Today we are joined by Steven Landsburg. Steven is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester, and he's written a number of books including More Sex is Safer Sex, The Armchair Economist, and, most recently, Can You Outsmart An Economist?.

You may be wondering about what economics has to do with SuperHuman Academy. Well, the reason I wanted to interview Dr. Landsburg is because of the way that he looks at the world. Economists as a whole see the world differently and are able to understand the reasons behind the things that the rest of us don't see, or think are completely random. You'll immediately see this in the examples that he gives. As it turns out, his latest book's subtitle is “100+ puzzles to train your brain”, and I think you'll understand why.

Through the course of the episode, we go deeper and deeper into the logic, rational thinking, and critical thinking that economics has trained Steven to be an expert in. On top of that, we also learn why even a basic study of these kinds of problems, helps him and anyone who studies this stuff better understand the world around them.

It's an absolutely fascinating episode, which I really enjoyed recording, and I know you will enjoy it too!

-Jonathan Levi

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In this episode, we discuss:

• Who is Steven Landsburg, and what does he do? [4:00]
• When did Steven's journey in economics start? [6:00]
• What is an example from economics that applies to the real world? [7:15]
• How has knowledge like this influenced Steven's life? [10:15]
• Single decisions vs. groups of decisions [12:00]
• Unconventional (but amazing) examples of viewing the world through the lens of economics [15:45]
• A few more amazing examples of how economists (and Steven) see the world [22:00]
• Can we learn how to think like an economist? [27:00]
• Is there a process in identifying patterns and answers like an economist? [29:15]
• Behind every behavior, weird or not, there is an incentive [31:15]
• What it really means to be an economist? [35:30]
• What are some of Steven's SuperHuman hacks? [36:00]
• The importance of working on something that you love [37:30]
• What are some books that have changed Steven's life? [40:00]
• A rapid-fire question for Steven Landsburg [42:30]
• Where can you find more about Steven Landsburg? [43:30]
• Steven Landsburg's final takeaway message [44:30]

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Can You Outsmart An Economist? by Steven Landsburg
• Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt
• Coaching for Improved Work Performance by Ferdinand F. Fournies
• Steven Landsburg's books on Amazon
• Frederic Bastiat's books on Amazon
• Milton Friedman's books on Amazon
• outsmartaneconomist.com
• The Big Questions Blog by Steven Landsburg

Favorite Quotes from Steven Landsburg:

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Before we get started, I want to ask you, what would it mean for you to be able to double or even triple your memory and ability to learn? So many people tell us that this skill would be absolutely life-changing for them, but they just don't have the time. They just don't have the time. So that's why we have developed, my team and I, a five-day memory mastery crash course, where we go into all the fundamental neuroscience and the actual techniques that are used by the world's best memory athletes and world record holders. It's a course that we value at $97, but here's the thing, we are actually giving this course away completely for free. All you have to do to enroll in the course is visit jle.vi/5 that's jle.vi/5.

Greetings, SuperFriends and welcome to this week's episode, which is lovingly handcrafted thanks to a review from Diana House in Canada, who says world-class podcast, five stars. Jonathan is a great host and has some phenomenal guests. I've learned so much from his Josh Felber and Carrie Campbell and Brian Grasso episodes. Thank you so much Diana, and for those of you who have not left a review yet, well, I don't have another one to read on the next episode, so please, please, please make sure to do so. Onto today's episode you guys today, we are joined by Steven Landsburg.

He is a professor of economics at the university of Rochester, and he's written a number of books, including more sexist, safer sex, the armchair economist, and most recently, can you outsmart an economist? Now you might be asking yourself, what does economics have to do with becoming superhuman? Well, the reason I wanted to interview Dr. Landsberg is because of the way that he looks at the world. Economists as a whole, see the world differently and they're able to understand the reasons behind the things that the rest of us just don't see or think are completely random. And you'll immediately see this in the examples that he gives was it turns out the subtitle of his book is 100 plus puzzles to train your brain and I think you'll see why.

Through the course of the episode, we go deeper and deeper into the logic and rational thinking, and critical thinking that economics has trained him to be an expert in, and on top of that, we learned why a basic study of these kinds of problems helps him and anyone who studies this stuff better understands the world around him. It's an absolutely fascinating episode. I really, really enjoyed recording it and I know you will enjoy listening to it, so without any further ado, Steven Landsburg.

Steven, welcome to the show. How are ya?

