4 ms·

Gladwell is pop science at best. He weaves everything into a neat narrative which is too convenient. It's funny how you construe the mere mention of "identity

Gladwell is pop science at best. He weaves everything into a neat narrative which is too convenient. It's funny how you construe the mere mention of "identity politics" as an attack on your beliefs. :)

eesmith 9y ago
It's funny how irrelevant "identity politics" is to the topic, and yet you keep bringing it up. I thought my example was quite apropos. Most of marketing is based on pop science. That is, I believe that this so-called identification of (micro)generations comes from a marketing technique of identifying sub-populations that can be marketed towards. Gladwell gives an example of why marketing people try to do that. I then relate it with clustering, where there's a long history of finding good - and bad! - cluster centers. Would you care to explain how identity politics provides a more meaningful interpretation than what I gave? Or, for that matter, how it provides any meaningful interpretation, other than "talks about identity therefore must be associated with identity politics." To be clear, I think that 'identity politics' can be meaningful. Consider the transphobic bathroom bills which sprang up last. That's a clear case of people using the formal political system to castigate others based on identity. Similarly, when a security guard attacks someone who identifies as a woman and who was assigned female at birth, for using the woman's room because she didn't look feminine enough (on the presumption that she must be male), than that's an informal use of identity politics. (This is not hypothetical: https://www.advocate.com/business/2015/06/17/detroit-woman-kicked-out-restaurant-bathroom-looking-man-sues https://www.advocate.com/business/2015/06/17/detroit-woman-k... ). But politics must somehow be involved for this to be "identity politics", and I just don't see it.

4 ms·

Gladwell is pop science at best. He weaves everything into a neat narrative which is too convenient. It's funny how you construe the mere mention of "identity

by oceanghost 9y ago

eesmith 9y ago
It's funny how irrelevant "identity politics" is to the topic, and yet you keep bringing it up. I thought my example was quite apropos. Most of marketing is based on pop science. That is, I believe that this so-called identification of (micro)generations comes from a marketing technique of identifying sub-populations that can be marketed towards. Gladwell gives an example of why marketing people try to do that. I then relate it with clustering, where there's a long history of finding good - and bad! - cluster centers. Would you care to explain how identity politics provides a more meaningful interpretation than what I gave? Or, for that matter, how it provides any meaningful interpretation, other than "talks about identity therefore must be associated with identity politics." To be clear, I think that 'identity politics' can be meaningful. Consider the transphobic bathroom bills which sprang up last. That's a clear case of people using the formal political system to castigate others based on identity. Similarly, when a security guard attacks someone who identifies as a woman and who was assigned female at birth, for using the woman's room because she didn't look feminine enough (on the presumption that she must be male), than that's an informal use of identity politics. (This is not hypothetical: https://www.advocate.com/business/2015/06/17/detroit-woman-kicked-out-restaurant-bathroom-looking-man-sues https://www.advocate.com/business/2015/06/17/detroit-woman-k... ). But politics must somehow be involved for this to be "identity politics", and I just don't see it.