

The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell - astrec
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/30/malcolm_gladwell_no/

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petercooper
Andrew Orlowski has made the typical geek mistake of dismissing the value of
presentation in relation to content. Gladwell may well twist soft scientific
insights into "intellectual comfort food" (as said by Alex3917 above) and this
might not be particularly challenging or clever, but it's easy to read, gets
readers, and gets most of us thinking about the bigger picture. He's just
joining dots in a way that helps idea and an interest in social sciences to
flow.

Gladwell, Godin, 37signals, Merlin Mann, pg, Hugh MacLeod and 1001 other well
known pundits and "idea spreaders" do not claim to be making significant
scientific discoveries. They are the lubricant of science, programming,
design, management strategies, creativity, or whatever their respective niche
is. They give us ideas that are easily digested but then force us to consider
our own positions and ideas on their ground. This is valuable in itself.

~~~
Alex3917
"Gladwell, Godin, 37signals, Merlin Mann, pg, Hugh MacLeod and 1001 other well
known pundits and 'idea spreaders' do not claim to be making significant
scientific discoveries."

I think you do a disservice to these guys by your description. PG et al aren't
idea spreaders, they're people who actually have good ideas and write them
down. Which is way more difficult and valuable than being able to work the lab
equipment and run statistical tests afterward.

~~~
Tichy
I swear I don't say this for brownie points, but honestly, I wouldn't put pg
in the same category as the other names you mentioned (though I admit I don't
know them all, but most). I value pg's essays much more - he is not going for
the daily quip, rather, his essays always treat something new in perfect
fashion. Gladwell and Godin could be writing daily columns for womens/mens
magazines, saying the same things we all already know over and over (yet we
like to read them for our daily motivational boost). PG explores new things
(or makes them accessible).

There are several pg essays that I wish everyone would read (not only geeks).
Can't say that for the other names you mention.

~~~
Alex3917
I'll put Godin's fifteen best ideas against the fifteen best ideas of anyone
else. Anyone who really believes in judging talent by the high points should
agree that this is a better metric than his daily blog posts, which admittedly
have mostly sucked for the past year.

~~~
aswanson
Would you mind sharing his best 15 here, succintly, for us?I haven't read his
books; from the blog posts I haven't distilled anything earthshattering.

~~~
Alex3917
It would take a few weeks to compile a list like this, but a few things that
would definitely be up there:

1) The idea behind the book All Marketers Are Liars

2) His idea that ideas that inspire people to talk about them are the ideas
that spread. This idea is spread out across three books (Purple Cow, Free
Prize Inside, and The Big Moo).

3) His collection of ideas about what is and isn't worth measuring. C.f. his
blog post on Clean Firetrucks, his blog post on holding the sides of the
treadmill, etc.

~~~
aswanson
Thanks, the best one I could think of off hand was him advising giving
something away free to lock in upsell merchandise...was it a book? It was
posted here not too long ago. He seems to have some good ideas so I need to
read some of his books.

[EDIT: found a link for All Marketers:
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294> ]

~~~
Alex3917
He talks about this in Permission Marketing, the idea of selling something
cheap or giving something away in order to get permission to sell something
more expensive later.

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dcminter
Hmm. I can spot an Orlowski article from the title these days; he's made
something of a career of detracting from popular organisations (Google,
Wikipedia, etc.) and persons.

I dislike the approach partly from a distaste for the tabloid savaging of the
successful but mostly because it seems to lead to rather thin regurgitations
of existing critiques. I believe that is the case with this article.

~~~
DenisM
Orlowski is the sole reason I unsubscribed from the Register. I hope he will
not be frequent here.

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bootload
_"... For good measure, Milgram's Six Degrees theory, has subsequently been
debunked since Tipping Point appeared. Gladwell couldn't have done that
himself using a bit of investigative research of his own ..."_

Don't let the truth get in the way of telling a good story. Well that's the
way _'theregister'_ likes to tell it.

