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Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

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Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#61

Post by unalone »

ScottHanson wrote: post #50
anthonyrubin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always found Gladwell's work to be interesting, but he suffers severely from confirmation bias. His pieces seem like very well laid out hypotheses with a lot of biased support and no further development nor testing. But again, they are interesting and great conversation starters. I strongly recommend voting up the original article so that we may refocus the discussion (I did not submit it): http://news.ycombin…

The original article has nothing of interest in it.

The original article is vastly better than this blog post.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#62

Post by unalone »

ScottHanson wrote: post #48
13ren wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and what do you think? Please elaborate.

You first!

Can I jump in and say "It's most likely a mix of the two?"

Steve Jobs was not and is not a huge computer hacker. Not like Bill Gates. But still, he was able to conceive of the idea of a personal computer, before anybody else had the idea. How did he get 10,000 hours working into that? From his own words, he got the idea by dropping acid and deciding that people weren't using this new technology in a way that could change the world. He repeated this again and again with the iPod, the iTunes store, the iPhone, even with how he changed Pixar.

Jobs is unquestionably talented. However, it isn't shown that he's talented solely because he practiced at what he did heavily. I think that part of what makes Jobs as great as he is is his unbridled ego, his belief that he alone is right until proven otherwise. And that's something that you can't entirely pin on the society around you.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#63

Post by unalone »

Ztrain wrote: post #29
pragmatic wrote: post #15

What's the deal with linking to this crappy "So You Want to be a Billionaire" site? It's obviously blog spam of the worst kind. Using Rand for bait is a nice touch.

It's led to a good discussion although a few people have gotten over-heated.

It's a great discussion! I love it! But the article is still pretty poor. I'd rather have a good discussion over a good article than have one or the other missing.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#64

Post by unalone »

SwellJoe wrote: post #27
KeshRivya wrote: post #6

Rand and Gladwell represent opposites of the scale.

As far as I'm concerned they're talking about two orthogonal subjects, and I think it takes a bit of cloudy thinking to conflate the two. Rand never posited that people are born productive. Productive people are productive by virtue of doing things, in Ayn's world...while a lot of other people are envious of the doing and stand in their way. People can become productive. Individualism requires that people can do what…

Yeah. That's another misconception of Rand's work, I think.

People assume that Rand is saying that people are inherently good or inherently evil. That's absolutely not the case. She says that they're inherently imbalanced, that we aren't all perfectly equal, but that we still have the freedom to decide which side of her argument we stand on. Look at Guy Francon in The Fountainhead, who is a fool and a faker but who decides, in the end, to support his daughter. Or look at Fred Kinnan, in Atlas Shrugged, who is talented and bright enough to know that he's doing the wrong thing, who is morally straight, but who decides that compromise is inevitable and that it's worth him sacrificing himself if it means protecting the people underneath him.

Rand has imperfections in her writing, but she doesn't have a lot of the ones that she's accused of. And it makes discussing her online rather difficult. Neither side wants to admit the virtues of the other side.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#65

Post by unalone »

nihilocrat wrote: post #13
noonespecial wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people read Rand all wrong. I found large elements of satire in Atlas and Fountainhead. Like Orwell in Animal Farm, she created a silly cartoon version of the world with its dynamics hugely out or proportion in order to bring out the subtle absurdities of modern life and government. You're not supposed to read it and decided to move to the mountains of Colorado. You're supposed to read it and then have a…

That's a valid argument. Unfortunately, looking at some of the essay work that I remember being included in the paperbacks (sorry I'm not specific, I read it almost a decade ago), it seems that Rand was more serious than humorous, and her readers seem the same way as you've pointed out. Someone with a fresher memory / more time to Google can feel free to prove me wrong.

I think Rand ended up getting too full of herself. The Fountainhead is my favorite book of hers. By Atlas, she was dealing with a beautiful scope and marvelous characters, but she lost the willingness to really flesh her characters out. You get hints of moral contradiction and moral struggle, but that's it. Not like The Fountainhead, in which the hero and the villain are thoroughly explained.

Rand believed very firmly in her philosophy. Her fiction, however, is romanticized: Rand says that she portrays things not as they are, but as how she wishes they could be. It pains me when her "followers" take her black-and-white approach literally.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#66

Post by unalone »

walterk wrote: post #34
noonespecial wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people read Rand all wrong. I found large elements of satire in Atlas and Fountainhead. Like Orwell in Animal Farm, she created a silly cartoon version of the world with its dynamics hugely out or proportion in order to bring out the subtle absurdities of modern life and government. You're not supposed to read it and decided to move to the mountains of Colorado. You're supposed to read it and then have a…

I'm not sure the gigantic speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged is merely about getting you to "wonder" if some change is in order. Rand wrote exactly what she thought you should think.

Yeah. But that's an exception to the rest of the book. I mean, good heavens, there's a mad scientist with a mustache who creates a death machine called Project Xylophone, there's a failing novelist named Balph Eubank, and a pirate is fraternizing with a coal miner. You can't look at that with any mindset other than "This is, above all, a fun read."

Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#67

Post by zzzmarcus »

thomasmallen wrote: post #59

Gladwell has a few racist bones in his body: "And then there are the math geniuses who, as anyone can’t help noticing, are disproportionately Asian. Citing the work of an educational researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Gladwell attributes this phenomenon not to some innate mathematical ability that Asians possess but to the fact that children in Asian countries are willing to work longer and harder than the…

By your logic, stating the obvious fact that there are differences between races makes you a racist.

There are differences between the races and some do stem from environmental factors, a fact that is well documented and is part of the theory of evolution and natural selection.

It's ridiculous to call Gladwell a racist for pointing out one of those differences and theorize on its cause.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#68

Post by unalone »

ScottHanson wrote: post #49

Randinistas! A question. Did Roarke have the moral or legal rights to destroy the development after the owners changed the design?

Legally, no. Morally, yes.

Samuel Beckett, possibly the best writer since Joyce, insists that if you perform his play, you do it precisely according to his directions: you use his setting, you follow his directions, you don't edit a line. It is his idea. In Beckett's case, thanks to copyrights it was both legally and morally his right to demand that.

In Roark's case, he did not submit the plan under his own name. Therefore, he couldn't have a legal right to it (Peter's confession is legally shady ground). However, it was his idea and therefore his right to demand that it be created without compromise. I think the ending of that book is a fantasy that would never actually happen, but if I were on that jury, I'd vote to acquit.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#69

Post by unalone »

thomasmallen wrote: post #59

Gladwell has a few racist bones in his body: "And then there are the math geniuses who, as anyone can’t help noticing, are disproportionately Asian. Citing the work of an educational researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Gladwell attributes this phenomenon not to some innate mathematical ability that Asians possess but to the fact that children in Asian countries are willing to work longer and harder than the…

My good-at-math friend is Asian, and her parents instilled a very powerful work ethic in her. That's not racism. It's a cultural difference.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell versus Ayn Rand: Who is right?

#70

Post by unalone »

peregrine wrote: post #45

So according to Malcolm Gladwell I need to be Chinese to be good at math and because I was born in the later half of the year I am not good at sports therefore I am good at computers. Man these guys have it all figured out. Bunch of shit both of them. Know why Bill Gates succeeded? Cause he worked hard. Know why Chinese kids do better in Math? Cause they usually start from nothing, parents come over here start a new…

Read the NYmag article. You'll find that Gladwell argues the exact same point that you just made. Except for the "people at the top" argument, because I know a lot of people from wealthy families who still work incredibly hard. I think there are lazy people in every class.
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