Malcolm Gladwell got us wrong: here’s what got oversimplified
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For me, this realization was life-changing. And yes, I learned to play the guitar at the age of 40 after reading Outliers because I then had faith that with enough hours of hard work that I could do it. And I did. And now playing music is one of my greatest pleasures in life.
Both are fine. One is meant to be motivational, and one is meant to inform the public about science.
Gladwell's reputation is one of a science-based author which brings with it extra scrutiny.
I've struggled to articulate my dislike of Gladwell, but you've done it accurately here.
At the end of the day it's up to you to determine if what you are reading is accurate. And if you don't have the tools, resources, or time to do so, you trust in experts at your own risk.
http://www.alternet.org/story/155770/is_malcolm_gladwell_ame...
I'm more mentally exhausted by the endlessness of pure contrarianism on the Internet. It gets worse and worse with each year and I'm losing my enjoyment of social communities.
This is because 'skeptic' content is by far the most cost effective to produce. You're piggy backing off someone else's fame, and the only demand you're making of your readers is that they not read the original source material for themselves, which isn't exactly a difficult sell.
It is really really easy for someone to write some BS (online or in print). Books and newspapers do it routinely. Blogs do it every day. And of course people on online forums do it every second. Unless you just write "You're wrong," it usually takes a lot more effort, volume, and words to refute the BS.
So yes, it is often intellectually easier for people to be contrarian, but only because there is so much BS out there to refute. And it still takes more effort and volume to do so.
Let me be the first to say I agree. And I'm a contrarian!
It just can't be possible that every discrepancy deserves the effort to refute and correct, and we're biologically trained to approximate as a matter of priority.
It took me 9987 hours to learn that.
I agree with the Language Instinct since it sticks with our current scientific understanding of how the brain scientifically and mathematically creates grammar. I disagree with much of The Better Angels book since it contradicts many anthropological and archaeological studies of human societies.
One thing they say is the hunter-gatherer bands of 10,000 years ago (or the small handful which remain in the world's remaining wilderness today) are not as bad as they say.
One thing is - the men in some of these bands work less than 40 hours a week. So in some respects, they are better off than a lot of people here (in some respects worse off).
The basic idea is against the Panglossian idea that Voltaire talks about in Candide - that we're currently living in the best possible economic/political/etc. system. One counterpoint to that is every political system since the dawn of time has held up people like Pinker who say we're living in the best of all possible systems and the other ones are awful, people need a strong government to keep them in check, and so forth.
People didn't need a strong government to keep them in check 10,000 years ago, 20,000, 30,000 when they were painting buffalos in caves and so forth.
Pinker never says anything like this I can remember and it doesn't even sound like something like something he talks about. Could you point out something that lead you to this interpretation?
So you agree with "The Language Instinct" because it supports the prevailing view and you disagree with "The Better Angels..." because it doesn't. Why the appeal to authority? Why not judge the books on their arguments and evidence?
No, I said the Language Instinct talked about science and the brain, and Better Angels talked about political questions. One is scientific, one is polemic.
Pinker refers to Noam Chomsky in his scientific books, and he is an author of similar note. Chomsky writes mathematical formulas to describe human and computer languages, which are widely used - so there is no argument to their validity (unless you have some logical proof that Chomsky normal form can not describe context-free grammars). Chomsky also writes in other books about what he thinks about Israeli foreign policy - which is political and polemic.
I don't know how much more I can explain how there is a difference between an error-free mathematical proof and a controversial political opinion. They are apples and oranges.
Stephen Jay Gould, Isaac Asimov, Sir Patrick Moore, or Vaclav Smil strike me as better examples, drawing from personal experience.
I'm actually having a fair bit of trouble coming up with a good example of a contemporary scientific author I'd recommend unhestitatingly. Hrm.
A larger part of my confusion is that I'm doing some massive revision -- call it a refactoring -- of my worldview. Not an absolute overturning, but tossing off massive amounts of cruft, teasing out the odd bits of real truth, and digging further for more connections.
