Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell in 2008

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“”We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.

—Malcolm Gladwell, accidentally describing his own work

“”malcom gladwell is a novelty writer posing as a serious thinker he’s like the inverse of chumbawamba

—Eve 6

Outliers, 2008

Malcolm Gladwell (1963–) is a well known British-born Canadian best-selling author of pop-sociology books such as Outliers: The Story of Success, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, and Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference as well as his articles in the New Yorker magazine and his podcast Revisionist History. The common theme of his works is that major world changing people, events, and ideas, all have innocuous commonalities that are the secret to their success, delivered in the form of several short narratives. However, many writers and academics have criticize Gladwell's work for having numerous inaccuracies, cherry-picking data to support his conclusions, and prioritizing compelling storytelling over truthfulness.

Books

While the human appeal of his stories is very high, the actual utility of his analyses are hampered by immeasurably large sums of bullshit survivorship bias, selection bias, and confirmation bias. For example, in Outliers, Gladwell presents a narrative that all early tech billionaires were born in the exact same year, 1955 (a fact demonstrated by conventiently ignoring the ones that weren't), had a childhood hardship that taught them to overcome adversity (but defined in a vague way that can allow it to apply to anyone), and that most dropped out of college. All while carefully ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people who had the same life story and ended up broke. Additionally, not only does this claim promote victim-blaming "bootstrap" myths that have failed both the working class and the poor, it completely erases the oppression and everyday struggles faced by marginalized people (such as African Americans) for generations while omitting the advantages held by those with inherited wealth.

Blink, 2005

In his 2021 audiobook The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell focuses on the titular group of American military men who, while fighting during World War 2 in the Pacific theatre, developed a deep conviction that by using precision air bombing (that is, long range heavy bomber aircrafts in large numbers against key enemy targets), the U.S. could win the war with little to no civilian casualties.

Galaxy brain hot-takes

Fearmongering against weed

In the January 2019 edition of the New Yorker, Gladwell penned an article where he expressed his concerns over the growing legality and normalization of marijuana in modern society, claiming that the effect of the drug have been understudied while fearing decriminalization advocates are ignoring its possible dangers at their own peril. Needless to say, this exactly didn't go over too well online.

10,000 Hour Rule

A now common belief, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, in the book Outliers, is that 10,000 hours is the "magic number" of diligent focused practice to become a master at a skill. He cited a fairly focused study that looked at amateur and professional musicians at various instruments as the basis for this rule. While subsequent research has found some consistency of the importance of deliberate practice in games, music, and sports, the 10,000 hour barrier seems to be purely an artifact of the methodology of the particular study he cited. And in the area of office professions, to which Outliers implied that the rule was central, deliberate practice hours explains about 1% of variation in performance.

Justifying transphobic discrimination in sports

Gladwell pulled an "devil's advocate" on transgender people in sports, quote tweeting sports broadcaster Ross Tucker's tweet defending IAAF's practice of "sex testing" the hormones and genitals of trans athletes.

Bibliography

• Outliers: The Story of Success ISBN 978-0141036250
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking ISBN 978-0141014593
• David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
• Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference ISBN 978-0349113463
• Revenge of the Tipping Point:
• What the Dog Saw: and Other Adventures
• The Bomber Mafia: a Dream, a temptation, the Longest Night of the Second World War
• Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know