What could the two men in the title of this chapter possibly have in common? Dubner and Levitt pose a few possible
answers to this question. (Here’s a hint: Both men provide clever examples of thinking like a Freak.)
While you’ll have to read the chapter for details on similarities between King Solomon and David Lee Roth, it’s safe
to say that both men used aspects of game theory to detect dishonesty and determine when individuals were telling
the truth (and when they were not). Knowing who was lying helped each man make important decisions that
had significant impact on their careers and reputations. Dubner and Levitt have dubbed this form of lie-detection
Teaching Your Garden to Weed Itself.
Designing a self-weeding garden sounds like a difficult task! Fortunately chapter 7 includes lots of examples to
help you get started planting your own. For example, Peter Leeson studies Hungarian church records from the
13th century in which priests were asked to determine when those accused of crimes were innocent or guilty. Tony
Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, has devised a self-weeding scheme to reduce turnover in his company, and cold beer
was used to prevent the discovery of a secret bullet factory in Israel after World War II. Finally, Nigerian letter fraud
scammers and the authors of this book use a version of the self-weeding garden to entice specific groups of people
to reveal themselves (gullible individuals for the former and would-be terrorists for the latter).