We’ve been running lots of Q&As of late, with you, the readers, asking the questions.
A fellow named Thomas Whitaker recently wrote us to suggest that we submit to a Q&A ourselves. This seemed like a sensible suggestion.
We did a bunch of Q&As back when the book came out (see here and here and here, and these FAQs), but a lot has happened since then.
So go ahead, fire away, and we’ll answer a good number of your questions. Warning: our publisher may end up publishing segments of this Q&A and/or using it for publicity purposes, so if you do ask a question, please consider your submission a granting of permission as well.
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Would you define yourselves as obsessive parents?
Great idea!
I recall Steve once saying (maybe even in the book?) that he could effectively battle terrorism if he had access to enough data.
In a perfect situation, what data would you need? In a more practical situation, what data do you think might be available (to the intelligence community, for example) that you could work with?
- Bas (from the Netherlands)
Ok, not sure if this is the kind of question you are interested in, or able to answer, but it kept me awake last night!
I just watched the movie Die Hard 4.0, where, basically, the bad guy hacks into a bank and downloads all the money from the accounts onto a hard drive, and steals it.
Now, I am a programmer, and I can’t see how this works, I suspect it doesn’t. You can’t take a hard drive into a bank and make a deposit with it.
So I kept thinking. To move the money into you account, you would have to get the victim bank to send a message to your bank asking them to put money into your account. However, if that is what happens, why not just hack into that communications system, and send false messages, without messing around with other peoples accounts. And then I ask myself, what stops the bank from just making up money, and sending it to other banks?
All this leads me to conclude that I dont know what money in a bank account actually means, how it is ‘backed’, what stops a bank from just adding extra numbers to your account, and how these numbers are transfered between banks?
Is there a simple answer? Can you explain?
When is the Freakonomics sequel coming out?
Prof Levitt,
Does it frustrate you when other econobloggers don’t take you or your work seriously? It seems like they look at you as a pop commentator and not a serious economist.
The cheating teacher analysis in Freakonomics was an elegant piece of work, has it been used outside the original sample space and applied to the nationwide testing effort?
Do you consider the primary target of this blog to be economists, ie. economics graduates and academics, or just regular joe soaps? Have you ever decided not to post something because it is too technical or mathematical?
I have a corollary to Bas Brouwer’s question on terrorism and free will. Do you believe this argument can be carried to its logical extreme – that any event or behavior (economic or otherwise) could be effectively predicted with enough data and processing time/speed? If so, isn’t this an argument against free will?