Steven Landsburg: Thanks very much for having me here, I'm doing great.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Well, I have been really, really excited to talk with you first off, because I really enjoyed a lot of the books in your genre from Freakonomics to well, I enjoyed economics as a whole, but also, I'm really excited to learn if I am actually smarter than an economist.

Steven Landsburg: I'm sure in some ways you are, and maybe in some other ways, you're not, we're all very smart about something much less smart about others.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. So, Steven, I tried to explain what you do in the intro, but I always love to hear, tell me a little bit about who you are, what you do, and how you got on this trajectory and this crazy thing we call life.

Steven Landsburg: I teach economics and I write books about economics and I write books in particular about using economics to understand not just financial markets, not just government policy, but the whole world around us, why people behave the way they do, looking at human behavior that looks a little strange or a little hard to understand. And trying to understand it better through the lens of economics, through the lens of starting with the presumption that when people are behaving in ways we can't understand, it's probably not because they're dumb, it's probably because they've got goals that we don't understand and if we think a little bit harder about what they're trying to accomplish, then their behavior will look more sensible and we will have learned something about them and we will learn something about the way the world works.

So my books are about applying ideas from economics to understanding how people behave when they go to the store, when they go into the voting booth, when they, uh, deal with their families when they get married when they get divorced when they choose how many children to have, and on the one hand, I want to focus on the ways in which that can make us be smarter about the world, but also I want to focus very much on the fact that it's just fun. And it's fun to think about the world, it's fun to think about things, it's fun to understand things better, and, uh, economics gives us a lot of tools for that. It gives us a lot of tools for looking beyond the obvious for realizing that there's often hidden motives in people's behavior and that it's fun to figure out what those motives are.

Jonathan Levi: I love that. When were you first turned on to this passion for understanding people through the lens of economics?

Steven Landsburg: I suppose, it happened in graduate school my graduate degree is in math. I got a Ph.D. in math from the University of Chicago, but I happened to fall in from the day I arrived at graduate school with a group of friends who were studying economics and they were so passionate and they were so excited and they always had something interesting to say about what they've been learning and what they'd been studying. I sort of, uh, felt like I needed to understand what they were talking about in order to keep up with the lunch conversations and in order to share their passion so I learned a lot of economics over the lunch table from them and started thinking more and more about economics, started learning from them what some of the interesting puzzles were, wrote, a couple of papers that addressed some of those puzzles that got some attention and then, although my degree was in math, I started getting some job offers in economics and eventually pursued that. And, uh, I still was not formally trained in economics, but I had the good fortune to land at a series of universities where there were wonderful colleagues who brought me up to speed, and, uh, who, again, I always had the tremendous good fortune of falling in with people who were really passionate about this stuff and that rubbed off and, uh, I feel very, very lucky to have found this community of people.

Jonathan Levi: Fascinating. So tell me a little bit about how economics has influenced the way that you live your life, some of these puzzles and problems that you've talked about, how they've caused you to look at life differently, and also how you think economics should influence our lives and the way that we live them. Because I think for most people, that's not a clear-cut connection until they study economics to the extent that you clearly have and understand just how much we are influenced by quote-unquote economics.

Steven Landsburg: You know, I, I think maybe the best way to answer that is to start with a simple example of how behavior becomes clearer through this lens. Let me take an example, you don't even have to talk about human beings, let's talk about pigs. What happens if you take a very strong pig and a very weak pig, you put them in a box together where there's a lever, you press the lever, and the food bowl at the other end of the box, fills up with food. Ask yourself the question, which pig will eat better? Now what's interesting about this experiment is that economic theory tells you which pig will eat better and it's not the one you expect. It's the weak pig. And biologists have actually run with that, they've taken out a strong pig and a weak pig, they've put them in a box together just like this, and it turns out they behave exactly the way that the economists predict. Here's what's going on, the weak pig has absolutely no incentive to press that lever because if the weak pig presses the lever, the strong pig is going to sit by the food bowl, wait for it to fill up, eat all the food, there is no payoff to the weak pig. If there's no payoff, he's not going to press the lever in the first place. The strong pig has an incentive because if he presses the lever, the weak pig sits by the food bowl, the week pig eats most of the food, but the strong pig has just enough time to run down to the food bowl, push the weak pig out of the way and get the last few crumbs before the weak pig finishes eating. That's a very small incentive, but it's just enough of an incentive to get them to push that lever. The weak pig gets most of the food because he sits by the bowl while the strong pig is pushing the lever, waiting for the strong pig to show up and push him aside, the weak pig gets about 85% of the food.