Many of the more insightful authors I could name simply aren't very well known. Many aren't in the hard sciences, though some (again, Smil delves there) are. Generally I'd point very hard at many of the folks associated with the Santa Fe Institute (Geoffrey West, W. Brian Arthur, David Krakauer, Sander van der Leuuw, J. Doyne Farmer), and others.
Since I'm reassimilating and assessing, a lot's up in the air.
I'd considered a few other names, mostly older -- Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov. I'd give slightly stronger cred to Asimov than Sagan, I think Asimov was more grounded in science, while Sagan tended to get a bit fuzzy. Though I also give Sagan serious credit for his attacks on bullshit and pseudo-science.
To a large extent though I'm mining more distant authors -- the past 250-300 years. Adam Smith (though largely revising my "conventional wisdom" assessment of him), Charles Darwin (quite possibly the most significant scientist of all time), Newton, Aldo Leopold, Howard and Eugene Odum, Alfred Lotke, William Ophuls (though more politics).
It's complicated.
Also, Gladwell has repeatedly "clarified", but if he didn't "get it wrong" why would there be a need to do this?
In regards to interpretations of their own work. They have largely spoken at arms length from what I'be seen and the book was popular enough to have lots of comments made via reporterst etc. I'm not claiming some coBS piracy, just the nature of these things.
Gladwell addresses this two years ago: http://www.businessinsider.com/malcolm-gladwell-explains-the...
To specifically address criticisms. One of then claim that deliberate practice is only 1/3 of the result. Gladwell, in his clarification, and original statements did not claim that deliberate practice was the only component. That was the misunderstanding from his book, not his intent.
Greatness is where practice and innate talent intersect.
There is such a thing as innate talent. Do you think anyone can be a world class physicist or mathematician with 10,000 hours practice? What about sprinters, programmers or entrepreneurs? I certainly don't. Not any of the above. I think people who achieve a high level of performance have almost certainly put in a lot of practice, but the reason they keep practicing is they have some natural aptitude for what they're practicing.
Gladwell's myth is comforting to our present elites who claim to have gotten where they are via hard work, and keeps the peace with the rubes.
Personally, I think people put too much emphasis on "natural talent." There may be such a thing, but yes, I think that dedicated, deliberate practice over long periods of time is what makes the biggest difference, and it can beat out "natural talent" in the long run. But, I'm not entirely convinced "natural talent" is a thing. I'm unsure what is real and what is perceived and cultural myth on this subject.
That's three and a half years of a 9-5 if you work 7 days a week. 5 years if you work 5 days a week. And I mean work to learn not work to put out a sub par product.
It's comforting to think that we are all capable of greatness. That doesn't make it so. It seems easier to accept with physical prowess. Do you think any amount of practice will bring me, an average Joe, even remotely close to the sprinting abilities of Usain Bolt? Clearly he was born with a physique that I was not. It's plain to see and so, natural physical talent is not something that is hard to accept. Why would natural mental talent be any different?
btw: i'm a high school teacher. I see the difference between gifted, middle of the road and ... um how to put it kindly, academically challenged individuals all the time. It may not be very PC, but there are loads of dummies among us and there's not much they can do do lift themselves up to even basic levels of intelligence. And just to be clear I'm not talking about the intellectually disabled.
> deliberate practice over long periods of time is what makes the biggest difference, and it can beat out "natural talent"
No. It will only beat out natural talent that never bothered to hone the same skills. Combining natural talent with practice is simply unbeatable and no amount of deliberate practice will allow you to reach the same heights.
This is patently obvious with physical ability. Why so hard to accept the same with mental ability?
> And just to be clear I'm not talking about the intellectually disabled.
below basic levels of intelligence, but not intellectually disable?
Then what are you talking about? Perhaps you are talking about kids who have squandered their potential, or had it squandered by others.
You may think natural talent doesn't count; but you can only think this because you've never been exposed to a sport, game or skill where someone had 4 sigma of natural talent on you.
