Think Like A Freak: The Authors Of Freakonomics Offer To Retrain Your Brain | Summary

The readers of Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics sent the authors of these books countless questions. Many of these questions were regarding various problems and issues that have affected society for a long time. Basically, the readers wanted the authors of the Freakonomics books to research their particular problems and find solutions.

The authors and the research team behind the Freakonomics books enjoy solving problems for people, but there is only so much that any human can do. Many of the problems that the authors encountered in their letters from readers were extremely difficult to solve and the mass quantity of questions made it physically impossible to even attempt to answer them all. This problem was contemplated for some time by the Freakonomics team and they decided that the solution to this problem was to teach other people how to think like they do.

This explains why the book is titled “Think like A Freak.” When the authors are talking about thinking like a freak, they are referring to a person’s ability to think about situations like an economist. There is the basic idea that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you will feed him for a lifetime. When people understand how to correctly evaluate any situation, they will be more likely to find a plausible solution.