
Having loved Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, I had an "if you like this, you'll like this" feeling when I saw Steven E. Landsburg's More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics in a remainder bin. Three chapters in, it's as irritating a book of nonfiction as I've ever read, a reminder that economics, while it finds itself sticking its nose into all sorts of human affairs, is a rough tool.
The title essay is particularly vexing because the thesis is so endearing: If more people had sex, the spread of AIDS would be reduced. But of course, by "more people" he means one of two kinds of people: sexually conservative ones. If sexually conservative people increased their quantity of sexual partners, there would be more competition for partners and promiscuous people would have less sex. (More pure water in the stream dilutes the polluted.) He even gives these types names: shy Martin and sluttish Maxwell.
If only the two were so easy to tell apart! At what point does a sexually conservative person become a promiscuous one? Three partners a year? 50? What about people who are serially monogamous or go in and out of periods of promiscuity? What about luck--yes, promiscuous people are statistically more likely to become infected with a sexually transmitted disease, but, as individuals, they get infected by carriers. Carriers are impossible to detect unless everyone is regular tested, honest and upfront about their status.
Lansburg falls into the labelling trap: All his arguments rest on the accuracy of his labels and when you're talking about pure/impure, only a small percentage of the population fits cleanly into one label or the other. There's counter intuitive thinking and there's pretending that people are so easily categorized.
The "Be Fruitful And Multiply" chapter, which advocates that more people are better for the planet because it means more geniuses is equally troublesome. First, it presumes that geniuses are born, not made--a larger population living at greater disadvantage is going to produce fewer geniuses than a small one where people are presented with greater opportunities for learning and achievements. He also suggests that more people gives us more opportunity to choose a suitable partner, overlooking the problem of distribution and the crippling effect of too much choice.
UPDATE: This book continues to drive me crazy. With his jaunty tone and can-do attitude, Lansburg is a master at defining problems and forces as narrowly as he has to to be counterintuitive. Judges forbid juries to gather extra-trial information for fear they'll lose their jobs? Pul-leez. This ridiculous claims in this book are a testament to the small part rational thought plays in our behavioural patterns.
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