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The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

theregister.co.uk

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Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#41

Post by Alex3917 »

aswanson wrote: post #29
Alex3917 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll put Godin's fifteen best ideas against the fifteen best ideas of anyone else. Anyone who really believes in judging talent by the high points should agree that this is a better metric than his daily blog posts, which admittedly have mostly sucked for the past year.

Would you mind sharing his best 15 here, succintly, for us?I haven't read his books; from the blog posts I haven't distilled anything earthshattering.

It would take a few weeks to compile a list like this, but a few things that would definitely be up there:

1) The idea behind the book All Marketers Are Liars

2) His idea that ideas that inspire people to talk about them are the ideas that spread. This idea is spread out across three books (Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, and The Big Moo).

3) His collection of ideas about what is and isn't worth measuring. C.f. his blog post on Clean Firetrucks, his blog post on holding the sides of the treadmill, etc.

Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#42

Post by unalone »

iamdave wrote: post #20
allenbrunson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sometimes it takes an (admittedly erroneous) crude approach just to bring what should be an overt point to fruition. While this wasn't one of them, there are certainly times. And on that point, that's the feeling I get when I read this article. The writer is trying to be direct and ride the fence of "condemnation by realization" but only comes off as wrongly crude. While I haven't read any of Gladwell's book, I've se…

I don't think it's a very good article, but I agree with its premise. Gladwell is not scientifically rigid. His books are interesting and make me think, but I would not take any statistic he gave me as anything other than an interesting fiction. He's too selective about data.

Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#43

Post by aswanson »

Alex3917 wrote: post #41
aswanson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing his best 15 here, succintly, for us?I haven't read his books; from the blog posts I haven't distilled anything earthshattering.

It would take a few weeks to compile a list like this, but a few things that would definitely be up there: 1) The idea behind the book All Marketers Are Liars 2) His idea that ideas that inspire people to talk about them are the ideas that spread. This idea is spread out across three books (Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, and The Big Moo). 3) His collection of ideas about what is and isn't worth measuring. C.f. his bl…

Thanks, the best one I could think of off hand was him advising giving something away free to lock in upsell merchandise...was it a book? It was posted here not too long ago. He seems to have some good ideas so I need to read some of his books.

[EDIT: found a link for All Marketers: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294 ]

Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#44

Post by sharkfish »

allenbrunson wrote: post #15
sharkfish wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

OMG you guys are idiots. I used the word "twat".

Go ahead, take away the rest of my karma. My e-penis is going to shrink! OMG!!!! I'm a girl by the way.

LOL. Again you guys are nancies. Total nancies. LOL.

I continue laughing: http://crazyontap.com/topic.php?TopicId=42993

P.S. Are you idiots RELIGIOUS, too? LOL.

Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#45

Post by Alex3917 »

aswanson wrote: post #43
Alex3917 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would take a few weeks to compile a list like this, but a few things that would definitely be up there: 1) The idea behind the book All Marketers Are Liars 2) His idea that ideas that inspire people to talk about them are the ideas that spread. This idea is spread out across three books (Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, and The Big Moo). 3) His collection of ideas about what is and isn't worth measuring. C.f. his bl…

Thanks, the best one I could think of off hand was him advising giving something away free to lock in upsell merchandise...was it a book? It was posted here not too long ago. He seems to have some good ideas so I need to read some of his books. [EDIT: found a link for All Marketers: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294 ]

He talks about this in Permission Marketing, the idea of selling something cheap or giving something away in order to get permission to sell something more expensive later.

Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#46

Post by robg »

pg wrote: post #37
robg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Newton only became Newton when it was shown the ideas worked, and better than Leibniz, for instance. Same deal with Einstein. Their contemporaries knew they were onto something, but a healthy dose of skepticism was reserved until the ideas gained empirical weight. Still not all of their "good" ideas were validated. Testing ideas, to me, is the best way to change how we think, especially when we're proven…

If your ideas are only valuable when other people believe them, then if everyone else died of some plague that you happened to be immune to, it would suddenly be impossible to have good ideas. That doesn't seem right.

If this happened to Newton or Einstein it wouldn't matter how good their ideas were. They'd starve because their ideas would be worthless. It takes a community to make use of good ideas, not just validate them. In the former you get the latter. Sure, sometimes a community has to be shaken free of their assumptions. But I'm not sure it's ever apparent by virtue of the strength of a lonely idea. It takes some powerful proof of concept. That's the apparatus.

To put it another way, in merely writing an idea down it may exist all by itself in some Platonic ideal. Not surprisingly, the Greek philosophers often left it to others to validate (or invalidate) what they produced. Running tests wasn't truly valued. I'd argue those ideas that have stuck with us the longest are those that engendered the greatest utility.

Then there's Heraclitus.

Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#47

Post by wheels »

Tichy wrote: post #19
Alex3917 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

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 al…

I think you're arguing a slightly different point.

I think the original poster's point was that the ideas of those people are editorial essays, with a largely motivational function. I think that's true.

But they're different kinds of motivational material. I think the primary difference is that Paul's writing usually builds to some point or collection of points of advice rather than the abstractions being the point. This isn't really surprising because basically his job is being an advisor.

Also, I'd be pretty careful in calling it perfect. Referring to almost anyone's ideas as perfect sets off the bullshit alarms for me. Paul's a smart guy and he's got some good insights, but he's sure to get a lot of stuff wrong. The converse would be to assume that he's stopped making mistakes and learning from them, which I think is the opposite of what smart people shoot for.

Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#48

Post by robg »

Alex3917 wrote: post #40
robg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replication is trivial once someone else has already shown you how to test the idea. But only if they're right will you be too.

Figuring out how to test an idea is a "tame" problem, in that the problem has a definitive formulation and stopping rule. Coming up with an entirely new paradigm is, if not exactly a "wicked" problem, some other type of complex problem so difficult and uncommon that we don't even have a vocabulary to describe it. So when I say that coming up with ideas is more difficult than testing them, what I mean is that coming u…

See, to me, an idea is a mere belief without some test to see it through. Like this argument, for instance...there's no logical conclusion one way or another. We're just stating beliefs back and forth.

Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#49

Post by sharkfish »

sharkfish wrote: post #44
allenbrunson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

OMG you guys are idiots. I used the word "twat". Go ahead, take away the rest of my karma. My e-penis is going to shrink! OMG!!!! I'm a girl by the way. LOL. Again you guys are nancies. Total nancies. LOL. I continue laughing: http://crazyontap.com/topic.php?TopicId=42993 P.S. Are you idiots RELIGIOUS, too? LOL.

WHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

You guys are badasses with the mouse.

Re: The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

#50

Post by sharkfish »

sharkfish wrote: post #14
sharkfish wrote: post #9

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

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

So you really can't spell. It really is a shame. I've always felt that people who program that can't spell are in this career to hide their lack of IQ.
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