I've never read any Malcolm Gladwell. I hear he's a plagiarizing pop scientist, and the same people that are really into TED seem to love his work. That's reason enough for me to be doubtful-- but based on this thread, it seems like you all really hate him. My dad's trying to get me to read Blink; why shouldn't I?
I don't hate Malcolm Gladwell. My experience, however, has been that people with a superficial understanding of things will use Gladwell to justify whatever fuzzy thinking they're trying to pass as gospel truth. Here's a lengthy conversation between insomniasexx and myself about the nature of truth in journalism. I can summarize my position thusly: - If you know a little and present it as a little, you give your audience a jumping-off point to learn more. - If you know a lot and present it as a lot, you give your audience an insight and a wealth of knowledge that they can integrate into their experience. - But if you know a little and present it as a lot, you give your audience the impression that there isn't much knowledge available. Worse, if you legit make shit up you are essentially denying a path to self-education to the curious. Malcolm Gladwell, for better or for worse, is the source of the 10,000 hours nonsense that has pervaded seminars, TED talks, and all things pseudointellectual. I haven't read his book so I have no idea if he really hammered the point home or not but he absolutely condensed the art of mastery down to rote mechanics. Considering the brilliant works created by people who have done less (or more), Malcolm Gladwell has not assisted the pursuit of understanding of that subject... but as far as a vast horde of the incurious are concerned, "10,000 hours" is what it takes. Stop thinking and do your pushups. Or tell people to do their pushups. Or get paid by people to tell them to do their pushups. So. Like I said in the post you linked: I haven't read his works, but the people whose arguments and opinions I disvalue have. Guilt by association? Sure.
10,000 hours has never made sense to me. That would mean I am a quadruple master-eater, a triple master-writer, and a double master-gamer. Who would even keep track of that anyways? Are you supposed to? Is it a switch? Only 1,000 hours until I become a master-musician/student/other bullshit!
In one of my courses that I have now we talked about the Dreyfus model of expertise. It's a framework for understanding the difference between knowledge and wisdom, competency and expertise that I've found to be very useful. The model asserts there are five stages from total n00b to expert: 1. Novice. You've just got the basic rules. To use the example of driving a car, you learn that the car turns when you turn the wheel and that the brake does something useful. Basic stuff. 2. Advanced beginner. You know the basic, universal rules and start to learn situation-specific rules, e.g. how to do a four-way stop, when to shift into the next gear, how to merge on a highway. 3. Competency: you're a level higher and can now understand everything in terms of rules and actions. You can prioritize your attention and focus on specific tasks. This is the level you're supposed to be when you get your license: you know all the rules and can handle all the situations using those rules. 4. Proficient. Your skill level starts to move beyond just the rules. This is the level where value judgements come in. Intuition also starts to play a role. Not the spiritual kind, but rather the gut-feeling / subconscious kind. You still depend on the rules to do most of your actions but you regularly get into the 'flow'. To put it into gaming terms, it's like when in a heated Super Smash Bros match your thumbs are quicker than your mind, and you do your B attack at the right moment, but you only realize that you did that after the fact. 5. Expertise: So at the level of expert / mastery, you basically transcend the rules and know how to do things without having to formulate your actions into rulesets. When you're in the flow, you don't stop and think about why you're doing what you do: you just do the thing because you know how to do it. Experts operate at a level that can't be reduced to rules and logic. This is because most of those decisions are completely context-dependant, whereas rules and laws are context-independent. A competent person knows all the rules, but most skills are more than just rules. A game of chess is more than just the rules. The book I have this from argues that to get to that level of expertise, you need to be exposed to an enormous amount of [activity you want to master]. So yeah, if you think of expertise as 'someone who is so good at an activity as to move beyond the rules of that activity', then you are an expert at eating. Which sounds strange but really, how often do you actively think about how you're gonna hold that fork? This doesn't mean that 10k hours of doing whatever will make you an expert. You can play guitar for 10k hours but if you still have to think about how to form an A minor chord, you're not getting past the competent level. It does mean that to get to the expert level, you do need somewhere in the order of 10k hours.
It is highly likely to me that people who are successful in an area have spent significant amounts of time engrossed in all/most/many aspects of that area - for instance, music could include listening to music, playing music, creating music, talking about music, and so on. However, for all those that are super successful in their area of choice and passion, I do believe there are many who have spent similar amounts of time invested in the same activities who haven't "made it big," become well-respected experts or bastions of knowledge in the area, who haven't gotten jobs related to those skills, who in short have failed to achieve much beyond thorough competency in the area. I think this is the result of many things - luck, connections, opportunity, as well as drive, passion, commitment, and probably a sackful of other qualities. It strikes me that a musician who does not know why what he does musically works, but only knows that it does, does not have the same ability to manipulate sound as the musician who knows exactly why a given chord progression is so powerful and elicits certain emotions. I think one of my issues with the 10,000 hour rule is that it seems to encourage the idea that if you simply put in enough time, you'll be good. The thing is there is much more than that to becoming a true expert. I do not believe anyone can attain mastery without at least some natural gift as well as an education, but I do believe that someone with moderate talent who has to work very hard to learn his or her craft can beat out those with significant talent but an inconsistent, lazy, entitled, or half-hearted approach. You need to put in more than time. You need to come to the scenario with more tools than simply "lots of time" in your arsenal. And there are people who deserve to make it big, who have put that time in and more, who don't - or at least, haven't yet - for all sorts of factors. I find both the 10,000 hour rule, and Gladwell's core assertion in Blink, ("think less, make better choices") at their core simplistic and yes, offensive. They both seem to encourage a certain taking of things for granted. They both dismiss effort, although in different ways. The message I get from Gladwell is that success really is as simple as 10,000 hours and the best decisions really are as simple as going with your gut reaction. I really don't like those. If those are such truisms, what are you supposed to say to all those people who toil away in an area, put in their 10k hours and more, and never make it? What about people who know their gut reactions aren't healthy or helpful? In distilling concepts Gladwell throws nuance to the wind and implies that if what he suggests doesn't work for you, that you must be a failure somehow. And I just can't agree with a man who tells me to think less before I make a decision, and that decision will magically end up being better than the one I'd come to after 30 minutes' thought.
