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I enjoy Gladwell's writing style and annecdotes, but have become wary of actually believing any argument he makes with them. The more I know about a subject the less convincing and more cherry-picked the annecdotes seem to become.
I think his books are made the same way the evening TV news is:- an editorial narrative is decided upon, and then people are interviewed until someone says what the editor wants and that's the clip that gets used.
Buy his books, by all means, just be wary and do your own research :)
Something about Malcolm Gladwell really didn't sit right with me after learning about his tobacco industry connections (http://exiledonline.com/malcolm-gladwell-tobacco-industry-sh...).
Reading this guy's response to Gladwell's cultural theory of plane crashes sealed the deal for me:
http://askakorean.blogspot.hk/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-a...
Gladwell aside,
"Why? Because Americans and Europeans are always accorded with the privilege of being treated as individuals, while Asians remain a great undifferentiated mass, unknown and unknowable."
Wow. Good article.
Reading his recent statement here [0], I was reminded of William James's remark on J.S. Mill:
"Mr. Mill's habitual method of philosophizing was to affirm boldly some general doctrine derived from his father, and then make so many concessions of detail to its enemies as practically to abandon it altogether."
[0]: http://greyenlightenment.com/malcolm-gladwell-bait-and-switc...
He spreads anti-information. I wonder if we would be better off without him.
I know sometimes lies-to-children are necessarily part of an education but sometimes they are just lies that get in the way of understanding.
So far as I can tell he deciphers what most people want to believe is true and then gives it to them.
Jared Diamond is in a very similar position.
Haha this seems like the start of a fun game. You see Gladwell and raise Diamond. I'll see your Diamond and raise Pinker.
Eventually we'll upset someone, who will then have to draw a reasonable line somewhere between Gladwell and their favored popular author.
Not at all, upset away!
I do think Pinker is of a higher calibre than Gladwell but ever since reading Dawkin's (in the God Delusion) vague idea of some eternal progress towards 'Progress' (which he called the Zeitgeist) I haven't seen much substantiating why outbreaks of violence should decline asymptotically. A handful of modern bombs would disturb that nice little chart. Seems like cycles are more likely, perhaps contingent on solar cycles. If we don't understand why we go to war (I find most explanations too high level and utterly unconvincing) we should not predict peace. Things can and do turn on a dime.
If we don't understand why we go to war (I find most explanations too high level and utterly unconvincing)
Fear, greed, or ideology. Those were the three reasons the Greeks came up with.
Fear and ideology are usually smokescreens for that other reason, at least on the aggressor's side.
Well, you can break "why does a country go to war" into two separate questions: first, why has war been declared? And second, why do the soldiers enlist and willingly go?
You can probably put together a decent argument saying "The second War in Iraq was because of oil", but I haven't heard any stories of soldiers who signed up and came out of their deployment with the rights to an oil well. If you want to have a discussion about the motivations for war, it seems foolish to ignore the motivations of the boots on the ground that are actually making shit happen out there.
You're like the blind man who can only feel one part of the elephant. You can see greed, but you don't see the other two reasons.
I like the modern inclusion of Compromise and Coercion.
Compromise causes war?
> they are just lies that get in the way of understanding
Careful there, those things have really piled up since Plato's day.
You unravel one or two of those lies, you're liable to bring down Western Civ. And we need aspirin and cell phones.
Howso Diamond?
It is because Diamond treats human civilization like a Age of Empires game. In Age of Empires if you were plonked near the sea (fishing/trade potential), near mineral deposits and trees, then all things being equal you'd win mechanically, the geography would be destiny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_determinism
Unfortunately for Diamond, Biology and Culture are both real. Humans are not blank slates nor are they mindless automata.
The topics of his books are interesting and worth debating over, so I am (unlike Gladwell) pleased he wrote it since lots of interesting commentary and observations have come out.
I say you would profit greatly by reading around Diamond rather than by taking him at his word.
While geography isn't quite everything, it does speak for a great deal.
Thinking of single-factor determinants (or criticising arguments on that basis) is insipid. And yet somehow we accept it in other fields -- economics and its devolution of everything to simple matters of capital and labour comes to mind.
I've found much of Diamond's work to be quite illuminating and useful. I find his critics, most particularly those claimi global fault, cavil and singularly unpersuasive.
> Thinking of single-factor determinants (or criticising arguments on that basis) is insipid. And yet somehow we accept it in other fields -- economics and its devolution of everything to simple matters of capital and labour comes to mind.
Agreed. The further you get from physics the more multi-factor everything becomes.
We know this yet I think our language and minds have difficulty expressing multifactor explanations in ways which seem convincing to most of us. That is a problem.
