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Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

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Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#181

Post by im3w1l »

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.

Evolutionary biologists are rightly slammed for having made many strong, wrong predictions. But I think it still has some value, if you just make weaker predictions. Instead of "a is necessary because of such and such living conditions", we think that "a might be more likely then b because of such and such living conditions". From certain assertions to potential hypotheses basically.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#182

Post by StavrosK »

im3w1l wrote: post #181
StavrosK wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Evolutionary biologists are rightly slammed for having made many strong, wrong predictions. But I think it still has some value, if you just make weaker predictions. Instead of "a is necessary because of such and such living conditions", we think that "a might be more likely then b because of such and such living conditions". From certain assertions to potential hypotheses basically.

Well, there is clearly some things that have evolved the way they have, so I don't think anybody's claiming that there's no merit in evobio. It's applying it to everything that's the problem.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#183

Post by Zimahl »

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…

I think I'd still rather be around people who argue with statistics and logic than people who don't. Step into a Yahoo news comment section with any article that mentions the US gov't or Obamacare. There's so much bullshit and stupidity thrown around it makes you lose faith in humanity.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#184

Post by wmil »

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…

Gladwell's books aren't aimed at nerds in the HN sense. They're actually targeted at people in communications / advertising who want an edge and also something to read on the plane.

That's what makes him so influential.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#185

Post by meowface »

larrys wrote: post #176
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 same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones." [1] The question is would anyone have thought anything of PG's essays before he became "PG" that he is today? Not that people didn't read them but it seem now that anything that he has written or writes takes on such status that people are less likely to question or disagree with any conclusions. [1] Also noting that PG's (at least…

Well, it's not just that he's been successful in the past, but that to this day his advice and mentoring helps produce many successful startups.

When someone achieves repeated and consistent success over many years (say, Warren Buffett), it is wise to listen to what they have to say if they're willing to share their knowledge and experience.

And also, HN isn't full of nearly as many mindless zombies as many other sites. When pg posts something contentious or controversial, usually there's debate about it in the comments.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#186

Post by pjdorrell »

The complaint seems to be that entertaining books are not sufficiently educational.

What I think we should really be complaining about is that educational books are not sufficiently entertaining.

Many of the startup websites promoted on Hacker News go to extreme lengths to reduce "cognitive load" - to make everything as easy as possible for their users to understand what they are doing.

Entertainment is content presented to us in a manner which does not require unpleasant effort on our part to maintain our attention as readers, listeners or viewers.

When text-book writers put the same effort into making their content entertaining as startup websites put into the UX of their websites, then we will have an educational revolution.

Actually, for most people, video is more entertaining than books, so the best results will come from making entertaining videos on technical subjects.

It is much easier to be entertaining if your content is "fluffy", and some of the most entertaining content is about "almost nothing at all", like Seinfeld, for example.

But that is no excuse for neglecting the need to make serious content as entertaining as possible.

To get some ideas about how to make technical content more entertaining, try the following:

* Search for your favourite technical subject on YouTube, and watch the most popular videos.

* Still on YouTube, search for "vlog", or "youtubers", or anything else that leads to videos made specifically for YouTube which include visual and verbal presentation of non-fictional content and commentary. (For example, see Ray William Johnson.)

* Observe the difference.

* Don't just observe the difference. Revisit the technical videos, and identify each point of pain, where the video requires effort of the viewer in a manner that would never have occurred in the "entertaining" videos. It could be things as simple as an extended interval where nothing happens at all, or too much talking and nothing happening on the screen, or the talking consists entirely of reading words that are already on the screen, or action on the screen but no talking, or too much talking about what the presenter is going to talk about. Etc.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#187

Post by notahacker »

ijk wrote: post #121
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…

Diamond is a little different, but he is working outside of his original field and produces very mixed responses from anthropologists (e.g. http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-does-... ).

The difference between Gladwell and Diamond (and for that matter Levitt) is that Gladwell is attacked for his work being atheoretical; it's basically a collection of anecdotes that belongs on a bookshelf with Bill Bryson.

Diamond is criticised for stretching his grand unified theories too far and missing all the evidence to the contrary. Levitt is accused of picking bad hypotheses and doing sloppy econometric analysis to support them. Gladwell doesn't have any grand unified theories, or any theories substantial or original enough to be controversial. and doesn't do any comparable statistical analysis.

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#189

Post by bobz »

georgemcbay wrote: post #60
downandout wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else. 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. Nothing wrong with it, just an (unscientific) observation.

"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.

I hate this about myself. =P

Re: Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?

#190

Post by kylebrown »

triplesec wrote: post #120
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…

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…

Worth mentioning that the Freakonomics guys (Donohue and Levitt) work tying abortion law to crime reduction was debunked. There was a bug in the regression analysis code, "coding errors" (as in typos while copying data tables from print sources), and flat out statistical errors (most egregious was their use of total arrests instead of arrests per capita).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio...

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