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Is "Peak" in the same vein as Malcolm Gladwell or "Good to Great" which preselects a handful of prodigies across all fields then makes broad, definitive (unscie

Is "Peak" in the same vein as Malcolm Gladwell or "Good to Great" which preselects a handful of prodigies across all fields then makes broad, definitive (unscientific) conclusions based on some posthoc observations?

iainctduncan 5y ago
No, if anything Peak was written as a response to Outliers, which grossly misrepresents Ericsson's work. Peak is his popular science version of his own work, presumably to correct that. It's a good read, and can act as a guide to his actual academic papers. But bear in mind, it is still only as good as his studies, which were done on pre-professional players and athletes, not on the super-elite geniuses. Outliers is a complete piece of shit. No professionals take anything in that book seriously, it's cherry picked extrapolated nonsense by someone who wanted a good story and has no idea what he was talking about.
laserlight 5y ago
I haven’t read Good to Great, but have read other Malcolm Gladwell books. They are written to be sensational and popular, not scientific at all. Indeed Gladwell is the one who misrepresented 10000 hours of practice that Anders Ericsson identified as part of his research. Ericsson identifies 10000 hours as a ballpark around which proficient practicers have practiced in their career --- nothing like a prerequisite Gladwell portrayed it to be. To the contrary, Ericsson states that without deliberate practice, the number of hours of practice doesn’t matter. Peak is nothing like Gladwell books. I recommend it to everyone interested in practice and improvement.
- iainctduncan 5y ago
  A good way to summarize it is: Gladwell implied that if you did 10k hours, you'd become world class, that's it! Ericsson identified that the most significant differentiator between the top performers at conservatories and the rest was how much of their lives they had spent doing rigorous practice. Those are two totally different things. To paraphrase Ericsson in a way that is meaningful for most people, he basically said "10k hours is the average we saw of our top performers" (10+ years, 3 hours a day). He in no way implies that doing that would make you world class, or that all world class performers had done it. He never says it's either necessary or sufficient - just what they observed their top subjects had done relative to their bottom ones, so if you want to get good, start there. There are people out there who are world class after playing half that, and scads and scads who aren't and have done more than double. I took a lot longer than 10 years to do my 10k+ hours, but by now at age 47 I've done them. So have most of my musician friends. We gig around town. lol. 10k is table stakes.
  - laserlight 5y ago
    Thank you for this very good summary.

iainctduncan 5y ago

No, if anything Peak was written as a response to Outliers, which grossly misrepresents Ericsson's work. Peak is his popular science version of his own work, presumably to correct that. It's a good read, and can act as a guide to his actual academic papers. But bear in mind, it is still only as good as his studies, which were done on pre-professional players and athletes, not on the super-elite geniuses. Outliers is a complete piece of shit. No professionals take anything in that book seriously, it's cherry picked extrapolated nonsense by someone who wanted a good story and has no idea what he was talking about.

laserlight 5y ago

I haven’t read Good to Great, but have read other Malcolm Gladwell books. They are written to be sensational and popular, not scientific at all. Indeed Gladwell is the one who misrepresented 10000 hours of practice that Anders Ericsson identified as part of his research. Ericsson identifies 10000 hours as a ballpark around which proficient practicers have practiced in their career --- nothing like a prerequisite Gladwell portrayed it to be. To the contrary, Ericsson states that without deliberate practice, the number of hours of practice doesn’t matter. Peak is nothing like Gladwell books. I recommend it to everyone interested in practice and improvement.

iainctduncan 5y ago
A good way to summarize it is: Gladwell implied that if you did 10k hours, you'd become world class, that's it! Ericsson identified that the most significant differentiator between the top performers at conservatories and the rest was how much of their lives they had spent doing rigorous practice. Those are two totally different things. To paraphrase Ericsson in a way that is meaningful for most people, he basically said "10k hours is the average we saw of our top performers" (10+ years, 3 hours a day). He in no way implies that doing that would make you world class, or that all world class performers had done it. He never says it's either necessary or sufficient - just what they observed their top subjects had done relative to their bottom ones, so if you want to get good, start there. There are people out there who are world class after playing half that, and scads and scads who aren't and have done more than double. I took a lot longer than 10 years to do my 10k+ hours, but by now at age 47 I've done them. So have most of my musician friends. We gig around town. lol. 10k is table stakes.
- laserlight 5y ago
  Thank you for this very good summary.