Isaac Chotiner's blog post yesterday pointed me to something I'd missed: a very funny and dead-on review of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. Actually, I only assume it's dead-on. All I've read from Gladwell is Blink and some articles in the New Yorker. But, Gladwell-like, I'll set aside the problem of induction and assume all Gladwellian musings are similarly worthless.
In everything I've read of his, he draws very dramatic and unwarranted conclusions from very limited data. He seems, oddly, to forget what point he is trying to establish and makes some other, unrelated or even contradictory point. His breeziness covers a real lack of familiarity with the topic on which he's writing. I have no idea how he's managed to be a gazillionaire spouting inconsistent, unsupported twaddle.
Natural History
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It usually takes me several weeks to write these essays, in part because I
am slow, and in part I have more to do in retirement than I ever did when
work...
8 hours ago
Thanks for the post...now, instead of punching a hole in the wall, I can refer people to this when they ask me what I thought of "The Tipping Point."
ReplyDelete-joe