The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics by Steven E. Landsburg

The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics Reviews

• 
  Mark

  I found the title of this book to be a little misleading. This is more of a libertarian rant by economist Landsburg -- complete with the moral reasoning why restaurants should not be forced by the government to serve all clientele regardless of race -- than it is a philosophy book. I guess it could be considered to be Landsburg's personal philosophy. By the end of his polemic, Landsburg is even disdaining the reading of books, calling it a hobby like tennis. I guess the next time I choose to read a book by an economist I'll pull a book off the shelf by Paul Krugman.
• 
  Barry Bridges

  If it were possible to take away stars for rating this book, Landsburg would owe me 5. It should be titled The Big Ego. He "likes" Steven Hawking, but consistently claims disagreement with Hawkings main premises. He routinely dismisses any thought but his own. His logic is incomplete and flawed, full of the same holes he attempts to point out in others. Furthermore, he fails at answering any questions other that can I write a book, get attention, and make money. Thankfully, I bought this for 50 cents and I threw it in the recycle bin when I was done.
• 
  Lindsay

  I have, with the help of a friend, concluded that while Landsburg’s writing is a bit off the wall, he would undoubtedly be an awesome professor to have in the area of economics or philosophy. I disagreed with half of Landsburg’s conclusions, and am still a bit baffled at some of the jumps he makes in his arguments, but regardless I did enjoy this book, though I very much doubt it will ever make the re-read list for me.
  Landsburg may call himself an economist, but deep down he is a mathematician who believes that all things can be boiled down to simple idealistic examples. In a way, he is not so different than me and my study of physics. I study simple idealist examples where a hockey puck is traveling on an infinitely long sheet of ice that is totally frictionless such that as long as the puck never hits another object or gust of wind, it will keep going at the same speed and direction forever. Obviously, this cannot happen in real life, but at the same time the model is simple enough for my understanding, yet accurate enough that I can formulate a fairly accurate hypothesis at what will actually happen if you were to throw a hockey puck onto a frozen lake. Landsburg has economic models, simple and idealistic like mine, to model real life situations of cost and effectiveness as well your basic supply and demand (along with some others that I will leave as a surprise if you decide to read it). What ultimately makes my models better or at the very least more accurate even for idealistic cases is that physics lacks what drives all his economic models out the window, the human factor. Humans screw things up like you wouldn’t believe, well actually, maybe you would. I found his economic models, particularly his one about pushing a man in front of a trolley in order to stop said trolley from killing five other people, (and other such variants of this model which include a switch, and an evil economist mwahaha). This becomes a question destined for the humanities sector of the philosophy department, not an economics textbook as he implies. If that one man you could push is “worth” more than the five people about to get run over, then by all means let the five die, after all, it’s all about keeping the general population happy, so says Landsburg anyway.
  There is nothing wrong with trying to make sense of the world, and as humans I think we will be doing that from the moment we open our eyes to the day we close them for the last time and I applaud Landsburg for doing just that, however, he takes his economic principles and attempts to apply them to damn near everything. His models work great for a very few select areas (which is where he should elaborate at which point I would gladly read more of his writing) but after that it gets shady and in some places down right silly, sort of like me using principles of electromagnetism to justify the French Revolution.
  As I said, I did enjoy this book (or rather I just enjoyed disagreeing with it so much) and I would recommend this book only to those who already know how to think for themselves. Giving this book to someone with little to no background in philosophy or science might be a bit disastrous if only for the fact that I truly believe the STD infection rate in America will rise (to understand this rather bizarre conclusion, read the book). I was humored, infuriated, annoyed, and fascinated by this book and give it a very well deserved 4 stars.
  
• 
  Don

  there is a lot of great advice and educated thinking in this book. The author's background in economics is the most important influence on the writing and he applies that sort of thinking to many subject areas.
  
  my paraphrasing of some of what i found interesting: many people hold erroneous believes about things they do not directly experience because it costs nothing to hold such beliefs. ethical dilemmas such as should one healthy person's organs be harvested to save five sick people from dieing? He creates an Economists Golden Rule to guide all decisions which is to include the benefit and loss felt by everyone involved.
  
  He makes some interesting and controversial claims such as people with few sexual partners could better the world by having more sex which would take away partners from promiscuous partners who may be spreading disease. Also it serves poor people better to spend $2 billion on food than $1 billion on food and $1 billion on expensive medical procedures.
  
  
• 
  Greg Linster

  Steven Landsburg believes that mathematics is at the core of existence. In other words, mathematics is the most fundamental thing in the universe. Not surprisingly, then, Landsburg's worldview is centered around this belief. In The Big Questions he takes on a host of philosophical problems and dazzles readers with his logical thinking and accessible prose. I thought the book was excellent and it forced me to wade through my own beliefs (I'm not still not convinced that mathematics is the most fundamental thing in the universe though!). Anyway, if you enjoy thinking about the big questions, then Landsburg is a must-read.
• 
  Shirley Freeman

  I read this a little bit at a time over many weeks so it is hard to remember much of it. It's a mixture of philosophy, economics, math, physics, theology (or not), educational philosophy etc. Landsburg thinks way outside the box and he is excellent at following things to their logical conclusions. He is brilliant - and often arrogant - but he does get you to think and to question the underlying assumptions of conventional wisdom. It would be a good discussion book (as long as we don't all have to understand all of the math and physics involved).
• 
  Ryan

  This was a very provocative book filled with all kinds of neat insight. I found myself very sympathetic to many of the author's viewpoints save only a few. The only reason I gave this four stars is because I would have liked to have seen some of the ideas more fully developed. Understandably, this is geared to a popular audience, but a deeper analysis on occasion would not have made it any less readable.
  