I could argue that having a some innate talent helps to keep people practicing, but it is certainly not required to become okay at something.
But the interesting part is they all started out with essentially the same hardware, and I don't believe there is any part of the brain where you will find a 'natural' aptitude for entrepreneurship, or programming or whatever. Evolution just gave us a general purpose tool that can be moulded to whatever purpose.
Maybe, maybe not. https://en.wikipedia.aorg/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theor...
However, research in the area of expert performance shows that when it comes to this practice, not just the amount, but the type of practice matters tremendously. How practice is done is such a major factor in improvement that taking the 10,000 hour rule by itself is like solving physics problems with the formula F = a instead of F = ma.
Research in the area shows that performers usually plateau after reaching competence, which is the point they no longer struggle with regular operations. At this point, automaticity takes over, which for example is the reason that whilst most people can walk, few get consistently better at it despite walking a lot. This means, that out of the 10,000 hours put into learning the task, 9,000 are potentially wasted.
In order to leave plateaus, one needs engage in "deliberate practice", a term coined by the cognitive psychologist Anders Ericsson. It's presence, or lack thereof has been shown across a wide variety of disciplines between masters and people who are merely good after having spent similar amounts of time on practice.
Deliberate practice is practice where you consciously strain for a point that is just outside your current skill level. In the case of musicians for example, it can manifest as slowing down a song to a crawl until every note is hit in the right way, and then slowly speeding up or slowing down again at the line where one starts making mistakes.
My point is that whilst the 10,000 hour rule is useful for setting time expectations to become a master at a task and helps illustrate how expertise is attainable for all of us if we put in the time and work, it lacks predictive power for whether you will become great at something after spending this amount of time.
For a hobby, this may only result in some wasted practice time getting to competence(I've eyeballed this at about a factor of 2 doing some testing learning the piano, unscientific, I know), which is perfectly fine. You're doing it for fun. Pain periods and all.
For an occupation, however, it can lead to endless grief. You've read about the 10,000 hour rule, you want to become very good, but after a year of work, you don't ever become significantly better. You sit there, grasping at the problem, but it's elusive, like you're wildly tweaking screen settings things to fix a kernel bug.
I am also oversimplifying a bit for brevity here, but there's some books on the topic. For an in depth review, there's the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance"[0].
For a lighter book more along the lines of Outliers, theres "The Talent Code"[1] by Daniel Coyle. AFAIK, both draw from the Cambridge book.
Both of them are worth a look, the 10,000 hour rule might tell you "I can do it", but these will tell you "How to do it".
[0][https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Handb...] [1][https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-Born-Grown/dp/0...]
If you can get a skilled spotter, or a coach who knows his/her stuff, nothing like it! I have to rely on myself unfortunately, and am very grateful for the super materials that I've found for learning the guitar. Like you, I am focusing on the fundamentals and patiently letting my skills build up. 2 years into it I am happy to say that it's looking good!
10,000 hours will make you an advanced student in a very competitive field, if you are the kind of person who will put in long practice into that field. It might still be a question of musical talent; the students in question would certainly be the ones born with talent.
Further, it's dedicated practice, not noodling around and not performing.
Finally, 10,000 hours isn't any kind of magic number. It wasn't enough to make those students masters, and I would bet that you haven't put in anywhere near that many to achieve a level of skill that satisfies you.
About the only thing that comes out right is that to develop a skill, you need to practice. Which, to quote my own least favorite phrase, we already knew.
Everybody knows they need to practice. But at least for me, the 10,000 rule set my expectations properly. Knowing that "practice" means 20 hours a week for 10 years helped me get past the temptation to quit when things aren't so easy in the beginning.
Otherwise, as you say:
> advanced student in a very competitive field...
There's a bunch of people who say they can't math, or paint, or play instruments, or learn a foreign language, etc etc. They don't seem to know that all they need is better lessons and lots of practice.
And when the (now withdrawn) "Sheep and goats" programmer study gets quoted here it feels right to some people, because we've all seen people who just can't fizzbuzz.