And again, this was something that economists realized, I think most people would not have guessed this, and when you put the pigs in the box, they do behave exactly the way the economists told you they would.

Jonathan Levi: That's fascinating what a, it almost reminds me of game theory, which of course is something you study when you study economics.

Steven Landsburg: Well, it should remind you of game theory because it is game theory. It's absolutely an example of game theory and game theory is a tremendous source of surprising counter-intuitive, uh, explanations of why people behave the way they do.

Jonathan Levi: Fascinating. How has something like this influenced your life or the way that you live your life?

I mean, are there any kind of guiding principles, you know, that you've been able to take out of your extensive study of economics and be like, you know, I probably should do this differently or I probably should stop doing this.

Steven Landsburg: Frankly, I think the main way it has influenced my life is it has given me something that's really fun to think about and I think about it all the time. So, uh, there's that, but if you're looking for, uh, sort of more direct applications, not just to the fact that I like to think about it, Economics is full of uh simple principles that can make you live your life better. One of the simplest and one of the first ones that we teach our students in the first courses is to recognize, for example, that sunk costs are sunk.

If you have made a mistake that you cannot recover from, it does not makes sense to try to recover from a mistake that you can't recover from. If you have thrown a lot of money at a project that you realize is going to fail, there is sometimes this human instinct to say, well, I've thrown so much money at this project. I can't abandon it now, but my goodness, if you figured it out, it's going to fail, of course, you should abandon it. There are behavioral economists particularly have investigated this, there is a tremendous human tendency to make the mistake of thinking that if you've invested a lot in something, that's a reason to continue investing more, it's not if you have figured out that things are less promising than you would expect them to be, you want very quickly to reevaluate and think about how much effort you're putting into this and I think, uh, it pays to remind yourself of that all the time and one thing that economics does is it does remind us of things like that all the time.

Jonathan Levi: That's brilliant and I hadn't even thought about the whole field of behavioral economics and all that kind of prominent thinking that's been done there in just decision-making and how even a cursory understanding of economics will make you make very different decisions and potentially decisions that are much better for you.

Steven Landsburg: Absolutely. In fact, in my new book, can you outsmart an economist, I have an entire chapter of little puzzles about choices that you could face, where somebody gives you a choice between, do you want to play this lottery or that lottery?

It's a little hard to do in a podcast because there are in order to describe the lotteries, there were some numbers and I think if you don't have the paper in front of you to keep those numbers straight, it's a little hard to pose the problem in a medium like this, but very simple problems where most people make the same choices as other people make. Would you rather, for example, have a million dollars for sure or would you rather play a lottery where you've got a good chance of getting $5 million and a small chance of getting nothing? There's a series of problems like that where most people make the same choices that everybody else makes.

And then I demonstrate in the book that if you, in fact consistently make those common choices, Then it is very easy for someone to take all of your money with certainty by offering you these choices in the correct sequence, you will end up not probabilistically, but with certainty at the end of the story, you will have given this person all of your money. That's gotta mean that the choices you're making are not wise choices, any one of the choices is individually perfectly wise.

If I asked you, would you rather have a million dollars for sure or a pretty good chance at $5 million? Either one of those choices is perfectly sensible. Some people prefer the security, some people prefer the shot at something really big, that's okay. Every one of these questions has no right answer.

Every one of these questions, some perfectly sensible people will answer it one way, some perfectly sensible people will answer it the other way. And yet the surprise is that the collection of answers that most people give if you give that entire series of answers, and if I present those lotteries to you in the right order, you will end up definitely facing disaster.

So I can't point to the single choice that is a mistake, but I can still tell you that if you make all of those choices, they add up to a collective mistake. And that is surprising that a bunch of choices no one of which is wrong can collectively be wrong if you make them all together. And again, I wish I could explain that a little better on the air here, but I think we would need to have a piece of paper in front of us with some numbers on it, I'll encourage people to look in the book if they want to see more detail on that.

Jonathan Levi: There you go. You know, as I listened to you speak, I'm realizing that a big part, I think of the value is learning how to think in this way, learning how to see the world in this way, and developing these kinds of analytical thinking skills to objectively look, not just at behavior, but at decisions, at value, and I mean, I often say so I'm marrying a lawyer, and I often say that she looks at the world in a very different but incredibly valuable way because she sees frameworks and liability and where other people see opportunities, she can see liability or potential for misinterpretation or miscommunication, I think the same is true of economists that you all are able to see the world in kind of this, what is the rational or irrational behavior behind this? And why is this happening?

