Posted March 27, Reviewed by Kaja Perina. In an earlier post , I ponder whether prostitution is evolutionarily familiar or evolutionarily novel and whether men try to impress prostitutes. My musing was prompted by an anecdote from Superfreakonomics.
A venture capitalist in Chicago attends one of Steve Levitt's lectures. The venture capitalist notices a copy of Freakonomics in Allie's apartment, and mentions that he has just attended a lecture given by one of the coauthors of the book, in an apparent attempt to impress Allie. In Levitt and Dubner's words, "The male instinct to impress the female is apparently strong even when the sex is already bought and paid for.
After her encounter with the venture capitalist, Allie contacted Levitt, which is why Levitt knows about the encounter. Allie and Levitt met in person a few days later, strictly for the purpose of academic research or at least so says Levitt , they have become friends, and Levitt even invited Allie to give a guest lecture in the "Economics of Crime " course that he teaches at the University of Chicago.
Several students afterwards commented to Levitt that Allie's lecture was the single-best lecture that they had attended in all their years at the University of Chicago, "which is both a firm testament to Allie's insights and a brutal indictment of Levitt and the other professors. Meanwhile, back at the Scientific Fundamentalist blog, my earlier post caught the attention of a retired prostitute named Maggie.
She contacted me out of the blue just like Allie contacted Levitt out of the blue and corrected some misconceptions that I had about prostitution. She saw right through me and correctly surmised that I had no personal experience or knowledge of prostitution. Essentially, I didn't know what I was talking about. Maggie very politely pointed out some of my misconceptions. Since I cannot really say it any better than she did in her initial email message to me, I'll quote her message here.
