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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

The question is if Malcolm Gladwell wants to be a Tony Robbins type author or a Steven Pinker type author.

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.

To some extent you're right and I see your point, but this is also a false dichotomy. Gladwell can be whatever he wants to be. He may be rooted in science, but let's be honest, 10,000 is a fairly arbitrary number. If the world couldn't figure out that 10,000 hours wasn't scientific, we may have a larger problem.

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.

> I'm more mentally exhausted by the endlessness of pure contrarianism on the Internet.

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.

I think that perspective of exhaustion with contrarianism is part of the problem. There an excellent quote, which is "the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."

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.

Sadly, I've found myself doing this https://xkcd.com/386/ more often than I would like.

> 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.

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.

Pinker is not a great example as a popularizer of science. He writes scientific books in layman's terms like The Language Instinct (which itself sometimes drifts off scientific canon into one explanation he favors over another in disputed areas). He also writes books like The Better Angels of Our Nature which are much more loosely connected to science in which he gives his opinion on human nature, politics, society etc.

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.

Genuinely curious: in what ways does Better Angels contradict studies of human societies?

You can read Marshall Sahlins, Lewis H. Morgan, Eleanor Leacock or others.

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.

>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.

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?

>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.

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?

> because it supports the prevailing view and you disagree with "The Better Angels..." because it doesn't.

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.

You're misrepresenting what Pinker is saying in "Better Angels". His claim is that violence globally has declined and he backs that up with quantified data and argument. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not disagree that there probably are some remote cultures that are less violent but it doesn't detract from his larger point.

There have been enough criticisms of Gladwell that I put him somewhere inbetween - perhaps closer to James Altucher of James Gleik?

I see your point, though I don't find your examples particularly compelling.

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.

Where would you put Richard Dawkins? His science books? I've always found them to be methodical and instructive.

He's in.

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.

Completely agree on Asimov. I spent a quite a bit of my childhood reading anything that was written by Asimov that i could lay my hands on. I always felt so much in awe at the kinds of things he'd make me think about. I'll have to check out the Sante Fe Institute stuff - thanks for the recommendations!

Could not have said this better myself.

I've struggled to articulate my dislike of Gladwell, but you've done it accurately here.

Upvoted. Its easy to forget, he is a journalist, albeit a very glorified one - not a scientist, although it's easy to see how he is often confused as one.

Journalists have as much responsibility to the truth as scientists. It is possible to entertain people using only the truth.

Sure, but they're limited by not being experts in the subject matter they are reporting while at the same time attempting to distill it down into accessible language for the lay reader.

Just because someone is proclaimed "expert" doesn't mean they are good at what they do. This is especially true for the softer fields that Gladwell writes in.

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.

Gladwell is not even a journalist:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155770/is_malcolm_gladwell_ame...

Except Gladwell didn't "get us wrong". People who read Gladwell and misinterpreted it "got us wrong". Gladwell has spoken repeatedly and clarified his book statements, Though if you read it closely there isn't much clarification needed.

I am confused by the comment. You think the researchers whose work Gladwell based his book on are WRONG about Gladwell getting it wrong, even though they explain the problems fairly well and you haven't addressed any of the specific points? Curious to know what qualifies you to know they have the wrong interpretation of their own work... have you even read it, or do you feel qualified to say this based on a reading of Gladwell alone?

Also, Gladwell has repeatedly "clarified", but if he didn't "get it wrong" why would there be a need to do this?

"Got us wrong" implies a fundamental inaccuracy in the concept. There is not a fundamental inaccuracy in the concept. Clarification is need to explain the nuance.

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.

He's a Gladwell type author.

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