The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/30/malcolm_gladwell_no/

by astrec • 18 years ago

71 54 18 years ago

theregister.co.uk

Alex391710• 18 years ago

This article is kind of amusing, but it's clear the author didn't actually read Gladwell's newest book. While in general I think it'd be fair to describe Gladwell's writing as intellectual comfort food, Outliers is pretty good. The last chapter on KIPP was pretty dubious, but not in a way that detracted from the thesis.

fallentimes3• 18 years ago

It was a lot better than I thought it'd be, and certainly better than Blink, but Gladwell seems to have this habit of using multiple anecdotes as data, which really bugs me. It's especially dangerous because he shifts between using empirical analysis to anecdotal-based logic.

I hope he doesn't turn in to Seth Godin.

Alex391710• 18 years ago

When Gladwell uses anecdotes he's not using them as data, but rather to give the facts an emotional valence.

electromagnetic• 18 years ago

I think The Register can be hilarious. I found that about a 6 out of 10, 1 being "oh my god that's so bad my ears are bleeding!" and 10 being "oh my god I laughed up a lung!". It just wasn't funny and like hell I'm reading like 6 printed pages worth of mildly amusing drivel.

Gladwell undoubtedly isn't the greatest scientific writer, he just points out that we have to think about things more than we do. The message I got was that on one hand organizations like the military don't act fast enough, while police officers are encouraged to think so fast that they stop reevaluating the situation.

trominos• 18 years ago

Dunno about that.

I read the first seven (I think) chapters of Outliers, and I can only remember Gladwell using two statistically relevant pieces of information: that sports players are born close to the cutoff line for their sport, and that violinists who have a chance to become virtuosos have uniformly practiced about 10000 hours, while the merely "good" ones have practiced about 8000 hours and the bad ones have practiced 4000 hours. (Incidentally, I don't really believe the second one -- because it implies that all kinds "effortful practice" are exactly as efficient as one another.) I'm not saying that there weren't others, just that I can't remember them.

I can remember at least eight statistically irrelevant anecdotes, though, and certainly I think anecdotes (and boilerplate) made up at least 80% of those first seven chapters. Plus his anecdotes kind of sucked. The Beatles prove the 10000 hour rule? Okay, I guess. Bill Joy? I don't really think so. Bill Gates? Hell no.

andreyf• 18 years ago

I can only remember Gladwell using two statistically relevant pieces of information...

I can remember at least eight statistically irrelevant anecdotes...

Which is precisely why authors use "statistically irrelevant" anecdotes. Because they help you emotionally connect to the material and remember it better.

dcminter• 18 years ago

Hmm. I can spot an Orlowski article from the title these days; he's made something of a career of detracting from popular organisations (Google, Wikipedia, etc.) and persons.

I dislike the approach partly from a distaste for the tabloid savaging of the successful but mostly because it seems to lead to rather thin regurgitations of existing critiques. I believe that is the case with this article.

DenisM• 18 years ago

Orlowski is the sole reason I unsubscribed from the Register. I hope he will not be frequent here.

axod2• 18 years ago

It deserves an upmod simply for using the excellent word "plebs".

ksvs• 18 years ago

It's an amusing word, but a bad sign when one uses it.

axod2• 18 years ago

Agreed... It's a dull sunday - made me chuckle.

sharkfish2• 18 years ago

I hate rants with misspellings. One I found was "breaktaking". I'm sure he meant "breathtaking". Get an editor, you twat.

sharkfish2• 18 years ago

I see I'm being modded down by programmers who also can't spell.

allenbrunson• 18 years ago

No, you are being modded down for being crude. That kind of thing might be common on other forums, but not here.

jsmcgd• 18 years ago

It's probably for your language.

queensnake• 18 years ago

For taking up space on HN with nothing.

stcredzero• 18 years ago

Specifically, you're mainly being downmodded for your last phrase: "you" and the following 4-letter word. If you left that off, you would've gotten a few points down at most. (And I would've up-modded you, as I also dislike spelling mistakes.)

charlesju• 18 years ago

I think it's so easy to critique someone's piece of work. But quite frankly, it's pretty petty and childish to openly bash an author with such an article.

If people like what he's saying, if people find that Malcolm resonates with their perception of reality, then all the better. It should be a personal choice as to what we find interesting and not interesting, rather than some omnipotent pundit at the "Register" dictating it to us.

I think that the author of the article is just jealous that he cannot personally derive anything of interest to say without belittling a colleague.

petercooper3• 18 years ago

Andrew Orlowski has made the typical geek mistake of dismissing the value of presentation in relation to content. Gladwell may well twist soft scientific insights into "intellectual comfort food" (as said by Alex3917 above) and this might not be particularly challenging or clever, but it's easy to read, gets readers, and gets most of us thinking about the bigger picture. He's just joining dots in a way that helps idea and an interest in social sciences to flow.