While I agree with the gist of your post -the 10k rule is indeed insulting, and I think less of Gladwell because of it- I disagree on the last half of this part. Not all knowledge is the same, and using your strong sense of intuition isn't necessarily 'thinking less'. If you hadn't noticed already, I find it difficult to summarize the argument in the book without it losing some strength. So I'll let my textbook explain: Experiences are the building blocks of intuition. The experiences themselves aren't what makes an expert an expert, it's what you do with it that matters.And I just can't agree with a man who tells me to think less before I make a decision, and that decision will magically end up being better than the one I'd come to after 30 minutes' thought.
It is important to emphasize that when Dreyfus and Dreyfus use the word ‘‘intuition’’ they do not mean some kind of guesswork. For Dreyfus and Dreyfus intuition is a property which each individual uses in everyday life. [...] Take something as mundane as riding a bicycle. Someone able to ride a bike has not formulated a set of rules, which, if followed, can teach somebody else to ride a bicycle. How could we, for example, ‘‘teach’’ the difference between nearly falling and the need to lean over in order to turn a corner? How do we explain the best response to being off balance? Bicyclists can bicycle because they have the necessary know-how, achieved via practical experiences, invariably accompanied by a few childhood scrapes and bruises. Experience cannot necessarily be verbalized, intellectualized, and made into rules.
[Using intuition] does not mean that experts never think consciously, nor that they always do the right thing. When there is time, and when much is at stake, experts will also deliberate before they act. Their deliberation, however, is not based on calculated problem solving but on critical reflection over the intuition, which the expert applies.
http://exiledonline.com/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-into-the-life-work-of-america’s-most-successful-propagandist/ He seems like a sleezy guy who will say whatever it takes for money and fame.
Mostly - because Gladwell runs a shtick. Half his stuff is bullshit. Here's a collection of one-off Hubski links designed to get you in deep...Or at least give you a few things to chew over...All mine, though I'm sure I could find more of others if I went looking - just that mine are easiest to find, personally... He ignores it when his statements are proven wrong - see 10,000 hours... He bases a lot of information on anecdotes instead of tempered assessments of data, trends, etc He goes on and on about 10,000 hours and it's bull Sometimes he writes about stupid things Of course, even someone you hate can write something you agree with. I tried reading his book, Blink, and I just couldn't get behind it. I didn't like the premises, I didn't like the suggestions of the "findings" in the book, and I didn't like the writing style. It felt dumbed down; I felt the content was handily summed up in packages of information that led to one conclusion and were meant for me to consume as fact without question. I'm sure others have more articulate and better-sourced arguments, kleinbl00 probably
to rule the world. Frankly at the bottom of it, I don't find what he writes appealing or inspiring, when I read it it comes across as slightly odious, noxious, and patronizing, and at the same time, doesn't convince me. I think he is a pop psychologist who doesn't do a good job with actual facts or expressing them. I think he is more likely to bend information to his narrative than acknowledge there is room for difference and error. I also find him annoyingly uplifting and platitudinous. Basically, Blink was like "You don't need to think about things to get to a good conclusion! Think less!" and I found that recommendation insulting and untrustworthy at minimum.
Most importantly because people read him instead of <insert any other name> and then that's all they read. If people are only reading an average of four real books per year, or whatever, if one of them is Gladwell, that's a massive impact on the sum total of your read intelligence on the year. He's famously an oversimplifier and I've never found anything he wrote interesting or insightful (and yes I've tried it). EDIT: oh. No reason not to read Blink, just recognize that you shouldn't spend too much time on it because there are more good books in the world to read than you can before you die and so you're only hurting yourself.
I think whenever something is sciency / fancy enough to not be
totally accessible, but not fancy enough to be inaccessible to idiots, you are going to have backlash by those who think it is too basic. I know you can give me 10,000 reasons why Gladwell is wrong or stupid, but I don't really care. I truly believe a lot of people simply hate him because it makes them feel smarter and above those who do like him. The reality is, reading Gladwell makes you feel smart and like you are learning something and seeing the world slightly differently. But wait! If insomniasexx the idiot feels smart reading Gladwell, then it must not be that smart. Shoot. I hate Gladwell because I'm smarter than that! That said... I do think that there are probably some legitimate reasons to not like Gladwell. I also do not think all Gladwell haters fall into this category. Some people truly are educated and we'll researched and see fundamental flaws with his work. That's fine. But in general... Especially in random threads on the Internet, it's cool to not like Gladwell because it means you will be on the "smart" side when the Gladwell haters and "you're am idiot for reading Gladwell' appear.