151–160 of 232 posts
Should I stop believing Malcolm Gladwell? This title was a non sequitur for me, as I have never heard of Malcolm Gladwell and so never started believing him. Interesting article though.
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 because of their name or their previously published writings. We should read anything we read with our minds active, ready to disagree if the facts warrant. And that is what Malcolm Gladwell himself has said in interviews: "I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think."
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.
For the record, although I consider myself smart, I usually like to get substantive feedback (whether agreeing with me or not) to battle test my views, learn more and refine my presentation. I intuitively find this to be valuable for me and I seem to be addicted to debating with people of different points of view on topics I care about. I don't care about an echo chamber beyond once in a while reinforcing that random…
Analytic philosophers tend to be.
The above should be the disclaimer on these types of books. I like Gladwell but there still needs to be some level of critical thinking involved when reading these books.
I like to take the main ideas and do further investigation on my own.
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…
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…
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, yeah, of course that's the case." But how does that explain how things ended up millennia later. A good read.
Another broader point though is that serious researchers are always going to put down popularizers who write books people actually read. But no one is going to read serious researchers except other serious researchers. Of course, you can go too far in the popularization direction and I tend to agree Malcolm Gladwell is a great example of that.
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…
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 the post says:
> Exercise has such a profound effect on our happiness and well-being that it's actually been proven to be an effective strategy for overcoming depression. In a study cited in Shawn Achor's book, The Happiness Advantage, three groups of patients treated their depression with either medication, exercise, or a combination of the two. The results of this study really surprised me. Although all three groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness levels to begin with, the follow up assessments proved to be radically different:
A blog cites a pop sci book, which cites a single study. And this is "proof" of a treatment for depression. It feels like it should be true. it repeats something that many people say ("exercise helps depression") and it has some sciencey stuff to support it (endorphins!). It's not homoeopathy or crystal healing.
The main problem is that it is not clear if exercise works for treating depression.
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004366/exercise-for-depressi...
> Exercise is moderately more effective than no therapy for reducing symptoms of depression.
[...]
> The reviewers also note that when only high-quality studies were included, the difference between exercise and no therapy is less conclusive.
People do not investigate further. They repeat these factoids and they believe they're promoting science.
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…
> 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…
"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 explained by geostationary or geomobile models."
If you want actual scientific knowledge, read a textbook, not a breezy popular science book written by some journalist dude. For example, I am taking a CMU OLI course on introductory statistics, which is about 216 pages long. I am in it for 29 days at 151 pages thus far, which means I am about 70% complete. I study an hour a day, does about 30 minutes of review minimum each day. I admit that it's not the most excitin…
The problem with popular science books is that they are written by journalists untrained in science. It should be scientists who write popular works. There are several scientists who have written great works which are neither difficult, nor dumbed down - for example, Steinhaus' "Mathematical Snapshots", Einstein and Infeld's "The Evolution of Physics", Schrodinger's "What is life?" and even delightful works such as F…
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…
Add Michael Lewis to the list