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Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

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Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#31

Post by jamesrom »

svantana wrote: post #29
crntaylor wrote: post #21

I have heard the genre (which includes Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, the Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond) described as "insight porn". The idea is to deliver small chunks of insight that is just counter-intuitive enough to be novel, but not so counter-intuitive that we can't take it at face value. It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a littl…

Just like with music, people prefer just the right amount of cognitive dissonance - noone likes to be told exactly what they already know, and hardly anyone likes to hear something that's completely the opposite of what they already knew/thought. In music, just a little bit of (harmonic) dissonance catches the listener's attention, but too much gives you a headache. Funny how that metaphor carries over so well, haven…

You should write a book about it...

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#32

Post by auctiontheory »

Ygg2 wrote: post #22
auctiontheory wrote: post #18

You should have stopped long ago. Malcolm Gladwell as an entertainer is great. Gladwell as a pundit quoted by (and presumably influencing) real decision-makers ... has me steaming in frustration. He is dangerous.

Is he much worse than CSI? I mean I don't trust both, they have right details (like some study proving one thing, or name of disease), but overall miss the big picture. Also it seems that he sometimes hits a mark. I remember his article on criminal Profilers being mostly correct as far as I could tell. Anyone who trust a journalist unconditionally and blindly is a fool. They are paid to pique your interest and entert…

I don't hear senior people in all sorts of professions referencing CSI the way I hear them referencing Malcolm Gladwell.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#33

Post by visakanv »

svantana wrote: post #29
crntaylor wrote: post #21

I have heard the genre (which includes Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, the Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond) described as "insight porn". The idea is to deliver small chunks of insight that is just counter-intuitive enough to be novel, but not so counter-intuitive that we can't take it at face value. It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a littl…

Just like with music, people prefer just the right amount of cognitive dissonance - noone likes to be told exactly what they already know, and hardly anyone likes to hear something that's completely the opposite of what they already knew/thought. In music, just a little bit of (harmonic) dissonance catches the listener's attention, but too much gives you a headache. Funny how that metaphor carries over so well, haven…

So I think of people like Gladwell as pop-fusion artists, like say, Jamie Cullum or Michael Buble. They often get disproportionately rewarded (as compared to "real" jazz artists), but they DO do a lot for a lot of people by introducing them to something they otherwise might not have considered.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#35

Post by someperson »

crntaylor wrote: post #21

I have heard the genre (which includes Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, the Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond) described as "insight porn". The idea is to deliver small chunks of insight that is just counter-intuitive enough to be novel, but not so counter-intuitive that we can't take it at face value. It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a littl…

This might also apply to NPR Planet Money.

Seems to plague the softer/human sciences like economics, psychology and anthropology more than physics/chemistry/maths (though these fields have there own poor journalism)

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#36

Post by visakanv »

auctiontheory wrote: post #18

You should have stopped long ago. Malcolm Gladwell as an entertainer is great. Gladwell as a pundit quoted by (and presumably influencing) real decision-makers ... has me steaming in frustration. He is dangerous.

Any "real decision-maker" who makes decisions because of pop-writers... was probably going to screw things up anyway.

Gladwell isn't dangerous, ignorance is.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#37

Post by lutusp »

morgante wrote: post #19
foobarbazqux wrote: post #4

Malcolm Gladwell : non-fiction journalism :: Fox News : television journalism It's entertaining fluff. If we become a society of fluffheads, that's okay, these things have a habit of correcting themselves.

I don't think that's quite right. Fox News encourages people not to think at all. Gladwell encourages people to think (the adjective thought-provoking is frequently applied to his work), even if his actual content isn't 100% true. Also, I don't think Gladwell ever completely lies. He certainly bends the truth, but he doesn't make up things on a whim like Fox.

> Also, I don't think Gladwell ever completely lies.

True, but we need to ask what we mean by "lie". Blatant lying is easy to detect and uncover. Cherry-picking facts to make a point contradicted by reality, by science, is a sneakier kind of lying, a kind meant to appeal to the superficially educated, the sort of people for whom the title of the article asks a reasonable question -- should we "believe him"?

Educated people don't need to believe anyone -- they will instead accept a responsibility to gather facts, evidence, for themselves.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#39

Post by digitalengineer »

willvarfar wrote: post #15

For everyone feeling cheated by Malcolm Gladwell, there is relief in sight! Buy books by Simon Singh e.g. The Code Book and Fermat's Last Theorem; after his court tangle with homeopathy he needs all the royalties he can get!

Could you elaborate a bit about his 'court tangle'? I'm reading 'Bad Science' which also talks about Homeopathy and it basically says homeopathy is relying on the Placebo effect, the attention patients receive and the probability a lot of people will resort to homeopathy when it's really, really bad. That's usually the point when it starts getting better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Science_(book)

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#40

Post by lutusp »

Ygg2 wrote: post #22
auctiontheory wrote: post #18

You should have stopped long ago. Malcolm Gladwell as an entertainer is great. Gladwell as a pundit quoted by (and presumably influencing) real decision-makers ... has me steaming in frustration. He is dangerous.

Is he much worse than CSI? I mean I don't trust both, they have right details (like some study proving one thing, or name of disease), but overall miss the big picture. Also it seems that he sometimes hits a mark. I remember his article on criminal Profilers being mostly correct as far as I could tell. Anyone who trust a journalist unconditionally and blindly is a fool. They are paid to pique your interest and entert…

> Is he much worse than CSI?

People who accept CSI confuse fantasy and reality. People who accept Gladwell confuse a contrived reality with a real one. I think the risk posed by the latter category is greater than the former, because the latter are more difficult to separate from their superficial grasp of reality.

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