We may have known it, but lots of us don't seem to have taken it to heart.
When we describe someone as a master or a professional, it's assumed that they've mastered more than just the mechanics of playing an instrument, since all of the most well known names in music have multiple skills developed at a high level.
If so, I think the "No evidence" is a bit strong in this case. We may lack what would commonly be considered "proof" but there are good indications that practice matters.
a) It doesn't take 10,000 hours to be halfway decent at guitar. If all you want to do is be able to strum the chords for most popular music, you should be able to do that in way less than 10,000 hours.
b) Even 10,000 hours isn't going to turn you into Stevie Ray Vaughan or Walter Becker. There's lots of guitar players out there with way more than 10,000 hours who are damn good and still aren't those guys. The 10,000 hour rule as Gladwell presents it makes people believe that time investment is key in developing a skill and that's just not true for all skills.
c) 10,000 hours is such an arbitrary number as to be totally meaningless. As guitar perfectly illustrates, it's almost never going to be the right number. For most people who just want to be able to strum some Beatles tunes, that's way too much time. For people who want to be Yngwie Malmsteen, it's not enough.
But it's not just guitar, most skills are like this. The 10,000 hour number is totally meaningless. How much time you need to invest into a skill depends on what your goals are with that skill, and also how good you are at related skills that feed into that ability already.
The 10,000 hour meme needs to be taken out back, hit with a shovel and buried. It's awful.
Like most people I've never taken the 10,000 hours as an absolute yardstick, just that you will be rewarded in proportion to the effort you put in. Of course, it's hard to slap a slick rule name on it when put that way.
The underlying message which Gladwell conveys that to be outlier at anything, all you need is 10,000 hrs of work does not seem to hold true for all individuals in all fields.
This puts the ten-thousand-hour rule in a completely different light: The reason that you must put in ten thousand or more hours of practice to become one of the world’s best violinists or chess players or golfers is that the people you are being compared to or competing with have themselves put in ten thousand or more hours of practice. There is no point at which performance maxes out and additional practice does not lead to further improvement. So, yes, if you wish to become one of the best in the world in one of these highly competitive fields, you will need to put in thousands and thousands of hours of hard, focused work just to have a chance of equaling all of those others who have chosen to put in the same sort of work.
This is not the case. Being a master in your field does improve your odds to a certain point and it can certainly get you a high income. But to actually become wealthy, you need more than skill/talent.
Once you get in the top 0.1% of your field, the level of talent/competition is so extremely high that it becomes literally impossible to differentiate skill levels between individuals (even experts in that field can't do it) - Beyond this point, to progress further, you have to rely on either luck or social connections. The hard part is that you have to keep practising/learning like crazy just to maintain your approximate 'ranking'.
Thankfully, at that skill level, influential/wealthy people might recognize your talent and may actually bother to answer your emails if you craft them correctly. But yeah, you'd better have damn good emotional intelligence/soft skills because beyond that, it's all about social scheming and manipulation.
The #1 most famous person in a given field is rarely the #1 in terms of skill level - They probably rank somewhere in the top 1% or maybe in the top 0.1% (if the field is particularly meritocratic) but it is unlikely that they even make the top 1000 list.
The meritocracy factor is probably relatively strong in fields like maths and science (research) but extremely weak in fields like acting, painting or music. It's related to the degree of subjectivity in each field. But I think even in science and engineering, there is a lot more subjectivity involved than most people would admit.
This, of course, isn't exclusive to software. The social scientist who is actually also great at mathematics will be able to make much more compelling grant requests than the average one who has muddled numbers and poor analysis.
How and where is this implied?
The book exists in a capitalist context, sure, but the stories are not dependent on it by my reading.
What he's an expert at doing is wrapping quite esoteric concepts up in a language that people can understand, relate to and discuss. For instance, he offers the Cliffnotes version of an answer to the question 'So how much work did I have to put in to become an expert at something' or 'How did containerization change world trade?.' He does this better than almost anyone, and his theories are tied to actual research (which sets him apart from the 'this sounds about right' of the likes of Seth Godin.)
