Chris Anderson brought together a group of 150 or so TEDsters and their guests last night at "TED HQ" in Tribeca for an evening of wine, hors d'oeuvres and conversation. The highlight? Brief presentations by Steven Levitt and Malcolm Gladwell.
Levitt went first. It was auspicious to hear him on the day the Wall Street Journal ran a glowing review of his new book, Freakonomics, co-written with Steven Dubner. Levitt gave an 11 minute overview of what will likely be the most controversial analysis from the new book. The significant drop in New York City's murder rate during the mid- to late-90s, he claims, was not the result of the Giuliani/Bratton "community policing" strategy, but rather of three other factors: 1) David Dinkins' dramatic police hiring campaign in the early 90s; 2) the consequent increase in the rate of incarceration of young (mostly minority) males; and, most importantly for Levitt, 3) the delayed effects of legalizing abortion in New York in 1970, three years before the Roe v. Wade decision. Levitt showed national statistics that show similar decreases in other states three years later than New York.
Gladwell gently demurred. He wondered if Levitt's analysis too heavily weighted the distant causes of crime (reduced birth rate) over the proximal causes (e.g., carrying a gun because of a belief that everyone else on the street is carrying one.) He also asked why the introduction of oral contraceptives in the early 60s (thereby also reducing birth rates) had produced a historic higher murder rate in the mid- to late-70s.
Very interesting, very thought provoking, like any TED session.
My thoughts immediately jumped to complexity. What we've seen over the past 50 years is that major social programs (the "Great Society," for example) or widespread shifts in cultural beliefs/practices ("women's liberation") unavoidably yield substantial waves of unintended consequences. I would argue that today's reluctance to seriously consider universal healthcare coverage, for example, is an offshoot of the caricaturization of system-scamming "welfare moms" in the wake of 1960s "social experiments." Likewise, it seems to me the alarming rise in young female smokers is an unintended result of tobacco company marketers targeting women newly empowered by "the movement."
And now we have Levitt's provocative hypothesis. Lesson? It is not possible to intervene in complex systems without producing outcomes we could never at the outset predict. A good thing to keep in mind for those of us who glibly label ourselves, "change agents."
Thanks, Chris, for a terrific event.
UPDATE: John Tierney's NY Times 4/16/05 op-ed recounts (sub. req'd) the gist of the TED event.
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