Steven Landsburg: Sure. I'll give you another example of that, where I think economists clearly see something that other people don't see, and I'm sure that there are things that lawyers see that economists don't see and things that you see that I don't see, but there are some things that we really need the economists to see.

Here's a great example. There's a lot of evidence that college students, when they evaluate their professors, they give higher ratings to the better-looking professors, the physically beautiful professors get much higher ratings from their students than average-looking professors do. Most people look at that and they say, well, this tells me that college students are a little bit shallow, that they are swayed by physical beauty, even when the beauty is not relevant I mean, why should it matter if your teacher is beautiful? Your teacher, he or she is up there teaching you economics, teaching you math, teaching you physics, why would it matter how beautiful the teacher is?

Economics though tells me that you should expect on average, the beautiful teachers to actually be better teachers. And here's why. Beautiful people have a lot of job opportunities that other people don't have. Beautiful people not only are they more in demand as actors and models, but much more broadly, they're more in demand in retail sales, pretty much anything where you have to connect with the public, they're in demand. They've got a lot of options that average-looking people don't have now a beautiful person with a lot of options who chose to go into teaching is probably somebody who really loves teaching. An average-looking person who went into teaching is more or less to be somebody who went into teaching because there just were no other options.

So you would expect the beautiful teachers on average to be more enthusiastic about teaching. They are people who gave something up in order to teach. The average-looking people gave up less in order to teach. You would expect the beautiful people to be more enthusiastic, you'd expect them to be better.

In fact, when I teach this example to my students, I tell them if you show me a lighthouse keeper with a movie star, good looks, I will show you probably the greatest light housekeeper the world has ever seen because somebody who gave up a career in the movies in order to become a lighthouse keeper is somebody who is really dedicated to light housekeeping.

Jonathan Levi: I mean, that is absolutely fascinating and, and it all comes from you look not at the situation as it's presented, but you're looking at all these factors like opportunity costs. I think it's fascinating the way that you look at the world.

Steven Landsburg: Another example of it is exactly the same sort of insight I did some work some years ago on the question of whether parents on average, we're always talking on average here are going to be enormous deviations in all directions, but on average, whether parents prefer boys or girls, and there is a lot of evidence from a lot of different cultures that suggests that a majority of parents particularly for a first child, prefer to have a boy. On the other hand, if you look at adoption agencies, people overwhelmingly ask for girls, even for their first child. That seems to contradict the rest of the evidence, but what economists quickly realize and I have discovered that other people don't quickly realize is that the fact that people at adoption agencies are asking for girls is actually evidence that people prefer boys. And the reason for that is that when you go to an adoption agency to adopt a child, In a world where people prefer boys, the boys who have been given up for adoption, again, speaking very broadly on average, the boys who have been given up for adoption are the boys who the parents, for some reason, even though they were boys, the parents didn't want them. The girls who have been given up for adoption, maybe it's just because their parents didn't want a girl. And so on average, the boys and the adoption agencies will be of lower quality than the girls and the adoption agencies.

If people prefer boys, The average boy put up for adoption will be of lower quality than the average girl put up for adoption. Adoptive parents have thought hard about that kind of thing, and they want children of high-quality children with no behavioral problems, et cetera, so it makes sense for them to try to adopt a girl, even if their first choice would have been a boy if they could have controlled for quality.

Jonathan Levi: It sounds a little bit cruel when we use the term quality to describe a human being but I totally understand what you're saying is, you know, in terms of ease of care and in terms of, you know, a child who's not going to be difficult or have emotional problems or health problems, or a lot of parents aren't willing to take on that burden, and essentially if I understand correctly, you're saying if a boy ends up in an adoption agency, there's likely a reason that the parents, you know, felt it was too much of a challenge.

Steven Landsburg: Exactly. If a boy ends up an adoption agency, it's like, and again, of course, there are going to be exceptions all over the place, it's likely because the parents thought he was too much of a challenge. Girls on the other hand, sometimes end up at adoption agencies just because parents prefer not to have girls. Again, you know, this is a statistical thing, but there are going to be some girls who are there, not because of behavioral problems, not because of challenges, but just because of gender.

And so if you're shopping at the adoption agency, you're right, quality, I realized too, non-economist sounds like cold word economists have gotten used to using language in that way, but again, as you said, it refers just to, uh, whatever challenges and whatever features it is that the parents care about.

