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Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

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Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#161

Post by LaGrange »

d23 wrote: post #128
georgemcbay wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"IMO, this is what appeals to many about HN....the desire to find share-worthy things that will help cement their image as the smart person within their social group." 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.

> 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…

Ah yes. Let's all stay positive. It's not like anyone ever died from not wanting to criticize something, right?

Only, things ranging from people going on doomed escapades and startups, via mountaineering accidents up to and including the Eschede train disaster can be at least partially attributed to people being afraid of expressing criticism. Of course there is a valid criticism of how many people express said criticism, but that's another matter.

In fact, what I do see, is a lot of people who are so attached to their own opinion, that even after an amount of statements intended discern between the opinion and person expressing it, they still become angry when facing criticism.

One of the actual reasons I come to HN is to read dissenting views. I may disagree with them, but without them this site would be useless.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#162

Post by kamakazizuru »

anyone else also feel this way about Tim Ferriss's stuff? I know theres a huge community of 4HWW fanboys around here so don't take it personally. However - I did have the feeling reading most of Ferriss' books that he essentially did just what Gladwell does - say something counterintuitive - back it up with some sort of studies (though he bothers even less to do that than Gladwell does) and even worse - personal anecdotal evidence! (What still cracks me up is - "I put my phone away from my pocket for a week and my sperm count went up" ..Geez).

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#163

Post by darkarmani »

dhimes wrote: post #116
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…

The field of popular nutrition is exploding with this. "Warrior diet" and "Paleo diet" are two recent ideas that come to mind. But as I type this it occurs to me: This might extend to beyond nerds. This effect might be what is addictive about Oprah or Dr. Phil (relationship insights), or even the bobble-heads on tv talking about the latest source of their political rage, or even sports junkies.

The Paleo or Primal diet idea has been around for a long time. I think it has gotten more momentum as more cherry-picked scientific studies have been found.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#165

Post by DanBC »

ctdonath wrote: post #158
DanBC wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 What use is an overview if it's wrong? Here's an example of the problem: ( http://www.social-consciousness.com/2013/10/ten-simple-thing... ) This blog got posted to HN. The first point in…

Relevant quote from the current HN thread History Must Be Curved : " Science doesn’t follow a mythic positivist ideal but the plural scientific methods described by Feyerabend: a mixture of empiricism, flights of fancy, intuition, aesthetics, doggedness, and jealousy. Scientific theories are underdetermined. Any finite set of facts can support multiple theories, and for a long time the available facts were equally ex…

But these books do not present the geostationary and geomobile models, and explain the differences and how the data fits.

They put out a book "GEOSTATIONARY: The Blah of blah blah", and they talk about a tiny subset of the supporting evidence. They won't mention geomobile, or if they do they won't accept that facts at the time are explained equally by both but to destroy geomobile and the gullible saps who believe it.

Your quote argues persuasively against the books of Gladwell, which are semi-truthy, using Science to sound authoritative and accurate but without accepting any of the fluidity of actual science.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#166

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#167

Post by cossatot »

ghaff wrote: post #156
triplesec wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it's unfair to include Diamond in this genre, as although he's popular, he's also a thinker (and prof) with an academic's consistency and attention to data. The Freakonomics guys are also closer to data, but episodically popularising rather than Diamond's coherent meta-narratives. The biggest argument you could level against Diamond might be one of leaning too heavily on "geographical determinism", which he…

I agree with both your points--at least with respect to Guns Germs and Steel. Arguably he way overextended his basic research in later works. An interesting supplement to Diamond is Ian Morris' Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. To greatly oversimplify, Morris endorses the idea of a Western core headstart (with credit to Diamond) but then basically says "Well,…

Fortunately, there are a couple examples of serious researchers who are also excellent (though maybe not as well known) popularizers. Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow) and Steven Strogatz (Sync, etc.) come immediately to mind, because I have read them recently. I have some books by Benoit Mandlebrot in shipping, and I am quite excited about them.

If anyone has other examples, I would love to hear them--I'm trying to pack my immediate reading list right now and am currently uninterested in fiction.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#168

Post by lutusp »

thesadman wrote: post #113
lutusp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From their articles, I was not able to identify a specific point that Gladwell has made that is false. There are many such cases, easy to uncover. As just one example, his remarks about easy versus difficult problem solving relied on a preliminary study that failed replication when applied to a larger experimental group, a fact he omitted from his book. > I was impressed by his unusual look at the David coming down…

OP asked for a specific point. You wrote: "his remarks about easy versus difficult problem solving relied on a preliminary study that failed replication when applied to a larger experimental group, a fact he omitted from his book". Could a layperson work out which specific point you're referring to and then understand it? Perhaps you'd care to elaborate.

> OP asked for a specific point.

Indeed he did -- he said, "I was not able to identify a specific point that Gladwell has made that is false." In my reply, I gave an example where Gladwell published something that had not been replicated, always a risky practice in science journalism, but worse, it was an example in which an ambitious effort at replication has failed.

In short, Gladwell published something that had been proven false, a case in which a cautious reading of the literature would have prevented this error.

Also, the original study came from the field of psychology, a field that's famous for superficial studies that lead to grand but unsupportable claims. Even for psychology studies that have stood unchallenged for years, one must be very careful in taking their conclusions seriously.

The Gladwell example I used represented something that was false, that had been falsified, something that all scientific results, to meet the definition of "scientific", must have as a possible outcome (testable and potentially falsifiable).

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#169

Post by redthrowaway »

tokenadult wrote: post #152

"I haven't read the book; I'm taking this example from a review in The Wall Street Journal by Christopher F. Chabris, a psychology professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y." Well, come on then. This is just blogspam in that case. We have already discussed Chabris's review (in its longer form from Chabris's blog) here on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6510996 We should stop believing ANYONE just becaus…

The piece isn't a review of Gladwell's book, nor is its thesis predicated upon the (de)merits thereof. He's saying Gladwell as a whole, in all of his works, may be Considered Harmful. You don't have to read his latest book to cogently draw that conclusion.
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