If he doesn't offer enough precision and clarity for you, consider that his audiences are themselves well below the 10,000 hours threshold in the subjects he tends to opine on.
He does pretend to be presenting facts, and he's still on the hook for being wrong a lot of the time.
Which would be obvious if it wasn't also false. You also need to be practicing the right things in the right way and evolve what you practice as you develop.
If you put a person in a room with a piano and had them futz with it for 10,000 hours they will end up much worse than someone who has a dedicated coach, sheet music and proper exercises.
Pretty much everything Gladwell posits is just some folksy wisdom pretending to be fresh insight wearing a shoddy Einstein wig.
Sometimes the art is knowing how much is good enough.
Feel-good snake oil sells a lot of books and is fun to read but it isn't doing science or public edification/knowledge any favors.
He just did a show on how going to Bowdoin instead of Vassar is eeevil because Bowdoin feeds students really well and only has 13% of students on the highest level of financial aid, whereas Vassar food (according to the show) gives students diarrhea but has a 23% number. The argument was just supremely stupid but if you don't listen too closely he sounds smart. Or I should say, he sounds smart to the naive and bad-at-math variety of socialists (a category in which I don't lump every socialist btw).
I listened to the financial aid episode on Revisionist History. Why do you think it is supremely stupid?
Money spent on facilities absolutely limits the financial aid budget at institutions. This has a real effect. The average debt of Vassar students is $8k lower than Bowdoin for a reason. [0] [1]
[0] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...
[1] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...
Also, the notion that cutting student services back to the point that many of Vassarh interviewees spoke of a laxative effect is somehow humanitarian doesn't hold water.
The idea that if Bowdoin, which has one of the more generous financial aid systems of the elite schools, has to hit a certain percentage of aid or is somehow immoral, also doesn't hold water.
They pretended to the Bowdoin interviewees -- which did not include anyone who could have rebutted -- that this was only about food, while Vassar's highest officials were interviewed about their humanitarian goals.
You can see a response from Bowdoin officials here. https://www.boston.com/news/education/2016/07/15/bowdoin-col... [FIXED LINK]
Bowdoin's financial aid approach is certainly different. For instance, they tend to give 100% of the gap for any student who qualifies, and this has been going on for some time. Vassar doesn't do it this way, but increasing financial aid somewhat for students who were only partially qualifying was touted by Gladwell as some kind of revolution.
By the way, the State school based in Portland, ME also gives surf and turf dinners...
How not? If you're claiming that the numbers don't work, please explain how reducing expenditures on luxury services couldn't free up additional money for financial aid.
You're nitpicking. Obviously, by itself serving better food is not by itself exclusive evidence of "evil." Princeton serves better food than either Vassar or Bowdoin, but also does an even better job with financial aid.
I don't think Bowdoin is "immoral" any more than I think someone who only donates 20% of their income (vs. 30) is "immoral." The point is that, at the margin, spending a dollar on financial aid is more moral than spending a dollar on fantastic food.
The specifics of Bowdoin food vs. Vassar food really don't matter to me. The general point is totally valid though: spending on luxury services absolutely takes dollars away from financial aid.
In fact, the podcast actually got me thinking about whether the most moral thing would be for super-rich universities (ex. Princeton) to switch to need-aware admissions in reverse, with a goal of 100% of students qualifying for financial aid.
e.g. is it "nitpicking" to point out that Gladwell gave the two college vastly different levels of research and opportunity to address his concerns?
Direct quote from Gladwell. "The food at Bowdoin is actually a problem. A moral problem." I'm sorry I don't see the caveat he made about how this really wansn't his point.
I do agree that it was sloppy of him to not include an interview with financial aid people from Bowdoin. I actually would be interested to hear them explain why they have higher indebtedness than Vassar.
> I didn't say that cutting the quality of the food wouldn't "free up resources" that could go do financial aid. Did you go to Vassar or something?