Gladwell, Godin, 37signals, Merlin Mann, pg, Hugh MacLeod and 1001 other well known pundits and "idea spreaders" do not claim to be making significant scientific discoveries. They are the lubricant of science, programming, design, management strategies, creativity, or whatever their respective niche is. They give us ideas that are easily digested but then force us to consider our own positions and ideas on their ground. This is valuable in itself.

Alex391710• 18 years ago

"Gladwell, Godin, 37signals, Merlin Mann, pg, Hugh MacLeod and 1001 other well known pundits and 'idea spreaders' do not claim to be making significant scientific discoveries."

I think you do a disservice to these guys by your description. PG et al aren't idea spreaders, they're people who actually have good ideas and write them down. Which is way more difficult and valuable than being able to work the lab equipment and run statistical tests afterward.

robg5• 18 years ago

I don't doubt the value of good ideas. But they're pretty cheap. The hard part is testing them for some truth value. Merely writing them down doesn't do that.

But, sure, working the lab equipment and running the tests is a waste if you're not testing good ideas. Problem is, I'm the worst judge of what's a good idea especially if it seems good to me.

I'll venture so far to say that good ideas are the ones that work. The difficulty is predicting ahead of time whether they will.

fallentimes3• 18 years ago

I wouldn't lump Godin with PG & 37signals.

Tichy2• 18 years ago

I swear I don't say this for brownie points, but honestly, I wouldn't put pg in the same category as the other names you mentioned (though I admit I don't know them all, but most). I value pg's essays much more - he is not going for the daily quip, rather, his essays always treat something new in perfect fashion. Gladwell and Godin could be writing daily columns for womens/mens magazines, saying the same things we all already know over and over (yet we like to read them for our daily motivational boost). PG explores new things (or makes them accessible).

There are several pg essays that I wish everyone would read (not only geeks). Can't say that for the other names you mention.

petercooper3• 18 years ago

PG et al aren't idea spreaders, they're people who actually have good ideas and write them down.

If by "good ideas" you mean "good insights" then I totally agree.

However, very few of the ideas that these people have popularized were truly original (in a sense that I feel a "new" idea should be). My original point was that this doesn't matter anyway - if their good presentation highlights a point, that's awesome. These people all know how to connect dots in an interesting way and then relay these ideas. They are (for the most part) not coming up with wildly new concepts and inventions (pg's founding of Viaweb being a good exception to this, of course!)

For what it's worth, a lot of people have "good ideas" and write them down. Many of these people go unheralded. This makes those I mentioned successful "idea spreaders" in my book.

Which is way more difficult and valuable than being able to work the lab equipment and run statistical tests afterward.

Since the insights people have often depend on the hard and boring science and studies to be completed, that strikes me as an odd (or perhaps it was satirical?) statement. Without the lab equipment and "statistical tests" there would be few new confirmed discoveries for us to make these connective insights about ;-)

aswanson4• 18 years ago

I don't think you can equate "being able to work the lab equipment and run statistical test afterward" with "making significant scientific discoveries". You're putting any lab tech in the same league with the founders of quantum mechanics, etc here. And for all the good they do I don't think you can put the above-mentioned authors/bloggers anywhere near the people who lay foundations in scientific fields.

theoneill• 18 years ago

I've learned a lot more from reading Gladwell than Orlowski. In fact, I can't think of anything I've learned from reading Orlowski.

bootload• 18 years ago

"... For good measure, Milgram's Six Degrees theory, has subsequently been debunked since Tipping Point appeared. Gladwell couldn't have done that himself using a bit of investigative research of his own ..."

Don't let the truth get in the way of telling a good story. Well that's the way 'theregister' likes to tell it.

The ideas behind the "6 degrees of separation" are measurable and form a new type of science, not surprisingly called Network theory. The ideas behind them instead of being debunked are strengthening. In '99, "Duncan Watts" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Watts and "Steven Strogatz" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Strogatz wrote a paper submitted to Nature working on the "Small World theory" problem called "Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks" . Their results tend to support the idea that there is a measurable, finite, minimum number of links in a network between nodes and that clustering of node links does occur. The idea applied to various other natural networks (Actors in Hollywood, neural networks in the brain, Transmission lines across the US) also support the conclusions.

   "... a scale-free network is a network 
    whose degree distribution follows a 
    power law ..."

Then consider "Albert-László Barabási" ~ http://www.nd.edu/~sciwww/Faculty/barabasi.html who who picked up the Watts-Strogatz work ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_and_Strogatz_model and came up with the idea of "Scale free networks" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_networks which gives probably the most important insight into how networks cluster, Hubs.

I don't just believe the ideas of Watts, Strogatz and Barabási because of who they are but what their experiments reveal.

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

Orlowski isn't the only one jumping on the "let's hate on Gladwell" bandwagon:

http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2008/11/naked.html

nazgulnarsil• 18 years ago

this thread is a perfect example of why these "dumb dumb" people are insanely popular. they make statements simple enough to polarize people. as soon as you hear their latest tidbit you instantly know whether you agree or disagree. This is one of the secrets of politics.

TrevorJ• 18 years ago

I'm not sure this article rises to a level sufficient enough to label it as "journalism"

The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

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