You got a better shot adopting a girl, especially in a world where people have a strong preference for boys, and so the fact that people are asking for girls is in fact evidence that we live in a world where people prefer boys. Again, that's the parents to economists. I don't think it's apparent to most other people.

Jonathan Levi: Right, right. Yeah. I figured we would clarify that one cause I got the impression that quality was it economics Terbosic I, I'm not sure how that's going to play out as well on the recordings and maybe we'll just clarify.

Steven Landsburg: All we mean by quality is that they fit better, whatever it is that the parents are looking for.

Jonathan Levi: Right. And they're a better match to what people in the market are looking for so to speak.

Steven Landsburg: Exactly.

Jonathan Levi: These examples are fascinating. I feel like I could just listen to these all day long.

Steven Landsburg: I got plenty more if you want them.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Yeah. Let's do a couple more cause I'm just fascinated by these and I think people listening in the audience are also fascinated by just this completely different way of seeing the world.

Steven Landsburg: You know, I saw a tweet recently from it was somebody well known and it's slipping my mind, who it was. Again, the name is in my book, uh, Kenya, smarten economists, but somebody fairly prominent tweeted to ask why it is that at least in the United States, the number of fast-food cooks is enormous compared to the number of coal miners?

Nevertheless, our politicians are constantly looking for ways to help the coal miners at a level that they're never looking for ways to help the fast-food cooks. Coal miners, get a lot of attention, a lot of discussion among politicians, what can we do to make their lives better? Fast-food cooks don't lead very desirable lives either on average but they get almost no attention from politicians. Why is that? And this led to a long discussion on Twitter, where people were raising all kinds of possibilities, you know, is it possibly a racial thing that the racial makeup in one profession is different than it is in the other, but again, to an economist, the answer is almost obvious.

The answer is that the very fact that there was a limited number of coal miners and a practically unlimited number of fast-food cooks means that it is worthwhile for coal miners to cultivate the attention of politicians. Because if politicians do something to help coal miners, Coal miners will benefit.

If politicians raise the wages of coal miners, coal miners will earn higher wages and they will keep those higher wages because it is difficult for well, I'll explain why I'll talk about the fast-food cooks. What happens if the fast-food cooks' lobby for higher wages and the politicians help them? I'll tell you what happens.

Their wages go up and immediately people flood into fast food cooking as a job. People quit the car washes, they quit other unskilled occupations and they become fast-food cooks and the wages are bid right back down again. The fast-food cooks, even if you could get them organized, even if they were brilliantly organized, there is little reward for lobbying for favors because whatever favors they get are just going to draw more people into that job and that's going to bid their wages right back down. Coal miners don't face that because there are a limited number of coal mines. People can't flood into coal mining because there just aren't a lot of coal mining jobs for people to try and take. The people who cultivate the politicians are going to be the people in jobs that it is hard to enter. That's where the rewards are. That's why, for example, in countries around the world and you're in Israel, I expect this is true there, although I'm not knowledgeable and you may be more knowledgeable than me, but in countries around the world, We see governments catering to farmers in a way that they never cater to let's say grocery store owners.

The reason for that is again if the grocery store owners get favors from the politicians, the result of that is that a lot more grocery stores are going to open up and all of those gains are going to get competed away. Farmers don't face that problem so much because there's a limited amount of farmland. People can't suddenly turn urban land into farmland. It's much harder for people to rush into farming. Therefore, farmers get a reward that they can hang on to if they can get some favors from those politicians.

Jonathan Levi: Fascinating.

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You know, as you were speaking, Steven, I was just thinking to myself, and maybe this is getting into the topic of, can you outsmart an economist, which I see the subtitle of the book is a hundred plus puzzles to train your brain so I may have just spoiled what question I'm going to ask, but can we learn how to think in this way, critically without doing, you know, a degree in economics or studying economics, to the extent that you have?

Steven Landsburg: I like to think that my books are the very best uh gateway to that. I really have tried to emphasize in my books again, I'll, I'll take the opportunity to say the title again.

Can you outsmart an economist is my latest book, but I, I have a series of books where I have tried to make this stuff really accessible in a way that is, you mentioned a Freakonomics earlier, Freakonomics is a wonderful book. I reviewed it for the wall street journal and I wrote a rave review of it. And in fact, when it first came out, it, uh, it shot up on Amazon from number 40,000 or something to number one, the day my review came out and has stayed up there ever since.

