person saying that a person with an "African American" name and a person with a "White" name can have the same qualities and qualifications but they will still be treated differently because of their names. Both cases were expressed with some evidence but there was no solution! I saw the same thing happen in the last section of the movie where they showed examples of how incentives did and didn't work. There was no clear conclusion as to what was really causation and really correlation in the movie. Maybe this was supposed to leave us feeling ambiguous to the topics brought up, or maybe the creators weren't to sure themselves what was really correlation and causation.


Majority of the evidence used in the film was either based on real life examples, personal experience and generalizations. I believe that the least reliable pieces of the evidence was used to prove that abortion possibly led to the decrease in crime rate in the late 80's. Although it was a beautifully put together theory, I believe in that case the movie  showed lack of proof. The idea was interesting but was it was based on generalizations saying that most women who want abortions can't take care of a child and that most children raised by mothers who considered abortion will grow up to become criminals. The movie also contrasted this theory with an example of a country where women were forced to become pregnant and their children grew up to become criminals. This example seemed very extreme seeing as no one was forcing women to produce babies before abortion was completely legal in the state of New York. In the end, I didn't think there was enough strong evidence to convince me that this was causation rather than correlation. 


I disagree with the statement: Freakonomics serves as an inspiration and good example to our attempt to explore the "hidden-in-plain-sight" weirdness of dominant social practices. This is because the movie's focus wasn't on exposing the strange things we do normally without considering how strange they might be. The movies main goal was showing the importance of incentives and how opportunities/consequences can alter our actions. Although the topics are loosely related, the movie doesn't directly adress what we are trying to do in class.