The ideas behind the _"6 degrees of separation"_ are measurable and form a new
type of science, not surprisingly called Network theory. The ideas behind them
instead of being debunked are strengthening. In '99, _"Duncan Watts"_ ~
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Watts> and _"Steven Strogatz"_ ~
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Strogatz> wrote a paper submitted to
Nature working on the _"Small World theory"_ problem called _"Collective
dynamics of 'small-world' networks"_ . Their results tend to support the idea
that there is a measurable, finite, minimum number of links in a network
between nodes and that clustering of node links does occur. The idea applied
to various other natural networks (Actors in Hollywood, neural networks in the
brain, Transmission lines across the US) also support the conclusions.

    
    
       "... a scale-free network is a network 
        whose degree distribution follows a 
        power law ..." 
    

Then consider _"Albert-László Barabási"_ ~
<http://www.nd.edu/~sciwww/Faculty/barabasi.html> who who picked up the Watts-
Strogatz work ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_and_Strogatz_model> and
came up with the idea of _"Scale free networks"_ ~
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_networks> which gives probably the
most important insight into how networks cluster, Hubs.

I don't just believe the ideas of Watts, Strogatz and Barabási because of who
they are but what their experiments reveal.

------
Alex3917
This article is kind of amusing, but it's clear the author didn't actually
read Gladwell's newest book. While in general I think it'd be fair to describe
Gladwell's writing as intellectual comfort food, Outliers is pretty good. The
last chapter on KIPP was pretty dubious, but not in a way that detracted from
the thesis.

~~~
fallentimes
It was a lot better than I thought it'd be, and certainly better than _Blink_
, but Gladwell seems to have this habit of using multiple anecdotes as data,
which really bugs me. It's especially dangerous because he shifts between
using empirical analysis to anecdotal-based logic.

I hope he doesn't turn in to Seth Godin.

~~~
Alex3917
When Gladwell uses anecdotes he's not using them as data, but rather to give
the facts an emotional valence.

~~~
fallentimes
But then he jumps to conclusions based on them and so do his readers.

A counter viewpoint: [http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-
point...](http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-
toast.html)

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charlesju
I think it's so easy to critique someone's piece of work. But quite frankly,
it's pretty petty and childish to openly bash an author with such an article.

If people like what he's saying, if people find that Malcolm resonates with
their perception of reality, then all the better. It should be a personal
choice as to what we find interesting and not interesting, rather than some
omnipotent pundit at the "Register" dictating it to us.

I think that the author of the article is just jealous that he cannot
personally derive anything of interest to say without belittling a colleague.

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theoneill
I've learned a lot more from reading Gladwell than Orlowski. In fact, I can't
think of _anything_ I've learned from reading Orlowski.

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tlrobinson
Orlowski isn't the only one jumping on the "let's hate on Gladwell" bandwagon:

<http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2008/11/naked.html>

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nazgulnarsil
this thread is a perfect example of why these "dumb dumb" people are insanely
popular. they make statements simple enough to polarize people. as soon as you
hear their latest tidbit you instantly know whether you agree or disagree.
This is one of the secrets of politics.

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TrevorJ
I'm not sure this article rises to a level sufficient enough to label it as
"journalism"

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sharkfish
I hate rants with misspellings. One I found was "breaktaking". I'm sure he
meant "breathtaking". Get an editor, you twat.

~~~
sharkfish
I see I'm being modded down by programmers who also can't spell.

~~~
allenbrunson
No, you are being modded down for being crude. That kind of thing might be
common on other forums, but not here.

~~~
iamdave
Sometimes it takes an (admittedly erroneous) crude approach just to bring what
should be an overt point to fruition. While this wasn't one of them, there are
certainly times.

And on that point, that's the feeling I get when I read this article. The
writer is _trying_ to be direct and ride the fence of "condemnation by
realization" but only comes off as wrongly crude. While I haven't read any of
Gladwell's book, I've seen him speak and he's got his wits about him regarding
these things. Let's put it into perspective: how many of us can effectively
lecture on the things he does?

~~~
unalone
I don't think it's a very good article, but I agree with its premise. Gladwell
is not scientifically rigid. His books are interesting and make me think, but
I would not take any statistic he gave me as anything other than an
interesting fiction. He's too selective about data.

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axod
It deserves an upmod simply for using the excellent word "plebs".

~~~
ksvs
It's an amusing word, but a bad sign when one uses it.

~~~
axod
Agreed... It's a dull sunday - made me chuckle.