So I take some credit for that. Freakonomics is an absolutely wonderful book, but my books are a little different. Freakonomics is full of fascinating facts with certainly some economic logic there but it's full of fascinating facts. I try to concentrate more on the fascinating logic on the way of thinking a step further than the other guy is thinking, thinking a little deeper, seeing beyond the obvious, I like to say that Freakonomics is out to dazzle you with facts and they succeed extremely well. I'm out to dazzle you with logic and I hope I'm, um, I'm equally successful in that way. The logic is there, it's not that hard, it does take a little bit of getting used to, but I've trying to write books that will help people get used to that, and, uh, I always try and emphasize along the way. The main reason to think about this stuff is that it's fun and, uh, I try to be playful with it and make it easy to learn, so I will immodestly say that if you want to think this way, you should be buying my books.

Jonathan Levi: I really love that answer. I appreciate that.

And you know, part of what I'm thinking is, you know, how do we learn this? Is this clearly you're an advocate of kind of case method for learning it, but I'm also wondering, is there a process that you go through? I mean, let's say that you observe some really strange behavior happening in your city and all these people are doing X where you really expect them to do Y.

As someone trained in your background, who has written books on exactly these kinds of puzzles, what's the first thing you look at? What's the first thing you do? Where do you start?

Steven Landsburg: Where I start is always by asking, you know, these people are doing something strange. If I want to understand why they're doing it, then I have to think about what is it that they're trying to accomplish?

What goal is consistent with the behavior that I'm seeing. And that's a great exercise in all kinds of ways. First of all, as I've said, it's fun, second of all, it's enlightening, and third of all, I think it makes you a more empathetic person. If you see somebody behaving in a way that you think is weird, you could just wave your hand and say, Oh, that's weird, or, Oh, he's stupid or she's stupid, but if you force yourself to ask, why are they doing that? What might they be trying to accomplish that maybe it's not what I would be trying to accomplish. Maybe there's something they care about, which is not what I care about, but I have to ask myself if they're doing this thing and if I don't start off by assuming they're just stupid, then there must be some reason behind it and if I can force myself to think about what is that reason, then I am forcing myself to think a little harder about what's going on in another person's brain and I think that's good practice for being a more empathetic person and for not just understanding the world better, but for being more caring and more understanding.

Jonathan Levi: That's a really good answer. Just starting by looking at the incentive, right? Because I've heard you say elsewhere in researching people respond to incentives, you know, that summarizes pretty well.

Steven Landsburg: That's all of economics right there.

Jonathan Levi: Right. I didn't want to go out and say it, but it's all of economics.

People respond really well to incentives and it's kind of like, you know, whenever there's a crime drama that the new detective is always told, follow the money, well follow the incentive and you'll pretty soon figure out why people are behaving the way that they are. I think that's also potentially really interesting in human relationships, right?

Is it a big turning point for me and this is a far-out tangent, but maybe this relates to economics? A big turning point for me, was realizing that people didn't do things to me, people did things because of reasons that they thought were going to be beneficial to them in their own way and I was an innocent bystander, and that even counts for, you know, someone publicly defaming you on the internet, they did it because they thought there was some incentive for them, whether that is the moral high ground, or they felt that they were protecting others from, you know, your snake oil, and I came to realize that there is a complete separation between those two things and there's an incentive that I don't understand. The incentive is not to do me harm because very few people have that level of Shodan Freud that it would actually be an incentive to do me harm or to do anyone else harm.

Steven Landsburg: What a tremendous insight. And I, you know, I think all of us who are visible on the internet have run into these people who appear to be completely motivated by, by doing us harm for no reason that we can understand, but you are absolutely right.

They have their own incentives, and the effect on us is nowhere near it's not in the top 50 reasons that they're doing what they're doing. And if we can realize that, and if we can focus on that, then we understand them better, we understand the world better, and I think it. It probably makes us happier to understand those things.

Jonathan Levi: Sure. And I think this is a master skill that I see in my fiance where, you know, I'll do something stupid or inconsiderate or forget to do something that I should be doing and to her credit into migraine benefit, her first thought is not, why would he do that to me? Or why wouldn't he do that? It's okay, what was he thinking was going to happen? Why did he do that? And what was the most likely positive intention behind it? I mean, it really makes all the difference, not just in her quality of life for what I can tell, but also in my quality of life.

Steven Landsburg: You know, you say that so articulately, and as you say it, I, I think back, I'm not going to go into details, but there are certainly times in my past, when, if I had had that insight, I would have been much more effective and much happier.

