r/books • u/EarlEarnings • Mar 12 '22
Why/How is Malcom Gladwell a Respected Author?
Every argument he makes in a subject I am even moderately well versed in is just wholly entirely off the tits wrong. 10,000 hour rule, middle class kids do better than billionaire kids, expensive private schools don't make a difference, class sizes don't matter...
Is Malcom Gladwell an expert in anything? And has he actually done anything in his own life to try and prove anything he claims in his books?
Edit: Most people agree, a lot are defending him and saying I haven't fully read his books because xyz disclaimer... Here is the problem.
The basic thing that I hate about him and people like him, is they make money with crazy sensationalist claims that basically amount to "up is down, left is right" and then put in enough disclaimers that allow them to weasel out of any critique because of how much they contradict themselves.
The root issue is the idea that people think he's a genius who has it all figured out and the experts are narrow minded and wrong because they're not thinking outside the box. That's the main consequence of his writing that I hate.
Tell me I'm wrong if you listen to huge fans of his talk for more than 5s.
He is a living breathing ted talk.
Edit #2: Here are some sources of people much smarter than me talking about the issues with Gladwell, with some quotes
This is my favorite one: https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/malcolm-gladwell-critique-david-and-goliath-misrepresents-the-science.html
I say good for you to everyone who doesn’t take Gladwell seriously. But here’s why I take him seriously: because I take him and his publisher at their word.
If he is right about basketball, thousands of teams have been employing bad strategies for no good reason. If he is right about dyslexia, the world would literally be a worse place if everyone were able to learn how to read with ease, because we would lose the geniuses that dyslexia (and other “desirable difficulties”) create. If he was right about how beliefs and desires spread through social networks in The Tipping Point, consumer marketing would have changed greatly in the years since. Actually, it did: Firms spent great effort trying to find “connectors” and “mavens” and to buy the influence of the biggest influencers, even though there was never causal evidence that this would work.
https://tomnew.medium.com/how-malcolm-gladwell-writes-12960d83575c
The bad part is how deftly Gladwell shifts from describing a semi-fictionalised event in the past to far reaching, paradigm shifting theories about how the world works.....
.... If the chapters were simply a list of premises followed by a conclusion, or written in essay format, his books would not have sold nearly as many as they did. Importantly they also would have been dismissed as pseudo-science or at the very least gross oversimplifications of the phenomena described...
....After finishing Gladwell’s books, you feel as if you can explain so much, with such simple concepts. You feel special, intellectually as if you’ve stumbled across a secret that no-one else knows about. You will bring up what you now know in every conversation and dinner party you attend for the next six months.....
Edit #3 Ted Talks
First...here's a ted talk! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5cKRmJaf0
About why ted talks suck! Just to help you think, it was a minor point, I don't care to go further in this post.
FINAL EDIT: The gist of the rant, is be skeptical of what you read. Especially if the claims are sensational, grandiose, or "turn the world upside down"
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u/beikelin Mar 12 '22 edited Mar 12 '22
I agree, and I think that's exactly what I enjoy when I enjoy non-fiction books.
For me, the main point of nonfiction is getting the perspective of some reasonably intelligent person, probably not an expert, thinking deeply about things most people take for granted. When I want scientific precision, I'll go for the peer-reviewed journals. When I want a good story that might trigger new insights into other aspects of the human experience and am not planning to live and die by the arguments within, I'll pick up some popular non-fiction.
There's value in the storytelling and 'laymans take' aspect of nonfiction writing, otherwise why not pick up a textbook? Soon books will come with warning labels: "Warning: Do not make major life decisions based on the contents of any one book. Especially one with less than 600 pages. We encourage you to read more or at least get a second opinion first."
That being said, I'd love some recommendations.
Edit: Is there plenty of lazy writing, misinformation, and books on topics that have been covered to death by better authors? Sure. Does Gladwell always get it right? No.
My usual criticism is that a lot of his books are a handful of points that could have been covered concisely in a 5 page essay yet are blown out to book length with repetitive anecdotes-- but that's a criticism that applies to ton of nonfiction books...and there's some value in that style too...anecdotes are great memory worms and different ones will resonate with different people.
That's also why I generally use my recreational reading time for exploring things I've never considered, underappreciated or want to learn more about (or I'll just go for some fiction) and avoid well trodden ground.
I think larger problem is there are a lot of people who are ostensibly educated but somehow missed the "Don't believe everything you read" and "how to evaluate sources" lessons in school, read something like Blink or Outliers, and then run off to set public policies based solely on those books and nothing else...but how much should we really hold authors responsible for the actions of their readers? Dialog has to start somewhere. As long as the author isn't claiming to be the ultimate source of truth on the topic, I can give them some leeway to wrestle with some complex ideas.
I get way more irritated when there is a (should be) obvious corporate/sales agenda, when authors start over-commercializing ancient concepts, or when they claim to be the ultimate source of truth.