Conventional Wisdom

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4. One of the most important arguments of this book is conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is a term we inherited from John Kenneth Galbraith, and he states that " we associate truth with convenience." Society frequently succumbs to this convenience, and oftentimes we forget to examine its factual evidence. "Failure is essential for growth" is a statement proclaimed by many experts, and is seen as conventional wisdom. From personal experience, I must disagree with this statement. After obtaining a bad score on a seventh grade English test, for the first time, I began to lack confidence in my school work. Studies show that failure can limit growth because we begin to view ourselves as incapable and weak, which results to more failure. …show more content…

I believe, however, we decide how we convey ourselves to the world, how we act, and that we are who we choose to be. For example, J.T. was associated with a group of drug dealers, but unlike the others he was a college graduate.
" You need money to make money" is a misleading statement used from time to time. Not only is this statement false; but it makes new entrepreneurs, with little to no money, feel inferior. A lack of money does not infer a lack of ideas, and resources, which are two essentials needed to start a business.
5. Experts tell us how to live our lives. They offer us their personal views ranging from how to eat and sleep, to how to be successful. Experts have information, and the information gives them an advantage. Due to the fact that they have the information, and we do not, they are given too much power. We place ourselves at this disadvantage because we fail to obtain the knowledge that is accessible to everyone. In Chapter 2, we learn how Stetson Kennedy used inside information from the Ku Klux Klan to exploit them. This event showed us the advantage of information and how it can be misused and abused.
7. The authors of "Freakonomics" discussed very persuasive arguments . …show more content…

Levitt and Dubner created an algorithm that questioned teachers cheating in the Chicago Public School system. This inquiry uncovered roughly 5 percent of teachers cheating in each classroom taught. The reason for cheating was the new No Child Left Behind laws, that scolded schools who did lousy on standardized testing. The most convincing deduction from this book was the effect of abortion on crime rates. The authors analyzed the drop in crime during the 1990's. Numerous experts had many theories to this occurrence, but the one ignored by the media was abortion. "Researchers found that in the instances where the woman was denied an abortion, she often resented her baby and failed to provide it a good home. Even when controlling for the income, age, education, and health of the mother, the researchers found that these children too were more likely to become criminals." After Roe v. Wade, the court case legalizing the abortion, nearly 750,000 woman had abortions. When the children who were aborted would have reached their teens, the time when young men begin committing crime, the crime rate

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