Jonathan Levi: Totally. I'll add one more example on this lovely tangent we're on, which is I once read, I was having some real difficulty with a team member in my last business. And someone handed me a book called coaching for improved work performance, and it exposed me. It was by Ferdinand Forney, I still remember it to this day.

And there were many very interesting ideas, including the idea that you know, before you ask yourself why is this person doing the wrong thing, ask yourself first, do they know what the right thing is? Which was like a breakthrough to me that other people couldn't see what was going on in my mind, but another thing that I thought was so fascinating was that in some sick, twisted, weird way for some people, and I'm not saying these people are sociopaths or anything, but for some people being kind of called out or reprimanded or bugged by the boss, Gives them a subconscious, I mean, that's an incentive because it gives them subconsciously a signal that they are important and worth the boss's time and the boss must care so much to repeatedly helped me with this thing I've been struggling with and it was like, Oh my God, you know, even negative attention can be an incentive and it just, at the tender age of, I think it was 18 or 19 when I read this book, helped me realize, like, you have no idea what other people's incentives look like, and they could be so different from your incentives.

Steven Landsburg: Absolutely. That's a great insight and it's really an economic insight and it goes to the heart of what it means to be an economist. I always ask what are the other person's incentives, putting, and recognizing that they may be very, very different than the incentives that you would have in that situation.

And, uh, it does help you see the world better and function better in the world.

Jonathan Levi: That's fantastic. Stephen, I know we're coming up on time here, so I do want to transition and ask you just because you are an intellectual and you've written a number of books and it's used quite a bit in your career, so I would be remiss if I didn't ask you some rapid-fire questions about how you perform, how you stay productive, and how you achieve all the things that you've achieved so what are some of your hacks in your arsenal that keep you performing at a superhuman level, whether that's research or writing your books or being fit and healthy?

Steven Landsburg: You know, I'm not sure that I have any particular insights on that, I know this is the focus of your podcast, and I hate to say it, but I, I'm not sure I have any particular hacks to offer. I get up in the morning, I have the great good fortune of having a career that I love, and so I get up in the morning and I'm eager to get to work, and I get to work and I work on whatever seems like the most fun thing to work on that day, I sometimes write books, I sometimes teach, I still do research, not just in economics, but also in pure math, and some days I get up and I feel like thinking about economics some days I get up and I feel like thinking about math, I have the great, good fortune of being in a career where I am flexible enough to do just exactly what I want to do every day.

And, uh, you know, one of the things that keep me going is that I don't spend a lot of time doing things that I don't want to do. I realize a lot of people don't have that option and I'm tremendously grateful every day that I do have it, but, uh, trying to work on something that you're not excited about, I think is a very difficult way to go, no matter how determined you are to do well, you're always going to be competing with people who love what they're doing, and if they love what they're doing, they're going to have more energy than you do. So, you know, the real hack is if you're doing something that is not making you want to get out of bed in the morning, I have, again, always had the good fortune of not facing that problem. I've always wanted to get out of bed in the morning and do what I'm doing. But if you were somebody who didn't have that good fortune, I would encourage you to think really long and hard about whether you should be doing something else.

Jonathan Levi: That's fantastic. And I will not only second that I will say that you just described exactly when I was between opportunities and I had sold one business and tried to launch another and it wasn't working, and I was looking for the next thing, that was actually exactly my criteria. I set myself a six-month goal, and at the end of six months, my goal cause you know, I do the whole SMA R T specific measurable, actionable reasonable time-based goals, my SMART goal was by December 31st, I will be working on a long-term project with a positive impact that makes me excited to get out of bed in the morning. Are the criteria, is, am I excited to get out of bed in the morning and work on this thing?

Steven Landsburg: There you go. I think that's great. Now of course, in the other direction, I always worry when I give this advice to students that if I tell them you got to do something you're excited about and they look around and they say, well, there's nothing I'm excited about therefore, I should do nothing. I worry they're going to take it that way. And the fact is that the harder you work at something often, the more excited about it you get. Something can seem so formidable and so daunting at the beginning that it just is off-putting and you don't want to face it. But if you throw yourself into something, if you really work hard at something, it becomes more fascinating the more you work on it, and the more you start to master it, the more you start to get into the details of understanding what you're doing and how things work, the more fascinating, the more exciting it gets. So it's a balancing act there, on the one hand, you don't want to end up in something that's not going to excite you, but on the other hand, you do want to keep your mind open to the fact that what doesn't excite you today might excite you tomorrow if you give it a chance.