No, I actually went to the horrible NYU (on a full ride, though). I just feel strongly that aggressively offering outreach and financial aid to low-income students is one of the primary moral responsibilities for elite universities.
Of course I don't agree. At what point do you determine that you've gone far enough, with the above stated principle? It's a bankrupt line of reasoning, based on the reduction of a budget with thousands of line items to dumbed-down sound bytes. Does it even bother you that you have mentioned no rational basis for drawing the line anywhere?
For individuals, I will state: spending a marginal dollar on charity is more moral than spending a marginal dollar on luxuries.
I don't have a clear answer to where the line lies, even for myself. I try to keep giving until the marginal luxuries which I give up have greater utility than the utility I gain from donations. Admittedly, this is not exact or imprecise. My giving is strongly affected by my mental health (one of the best ways I've found to get out of a depressive spiral is to go on a donation spree).
However, I don't think this lack of precision undermines the notion that charitable giving is more moral than luxury spending.
Does morally upstanding Vassar lack fancy architecture and highly-paid administrators?
> In retrospect this week's episode of https://t.co/2Mqc5Dwr4V should have included a trigger warning for Bowdoin grads.
This is not the writing of someone who is honestly investigating social justice issues. This is a pot-stirring self-promoter.
I'm sure he's interested in his image but I think mainly he wants to tell a good story and doesn't mind cutting some corners to do so. He's a very good story teller and naturally his priorities line up that way.
As other have pointed out, Gladwell didn't "oversimplify" but rather seriously misconstrued the research on expertise/practice.
His work tends to focus on narrow areas of performance: chess, music, etc., where rote learning, memorization, drill, and repetition are the main keys, unlike 'messier' areas like research, engineering, teaching, and the like. But even within those narrow domains, his theory isn't sufficient to explain performance, individual differences, and expertise (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...). There are so many exceptions to the rule (like child prodigies http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613... ), so many domain differences (like he is acknowledging now in the target article). He ignores the last 30 years of research in cognitive psychology. For example, persistent misconceptions and bad habits that prevent us from learning and making significant progress in both conceptual and physical domains. His theory ignores genetic factors that influence performance and expertise (see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613... or just watch a game of basketball), and ignores the role of IQ (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...). The data does not support Ericsson's theory, and his arguments have errors and contradictions (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614...).
Gladwell himself admits 10,000 hours is rather arbitrary. The point is still important though, as far too many people start a new skill and are disheartened by their lack of ability before putting in serious practice.
It might seem obvious that practice is necessary for most skills, but people forget it all the time. For example, when I'm teaching people programming they're quick to think themselves failures when they see the giant gap between their abilities and my own. What they don't realize is that I've been doing it for over a decade and, in fact, was much worse than them at first. [0]
[0] In fact, I probably only did HTML for my first whole month of "programming." One major advantage of learning things as a kid is that there's no pressure to be good.
A different study tested students on their ability to make clay pots. Some students were scored on the quality of each pot. Others were only scored based on quantity.
The students that emphasized quantity were able to make better pots by the end of the study. By aiming for quantity over quality, they were able to deliver both.
Performing puts a lot of pressure on you and a more direct focus on the mistakes and triumphs that count. I wouldn't be too quick to disregard how valuable it could be, because it forces you to follow through and work on all the important things.
It may be true but there's no evidence for it.
I always mention this guy [1] whenever this topic comes into the discussion. It has tangible aspects, you can see the improvement in his paintings along with the number of years passed, it's a journal.
[1] http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/870-Journey-...
And if 10,000 is just a made-up number, then is he even saying anything of value? It takes thousands of hours to become an expert at something. Wow! Really? Who knew!?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/29/malcolm-gladwe...
in other words, if you're smart enough to challenge my assumptions, don't read my books.
I think we can all conjure up examples like these in our everyday lives. The casual Dad who plays tennis every weekend but hasn't won a Round Robin tournament ever. Or the entrepreneur that jumps from idea to idea, never really following through and taking a risk.
It's feel-good science-iness like those crap games that "exercise your brain". It's just marketing.