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Garbage article. The article misses that Rand's books are romantic, whereas Gladwell is a journalist. Rand writes fiction; Gladwell writes theories based on an

Garbage article. The article misses that Rand's books are romantic, whereas Gladwell is a journalist. Rand writes fiction; Gladwell writes theories based on anecdotes and statistics. For an analogy, that'd be a lot like saying "Pablo Piccasso, or xyz modern photographer: Who is right?" The guy's synopsis of Rand is pretty telling --> "Atlas Shrugged is a similar story. In it a group of scientists and tycoons decide in equally petulant fashion decide that they will "simply take their ball and go home" when society refuses to capitulate to their capricious demands." Rand misses some points, the world isn't so black and white. But her general message is pro-individualism, hard work, anti-politicking, pro-competition, etc. It's anti-interventionism, anti-socialism, anti-labor, etc. It also mocks the hell out of people who come from opposite backgrounds, and interprets their motivations as scared and selfish. It makes for a good read, but makes her books hard to discuss with people from those viewpoints. In reality, most people who are pro-collective, pro-socialism, etc. are decent folk with great intentions. Free marketists and socialists just happen to violently disagree on how to build the best world. Unfortunately, Rand's ruthless treatment of people who disagree with her all being nincompoops makes the books hard to discuss with someone who doesn't already have some of the underpinnings of her philosophy.

ScottHanson 18y ago
It's only a garbage article if you're a fanatical Rand groupie. The post contributes to an important societal debate over whether or not the successful owe anything back to society, such as taxes. Obviously it's stimulated a lot of heat.
- unalone 18y ago
  No, it's garbage because it makes a claim, then fails to back it up well. I read the NYmag article. Gladwell in that article does appear to be Rand's favorite villain. However, the blog post doesn't use those points. It doesn't contrast Gladwell's "cutting down the great man" to Rand's points. It brings up Rand, attacks her, brings up Gladwell, draws no conclusions whatsoever, and then says that the author can see a connection. The fact that a good argument as come up is because of the various Hacker News factions, not because of any merit that article had whatsoever.
  - RobertHenderson 18y ago
    No, it's garbage because it makes a claim, then fails to back it up well. -- The guy simply asked a question. A question which then led to this long tirade by Rand groupies.
    - unalone 18y ago
      FTA: Well, according to Ayn Rand everything in the world grinds to a halt. In her bizarre world view, no replacements are available amongst the rest of humanity to rise up to the occasion and take over from the cry-babies who have gone home in a snit. Then, citing Gladwell out of context: Then there's the question of why so many Asian students excel at mathematics: And then there are the math geniuses who, as anyone can’t help noticing, are disproportionately Asian. Citing the work of an educational researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Gladwell attributes this phenomenon not to some innate mathematical ability that Asians possess but to the fact that children in Asian countries are willing to work longer and harder than their Western counterparts. That willingness, Gladwell continues, is due to a cultural legacy of hard work that stems from the cultivation of rice. Turning to a historian who studies ancient Chinese peasant proverbs, Gladwell marvels at what Chinese rice farmers used to tell one another: “No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.” Elsewhere in this thread was an argument from somebody who saw this and assumed that Gladwell was being racist and saying that working in rice paddies make Chinese people hard-working. Then it sums up: So the question is then: Are the successful truly independent of the society within which they grew up or do they owe their success, at least in part, to the benefits, attitudes, and advantages it bestowed upon them? Read the entire article, Why Success Is More Circumstantial Than Personal. Who is right? Malcolm Gladwell or Ayn Rand? It doesn't add anything of interest. It doesn't make an initial comparison. It doesn't argue about how they're opposed in any way. We the commenters did that.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
    - unalone 18y ago
      The necessary claim to make that assertion, as has been stated in several places here, is that Rand and Gladwell are opposites. There've been a few threads here discussing that in particular. That claim is not backed up. If I asked the question "Who is our savior: George Bush or Boy George?", then I would be making a specious claim: that either is a savior. Or, if I ask "Who is right: George Carlin or Lewis Black?", the specious claim is the two oppose themselves. In that case, my follow-up post to the question needs to explain exactly how the two oppose one another. In this case, there is somewhat of an argument to be made, but it's not one that the blog post makes.
- Dino 18y ago
  There is no easier way to bump your traffic up than by dissing Ayn Rand. Well, maybe dissing Jesus might get you more traffic. It's hilarious seeing all the fanatics go rabid.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
prospero 18y ago
Rand's vilification of people who disagree with her is irritating, but what's more troublesome is the victim mentality that goes along with it. Inevitably the protagonist (who is handsome, smart, determined, and surprisingly domineering in the bedroom) is held back by the mediocrity of the masses. If only circumstances were different, the books tell us over and over again, our hero could achieve his true potential. This, to me, is a cop-out. Most proponents of Objectivism never make something excellent, they just talk a lot about how they could, maybe, if only things were different. Or, in an amusing variation, they can just declare themselves to have achieved excellence (Ayn Rand once declared herself "the best writer today") in spite of the opposition. Both of these approaches seem to sidestep the very real challenges of making something great and enduring. While I think the comparison to Gladwell is apples to oranges, I much prefer his attempts to quantify what make someone exceptional to Rand's ineffable "greatness".
- ScottHanson 18y ago
  Rand's vilification of people who disagree with her is irritating, but what's more troublesome is the victim mentality that goes along with it. Inevitably the protagonist (who is handsome, smart, determined, and surprisingly domineering in the bedroom) is held back by the mediocrity of the masses. If only circumstances were different, the books tell us over and over again, our hero could achieve his true potential. - Hence the blogger's comment: "Atlas Shrugged is a similar story. In it a group of scientists and tycoons decide in equally petulant fashion that they will "simply take their ball and go home", when society refuses to capitulate to their capricious demands. So what happens? Well, according to Ayn Rand everything in the world grinds to a halt. In her bizarre world view, no replacements are available amongst the rest of humanity to rise up to the occasion and take over from the cry-babies who have gone home in a snit." Yes, in real life others would have stepped up to the plate.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I think Atlas Shrugged assumes a fantastic future in which the amount of people who CAN step up to the plate have dwindled immensely, and in which many of the ones who COULD are already broken. In real life as it stands today, Atlas Shrugged is not a plausible scenario. The trick to reading it without casting it aside in horror is realizing that Rand knows that, and that she's drawing things to their extremes to make a specific point about how she thinks human beings work. People who mock Atlas on that point are missing the point of the book.
walterk 18y ago
The article misses that Rand's books are romantic, whereas Gladwell is a journalist. Rand writes fiction; Gladwell writes theories based on anecdotes and statistics. For an analogy, that'd be a lot like saying "Pablo Piccasso, or xyz modern photographer: Who is right?" Not sure what profession has to do with a comparison of beliefs.
- KrisZolar 18y ago
  But fools take it literally.
- unalone 18y ago
  They each have different aims with their writing. Gladwell wants to illustrate things as they are. Rand wants to illustrate things as they could be.
  - walterk 18y ago
    Gladwell's writings undermine Rand's beliefs justifying her vision of what could/should be.
    - unalone 18y ago
      To some extent, yes. As I said: Gladwell is like a Rand villain. But they aren't polar opposites. I doubt Rand ever saw the world as stylized as she wrote it. She's openly a Romantic Realist. Gladwell opposes Rand. But they still hold fast in certain things. The opposite of Rand is not the person who says that people aren't responsible for their success. It's the person who says that civilization isn't a success, that human beings are beasts, that the solution to our problems is to go back to being savages. Similarly: I think Rand would disagree with Gladwell's claim that nobody is responsible for their life, but she wouldn't dispute his findings. She would just argue that they aren't as relevant as Gladwell thinks they are.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
time_management 18y ago
My favorite Randian hero is not from a Rand novel, but Final Fantasy 6: Kefka.

