Reviews for The logic of life

The average rating for The logic of life based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-03-20 00:00:00 Jack Winover I've been trying to increase my understanding of economics lately, and have found myself reading a lot of books like this one. From 'The Undercover Economist' to 'Freakonomics' I feel a lot more informed about the world, but also better equipped to view my surroundings from new perspectives. This book is no exception. Harford has a knack for delivering complex information to the everyday reader in an entertaining way. Most importantly, he deals with issues that are relevant to the average person's life while making his main point that the decisions we make are essentially rational. By rational, Harford means, "rational people respond to incentives." With this assumption, he's able to flush out all kinds of interesting, and sometimes scary, incentives to which humans respond. Additionally, Harford claims that we respond to incentives that go beyond mere monetary considerations to our everyday decisions, i.e. sex, neighborhoods, race, culture, and so on. Basically, anything that has a consequence can also be an incentive. It's at this point that Harford says "rational choice theory" becomes controversial because it enters the realm of everyday human behavior. And for me, it is also controversial because I don't think we can call every individual rational in the sense that we all respond to reasonable incentives. Obviously we respond to incentives, but how logical are these incentives on the individual level? This book is about flushing out what incentives we are responding to in particular situations, and, as is always the case with statistics, an aggregate number that points to a particular incentive doesn't really tell us much about whether a particular individual is responding to that incentive. I think the incentives Harford highlights are enlightening and useful, but that he should stop short of labeling life logical.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-03-18 00:00:00 Thomas Buckley The explanatory ambition of this book is stunning--Harford offers rational actor explanations of changes in sexual activity, racial segregation in cities, professional poker, the number of people in parks at different times of day, the productivity of cities, the industrial revolution, colonization, and even why human beings eventually triumphed over neanderthals! Along the way you get informative sketches of major 20th century economists and game theorists and their theories. I was most impressed by the explanation of why small scale rational decisions made by individuals can lead to large-scale problems like extreme racial and class segregation in cities. For discussion of this point, see chapter 5, which begins with Harford trying to decide where to live in Washington, DC, and being told by his minder at the World Bank not to live east of 16th street! One statistic that stood out: each year a married woman delays having kids, her lifetime earnings go up 10% (chapter 3). This book is further proof (as if more was needed) that having things explained is incredibly enjoyable, and incomparably better than the refusal to offer explanations in the face of what seems like overwhelming complexity.