Strangely we are more confident with a single over-arching explanation. I can't explain why that should be so. Surely more analysis should give us more confidence and not less!
Intelligence analysts and other smart people put their efforts into building multiple scenarios, which is a good way to see things more multi-dimensionally. I picked up on something from Thiel, which is that he tends to run through multiple explanations e.g. from a liberal and conservative and libertarian and communist point of view before proceeding to make a political point. That's a pretty good mental habit!
Whether this gets you to the truth is a separate question I feel but this method will certainly prevent you from overlooking major lines of reasoning, and that in itself is a pretty profound improvement over single factor determinants.
But what great anecdotes and snippets! I loved this one:
Elliott’s father, Claude, was the headmaster of Eton. According to Macintyre, the elder Elliott “loathed music, which gave him indigestion, despised all forms of heating as ‘effete,’ and believed that ‘when dealing with foreigners the best plan was to shout at them in English.’ ”
Sounds like the inspiration for a character played by John Cleese.
My favorite part was the story about wine at the end, which had little or nothing to do with the rest of the piece.
> [Regarding] a don at Trinity College in the mid-nineteenth century:
> In 1848 he published a thesis entitled Horae Apocalypticae, purporting to prove beyond doubt that the world would come to an end in 1868 because the Euphrates would have dried up the previous year. Harmless enough, you would think. But since he was a man of dominating though eccentric personality he succeeded in persuading the wine committee of Trinity that it would be pointless to lay down any 1853 port because it would not be fit to drink before Judgment Day. As 1853 proved to be one of the best vintages of the century and as Trinity was the only college without any, his name was not remembered with overmuch affection.
It reminded me of an old Jewish saying, "If you are planting a tree and you hear that Messiah has come, finish planting the tree, then go and inquire."
Can you explain that old Jewish saying a little bit? It sounds quite though provoking. TIA.
If you are catching a Pokemon and you hear that Halo 3 has been confirmed, finish catching the Pokemon, then go and inquire.
Halo 3 was released almost 10 years ago. Now, I'm pretty sure you meant Half-Life 3, I just wanted to be an ass Even then the saying doesn't fit because the Jewish Messiah is far more likely than Half-Life 3.
Oops! Thanks.
Ah I see. Thanks for the explaination.
I'm so happy to see the a good deal of skepticism of Gladwell here. What a change from ~10 years ago when he was near-universally lauded.
Gladwell is an amazinglh eloquent and convincing writer. I only wish I had his talents there. But oh how I wish he were more intellectually honest with his subject matter.
Do others have examples of writers with similar prowess of the pen, but greater merit in seeking truth? Always on the hunt for more good thinkers to read and all the better when their writing is entertaining and of admirable skill to boot.
"Hester Harriet Marsden-Smedley" Wow. Just wow. And apparently it isn't never lupus.
Gladwell has a knack for making me want to know more about his topics. Not by reading Gladwell, of course; that would be pointless.
He makes the assertion in this article that intelligence services in general, and British intelligence in the early decades of the cold war specifically, are useless. Based on a few examples, he thinks that having MI5 and 6 riddled with spies had no consequences---either the intelligence wasn't believed or it was, it was acted on, and people died, but that didn't change the outcome. Further, he says the later, paranoid period was bad, although other than a couple quotes from politicians, he gives no evidence.
And yet, the period between 1945 and 1965 was the high point of the Soviet Union. Taking over neighbors. Stealing secrets. Influence. Striking terror in the hearts of free world politicos. And then, after the golden age of Philby, not so much, realistically.
Back in Russia, we considered our golden age to be 1966 to 1982. Soviet spy stories of this time are no less dramatic.
That's a very debatable assertion, comrade. If true, the 70s-80s period would've not commonly referred to as The Stagnation Period. Plenty of spy activity, granted, but calling it a golden era is an overstatement.
Lack of purges, lack of famine, lack of war, maybe could find something better than a Khrushchyovka.......the struggle continued, but there was less struggling.
I have followed these stories for a few decades. Gladwell makes an unusual argument, to be sure, but I think his point about selecting false positives and false negatives is pretty good. James "Jesus" Angleton undoubtedly wreaked havoc on the CIA in the '60s with his obsessions about moles, for example.
Whenever I dig deep into the spy world from my armchair, though, I always come to the conclusion that my father was right when he said that it's not healthy to keep secrets.
See also http://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the-great-times-they-... on Wallis Simpson and spying for Fascism. Anthony Blunt is mentioned in both articles.
C-Span Booknotes interview with Anthony Cave Brown, author of "Treason in the blood"[1] starts off with an recap of his father's life and so far (8 mins in) it has been pretty interesting.
Another Gladwell special, devoid of real substance.
Not trusting Gladwell