ScottHanson 18y ago

It's only a garbage article if you're a fanatical Rand groupie. The post contributes to an important societal debate over whether or not the successful owe anything back to society, such as taxes. Obviously it's stimulated a lot of heat.

unalone 18y ago
No, it's garbage because it makes a claim, then fails to back it up well. I read the NYmag article. Gladwell in that article does appear to be Rand's favorite villain. However, the blog post doesn't use those points. It doesn't contrast Gladwell's "cutting down the great man" to Rand's points. It brings up Rand, attacks her, brings up Gladwell, draws no conclusions whatsoever, and then says that the author can see a connection. The fact that a good argument as come up is because of the various Hacker News factions, not because of any merit that article had whatsoever.
- RobertHenderson 18y ago
  No, it's garbage because it makes a claim, then fails to back it up well. -- The guy simply asked a question. A question which then led to this long tirade by Rand groupies.
  - unalone 18y ago
    FTA: Well, according to Ayn Rand everything in the world grinds to a halt. In her bizarre world view, no replacements are available amongst the rest of humanity to rise up to the occasion and take over from the cry-babies who have gone home in a snit. Then, citing Gladwell out of context: Then there's the question of why so many Asian students excel at mathematics: And then there are the math geniuses who, as anyone can’t help noticing, are disproportionately Asian. Citing the work of an educational researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Gladwell attributes this phenomenon not to some innate mathematical ability that Asians possess but to the fact that children in Asian countries are willing to work longer and harder than their Western counterparts. That willingness, Gladwell continues, is due to a cultural legacy of hard work that stems from the cultivation of rice. Turning to a historian who studies ancient Chinese peasant proverbs, Gladwell marvels at what Chinese rice farmers used to tell one another: “No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.” Elsewhere in this thread was an argument from somebody who saw this and assumed that Gladwell was being racist and saying that working in rice paddies make Chinese people hard-working. Then it sums up: So the question is then: Are the successful truly independent of the society within which they grew up or do they owe their success, at least in part, to the benefits, attitudes, and advantages it bestowed upon them? Read the entire article, Why Success Is More Circumstantial Than Personal. Who is right? Malcolm Gladwell or Ayn Rand? It doesn't add anything of interest. It doesn't make an initial comparison. It doesn't argue about how they're opposed in any way. We the commenters did that.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
  - unalone 18y ago
    The necessary claim to make that assertion, as has been stated in several places here, is that Rand and Gladwell are opposites. There've been a few threads here discussing that in particular. That claim is not backed up. If I asked the question "Who is our savior: George Bush or Boy George?", then I would be making a specious claim: that either is a savior. Or, if I ask "Who is right: George Carlin or Lewis Black?", the specious claim is the two oppose themselves. In that case, my follow-up post to the question needs to explain exactly how the two oppose one another. In this case, there is somewhat of an argument to be made, but it's not one that the blog post makes.
Dino 18y ago
There is no easier way to bump your traffic up than by dissing Ayn Rand. Well, maybe dissing Jesus might get you more traffic. It's hilarious seeing all the fanatics go rabid.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

