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Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

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Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#141

Post by jonnathanson »

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…

"developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else."

It doesn't seem limited to nerds, though. These books are always top sellers in places like airport book stores, so there's got to be a wider audience than that. If anything, I'd say these are very middlebrow books that hit a sweet spot in making college-educated (though not necessarily nerdy or even particularly smart) people feel smarter. They're like the USA Today distillations of behavioral and neuroscience research.

The nerdier equivalent would be TED.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#142

Post by StavrosK »

jerf wrote: post #138
stavros wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how it goes, "explain everything, predict nothing". Or maybe you don't, because I just made that up, but it fits.

That is an established idea; if you can explain any possible outcome equally fluently, you can't explain anything. I find it a useful cognitive hack; if someone asks you whether X or Y will happen (and for the sake of argument let's discard "none of the above"), instead of asking that question of my brain directly, I try to pretend in sequence that both have already happened, and then explain why. If you can easily e…

I meant the phrase, not the idea. I agree with you, though. Especially when someone tells me "well, it was obvious that X would happen, because Y", I ask them "what if I was lying and the opposite of X happened? Was that equally obvious? If both are obvious, then neither is".

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#143

Post by IsaacL »

StavrosK wrote: post #103
IsaacL wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this where you came across the concept of "insight porn"? http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/trying-to-see-... There's an interesting possibility that our brain actually gives us a neurochemical "hit" every time we encounter a particularly juicy piece of insight porn. The reason for this is evolutionary: insights are basically the recognition of deep patterns that explain seemingly unrelated phenomena,…

Whenever someone says "There's a possibility X is evolutionary", nowadays, I mentally continue it with "The reason for this is rationalization". As an aside, what's it called when you come up with an explanation of something to fit the facts the way you want them? Hindsight bias comes to mind, but it's not exactly that. More like a mixture of hindsight/confirmation bias and wishful thinking.

Yes, that was sloppy of me.

You have to be precise when talking about the effects of biological evolution on our brains. We know our brains were initially created entirely by biological evolution; what's not clear is how direct or indirect the influence of evolution has been on our psychology. That is, does evolution hardwire relatively complex behaviour (as it does in many animals) or does it merely specify high-level learning algorithms? This appears to be the case with humans - we don't have many instinctual behaviours compared with other animals, but we do have an instinctual ability to learn new things. It's interesting to speculate how this ability might have arisen; the ability to learn new things and to spot patterns must have been useful to our distant ancestors, as they're such fundamental traits of human cognition.

This is also why the "nature vs nurture"/"biology vs culture" debate is a false dichotomy: the foundation of human culture is our ability to learn, which is itself a genetic adaptation.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#144

Post by Brakenshire »

paganel wrote: post #66
crntaylor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of his ideas is that the development of agriculture was "the worst mistake in the history of the human race"[0] contra the popular belief that agriculture improved food yields and freed people up to spend time developing science, technology and art -- and could therefore be considered one of the greatest achievements in the history of the human race. I'm not saying that his argument is wrong, but it definitely ru…

> Guns, Germs and Steel" (the advantages of old-world people over new-world people in the 1500s were due to the influence of geography and climate, not inherent superiorities). I'm too lazy to look for the actual references, but in one form or another climate-related arguments for the "superiority" of Europeans were made in the late 1700s and in the 1800s (and towards the end of the 1800s a more racist undertone emer…

> I'm too lazy to look for the actual references, but in one form or another climate-related arguments for the "superiority" of Europeans were made in the late 1700s and in the 1800s (and towards the end of the 1800s a more racist undertone emerged, but that's another story). Something like "one can only be productive in a temperate climate", while those poor souls that have to live at the Tropics will never become industrious peoples.

To be fair, the GGS arguments are about explaining the origins of different rates of development, and not giving a rationalization for continued supremacy. For instance, one of his major arguments was that the New World had few domesticated draught animals. That ceases to be of any relevance with modern transportation, or indeed modern industry. He is talking about why some countries got a headstart, not trying to establish some firmly rooted 'natural order'.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#145

Post by Brakenshire »

cormullion wrote: post #34

Another review (of the book) at http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/malcolm-gladwell-backlas... "Gladwell is the non-fiction equivalent of Dan Brown."

> So, Gladwell promises that our alleged misunderstanding has “consequences for everything from the way we educate our children to the way we fight crime and disorder”. Consequences for everything! That is the hard sell, the first free rock of intellectual crack.

> The examples of “everything” include basketball coaching, policing, university science, Martin Luther King, and the Impressionists. (The waft of luxury art-history tourism in the Impressionists sequence is only the most obvious example of how Gladwell is now the non-fiction equivalent of Dan Brown.) The promise that such heterogeneous matter can be governed by one or two big ideas and understood through them constitutes the main attraction of the Gladwellian literary genre. Armed with these “ideas”, you won’t have to think for yourself ever again.

Ouch.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#146

Post by ctdonath »

The issue is just a larger-scale version of a common social problem I constantly see on blog discussions:

Critics demand encyclopedic thoroughness for what is little more than brief casual conversation.

Someone writes a pithy & insightful blog post (a la HN). It fits a convenient size suitable for the medium (1-10 paragraphs). Rather than responding to the substantive point of the post, critics nit-pick some obscure point which the author glossed over precisely because more detail runs at odds to the medium. To wit: the criticism amounts to demands for peer-reviewed scientific process with rock-solid presentation & references, when said critic would in no way actually read such material.

Gladwell's (and many other writers', ex.: 1491 and A History Of The World In Six Glasses) works are like this. The books are not weighty tomes, they are not peer-reviewed, they are not scientific papers with rigorous analysis of the material. They are lightweight overviews of interesting insights, appealing to many people (enough so that some expend energy loudly criticizing the works), and providing launching points for those so motivated to further pursue the subject (such as the would-be pro golfer testing the "10,000 hours" theory by actually doing it). If Gladwell et al wrote books the way critics demand, critics (and pretty much everyone else) would never bother reading them.

"the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." - Ratatouille

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#147

Post by flanbiscuit »

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…

It's also probably why we read sites like HN, so we can feel like we know something others don't... or know something before others.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#148

Post by ctdonath »

auctiontheory wrote: post #32
Ygg2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a disturbing number of jurors who won't convict the guilty because the evidence isn't as blindingly solid as CSI makes it seem necessary, or dismiss blindingly solid evidence because they expect some wildly implausible CSI-like theory is likely the truth.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#149

Post by pjmorris »

kiba wrote: post #11
r0h1n wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid you're comparing two entirely different genres. People who read popular non-fiction (on science, economics etc.) aren't looking to learn concepts the way you are. They, I surmise, want to read interesting stories that can be explained using science/economics etc. In other words, you're attempting to learn the science so you can apply it, while most others are attempting to read stories which can be explain…

In other words, you're attempting to learn the science so you can apply it, while most others are attempting to read stories which can be explained using science. I don't need to apply the scientific knowledge. I have gratification in knowing how reality work.

Yes, and more power to you, but your boss, and his boss, and your city manager, and the people providing the services you have are basing their decisions on something. If it's pseudo-science instead of the real thing, you're still living with the consequences.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#150

Post by d23 »

arjunnarayan wrote: post #136
d23 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't forget those of us who come to HN primarily to post comments about why the linked article is obviously stupid and wrong, or is right but just saying things that we've been aware of for a while now. This is why I hate being around a good deal of "smart" people (or atleast, people who have smartness attached to their identity, which seems to be rarely the same group). Every statement, every conversation, every…

That sounds infuriating. Why would you hang around with those "smart" people?

I'm primarily thinking about former co-workers.
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