• 
  Nathan

  Philosophy and economics ands physics and math and ... finding lots to disagree with and lots to think about.
  
  Abandoned because reading his conclusions to tricky philosophical issues felt like missing the point that *I* am supposed to be *thinking* about them, not reading about them. Reading other people's conclusions is like confusing a takeaway for "cooking", or a vial of semen for sex.
• 
  Frank R

  Landsburg approaches Big Questions, from "What is real?" to "What should economic policy be?" with rational arguments based in mathematics. Very entertaining and thought-provoking. Some tangential digressions, but for the most part those are not a distraction.
  
• 
  David

  This fellow likes math and economics for many of the same reasons I do. I hope I don't come off as QUITE so conceited, though! In the end I thought his conceit got the better of him. He even cheated here and there.
• 
  Linda Robinson

  "I'm not saying that the laws of arithmetic are eternal and immutable; I'm saying more than that. Eternal means for all time, but mathematics exists outside of time." In the beginning there was arithmetic... Sheesh.
• 
  Nickolaus

  Almost 4 stars but not quite. A lot of good things to think about to be sure, and a very quick read as a result of his good writing and clear explanations. I felt that there was a bit of a lacking to some arguments -- particularly with regards to philosophy and consequentialism.
• 
  Bob

  Interesting ideas, but the author comes off as way too self-assured that his answers are "right". Being certain (or extremely confident) that you have deduced the logical answers to the big questions requires certainty about the premises. I'm not so confident of those.
• 
  Garrett Burnett

  The subtitle is a nice teaser, and the book--to some degree--delivers on the promise. Landsburg loves math and tries to do a lot with it. Even if he's not right in his answers to the "Big Questions" (and he accepts that he may not be), he provides an interesting point of view.
• 
  Gavin

  I learned about logic and clear thinking.
• 
  Matthew J Brown

  Recommended by a student, 8/24/2011
• 
  Lynn Beyrouthy

  Tedious, hideous, desultory and... bleh. Mediocre.
• 
  Martin Omedo

  "Do not be too constrained by traditional boundaries between subjects. Let your mind run free." That is a clarion call in the second last paragraph of this exciting read, The Big Question by Steven E Landsburg, and true to those words, it seems the good Professor was on a mission to prove his point.
  
  The title of Steven Landsburg's treatise, "The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics (which, according to Landsburg, must be the fabric of the universe), Economics, and Physics," does an excellent job of explaining the goal of this book. Landsburg addresses topics such as belief, knowledge, right versus wrong, and other philosophical problems through mathematics's lens (primarily).
  
  This attempt is an interesting (and ambitious) idea for a book. The execution, however, is rough and abrasive. Landsburg's points are consistently logical, cohesive, and coherent. However, how the points are made is often dismissive, making the arguments hard to separate from the harsh treatment of viewpoints that might not align with those of the author.
  
  While the book is a delight to read, and I learned quite a few things, other aspects are pretty controversial, especially the chapters on ethics. This is enunciated in his attempt to try to solve some of the classical moral dilemmas that have been debated for aeons. The author applies what I could label "impeccably sound economic arguments" to some ethical dilemmas such as the well-known Trolley Problem, its modification of the Doctor Problem, or its second modification, the Headache Problem. For example, Landsburg claims that it is OK to kill an innocent person to stop a minor headache that will last for an hour to one billion people! Landsberg's anti-humanism is sometimes disturbing, but I think it's primarily a by-product of his faith in mathematical mysticism. 
  
  It would be interesting to read a book that debates Landsburg's arguments. After all, this is what philosophy for the last three millennia has been about, arguments and counterarguments. So be sure you read the book, but read it with an open mind. It's an exciting book in an intellectually middling sort of way. I think the best way to put it comes from a much deeper economist: "a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like."
• 
  Pranjal Awasthi

  Pop economists often get a bad rep. The common allegations levied are of simplistic narratives, oversimplified axioms and thorough lack of nuance. While these are not entirely false they are most definitely not entirely correct. Under the assumption that not all books can be as dense as Journal papers you've got to understand that economists who write for the larger audience primarily serve two purposes. The first is to help the lay person understand how incentives work and number two point out the logical fallacies using real world examples to actually drive home the importance of thinking rationally like an economist. Stephen landsberg does exactly this with the addition of using witty and humorous prose. The book does not have the chart breaking light bulb moments which a book like freakonomics might have had but it gives you a lot of incentive to actually rethink your beliefs and hopefully become more rational by the time you finish this book. For me this book reaffirmed the mathematical nature of philosophy, the transactional nature of our morals and how we are all in our own little ways deluded economists who think that we are thinking rationally but are more emotionally driven than we might want to believe.In this, the book does a similar job what Kanheman's Thinking fast Thinking slow does, in that it drives home the point that many times what we believe in is a product of sensory perceptions, emotions and human biases. Overall a very fun and informative read which is eclectic and wide ranging in its scope
• 
  YHC

  Many small daily loge ideas, questions on philosophy, math, mostly on economics...I think i have understood the direction of author. Landsburg has similar taste on scientists. We like same group of scientists whom led us to have the same rational and critical thinking.
  
  
• 
  Amy

  Started off quite interesting but I gradually lost interest. Thought it would be quite eye opening and philosophical but the writer is an economist and there was too much economicky stuff for me! Good insight though!