Jonathan Levi: That's a fantastic, fantastic caveat I think. What are a few books that have changed your life?

Steven Landsburg: A few books that have changed my life there is, I don't know if you know of the French economist named uh Bastiat, who wrote in the 19th century, a brilliant writer who really gave uh, not just economists, but the whole world, a way of seeing clearly the effects of economic policies, the effect of things and these are going to sound like dry subjects, but taxation, tariffs, government policies, and he also wrote about legal issues. There is a little book called the law. I would recommend Bastiat to anybody who wants to understand the public policy better.

I learned from him not just how to think clearly, but how to write clearly. It's just, it's beautiful writing, it's brilliant, anything by Bastiat. The other great economist who have both thought and written very clearly, Milton Friedman is a tremendous example of somebody who reached the public and made ideas clear in a way that again, many of these ideas were familiar to economists, but until Milton Friedman came along, they were not well understood and through his books and through his television shows and his public speaking, he became a spokesman for a lot of specific ideological views that uh, many economists share, many economists don't share, but also he never made etiology or politics a condition for being your friend. He was somebody who was always willing to interact with anybody, no matter how different from his views, their views were, he was always willing to interact, to discuss ideas, to take ideas seriously, regardless of the source, you see him in the videos on YouTube, interacting with people who are diametrically opposed to him on ideology, but always respecting what they have to say, listening carefully to what they have to say, picking apart the logic mercilessly, when the logic was not solid, acknowledging their good logical points when the logic was solid, engaging and showing people how much there was to be gained by talking to each other. I think he was brilliant that way, and all of his writing, I think, uh, whether or not you agree with all of it is a tremendous lesson in how much there is to be gained by engaging with ideas.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. Steven, tough question for you, complete this sentence for me, most people would be much better off if they just?

Steven Landsburg: Most people would be better off if they just, I'm going to say stopped to think for a minute before reacting to something. You see something that makes you angry and it's so easy to just run with that anger whereas if you stop for a minute and ask, as we talked about before, what's behind this action, that's making me so angry what are they trying to accomplish? It will help me understand their action better, it will help me respond in a more sensible, more useful way, and just running with your initial anger is often a great mistake.

Jonathan Levi: That's a fantastic one and one that I aspire to, as much as I can, as Joe Polish always says, respond, don't react.

Steven Landsburg: Great way of saying it.

Jonathan Levi: Easier said than done sometimes. Steven, I want to give you an opportunity to let people know where they can reach out and learn more, we're obviously going to put a link to the book in the show notes, but anywhere else that we can send folks to check out all this stuff you're working on.

Steven Landsburg: Absolutely. Two things. First of all, outsmartaneconomist.com. outsmartaneconomist.com will give you links to reviews of my newest book and a place to buy it, and you'll actually be able to read for free the first chapter, if you go to outsmartaneconomist.com, that's all one word, outsmartaneconomist.com, you'll be able to read a chapter for free and learn much more about the book. The other thing is my blog, which is at thebigquestions.com. I used to blog every day, now I blog, uh, three or four times a month so it's a little less active than it used to be but of course all the old posts are there, there are years and years of old posts to go back and read through, the blog again is that thebigquestions.com and there's a tremendous amount of back archives there that you can read through with, uh, the sort of material that we've been talking about today.

outsmartaneconomist.com and thebigquestions.com.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. And one last question for you just cause we ask it at the end of every single episode, which is, if people remember just one key takeaway from this episode and they carry it with them for the rest of their lives, what would you hope for that to be?

Steven Landsburg: I would hope for that to buy my books.

Jonathan Levi: I love it. I love it. Dr. Steven Landsburg, thank you very, very much for spending your time. I really enjoyed our conversation and I know our audience did as well.

Steven Landsburg: So did I, and I want to say on the air here, I've done a lot of these podcasts and you are the best you are just really terrific. Thank you so much for having me.

Jonathan Levi: Thank you. I really appreciate it. You take care.

Steven Landsburg: You too.

Jonathan Levi: All right. SuperFriends, that is all we have for you today, but I hope you guys really enjoyed the show and I hope you learned a ton of actionable information tips, advice that will help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

If you've enjoyed the show, please take a moment. To leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or drop us a quick little note on the Twitter machine  @gosuperhuman. Also, if you have any ideas for anyone out there who you would love to see on the show, we always love to hear your recommendations. You can submit on our website, or you can just drop us an email and let us know that's all for today, guys. Thanks for tuning in.

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. For more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.