prospero 18y ago

Rand's vilification of people who disagree with her is irritating, but what's more troublesome is the victim mentality that goes along with it. Inevitably the protagonist (who is handsome, smart, determined, and surprisingly domineering in the bedroom) is held back by the mediocrity of the masses. If only circumstances were different, the books tell us over and over again, our hero could achieve his true potential. This, to me, is a cop-out. Most proponents of Objectivism never make something excellent, they just talk a lot about how they could, maybe, if only things were different. Or, in an amusing variation, they can just declare themselves to have achieved excellence (Ayn Rand once declared herself "the best writer today") in spite of the opposition. Both of these approaches seem to sidestep the very real challenges of making something great and enduring. While I think the comparison to Gladwell is apples to oranges, I much prefer his attempts to quantify what make someone exceptional to Rand's ineffable "greatness".

ScottHanson 18y ago
Rand's vilification of people who disagree with her is irritating, but what's more troublesome is the victim mentality that goes along with it. Inevitably the protagonist (who is handsome, smart, determined, and surprisingly domineering in the bedroom) is held back by the mediocrity of the masses. If only circumstances were different, the books tell us over and over again, our hero could achieve his true potential. - Hence the blogger's comment: "Atlas Shrugged is a similar story. In it a group of scientists and tycoons decide in equally petulant fashion that they will "simply take their ball and go home", when society refuses to capitulate to their capricious demands. So what happens? Well, according to Ayn Rand everything in the world grinds to a halt. In her bizarre world view, no replacements are available amongst the rest of humanity to rise up to the occasion and take over from the cry-babies who have gone home in a snit." Yes, in real life others would have stepped up to the plate.
- unalone 18y ago
  I think Atlas Shrugged assumes a fantastic future in which the amount of people who CAN step up to the plate have dwindled immensely, and in which many of the ones who COULD are already broken. In real life as it stands today, Atlas Shrugged is not a plausible scenario. The trick to reading it without casting it aside in horror is realizing that Rand knows that, and that she's drawing things to their extremes to make a specific point about how she thinks human beings work. People who mock Atlas on that point are missing the point of the book.

walterk 18y ago

The article misses that Rand's books are romantic, whereas Gladwell is a journalist. Rand writes fiction; Gladwell writes theories based on anecdotes and statistics. For an analogy, that'd be a lot like saying "Pablo Piccasso, or xyz modern photographer: Who is right?" Not sure what profession has to do with a comparison of beliefs.

KrisZolar 18y ago
But fools take it literally.
unalone 18y ago
They each have different aims with their writing. Gladwell wants to illustrate things as they are. Rand wants to illustrate things as they could be.
- walterk 18y ago
  Gladwell's writings undermine Rand's beliefs justifying her vision of what could/should be.
  - unalone 18y ago
    To some extent, yes. As I said: Gladwell is like a Rand villain. But they aren't polar opposites. I doubt Rand ever saw the world as stylized as she wrote it. She's openly a Romantic Realist. Gladwell opposes Rand. But they still hold fast in certain things. The opposite of Rand is not the person who says that people aren't responsible for their success. It's the person who says that civilization isn't a success, that human beings are beasts, that the solution to our problems is to go back to being savages. Similarly: I think Rand would disagree with Gladwell's claim that nobody is responsible for their life, but she wouldn't dispute his findings. She would just argue that they aren't as relevant as Gladwell thinks they are.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

time_management 18y ago

My favorite Randian hero is not from a Rand novel, but Final Fantasy 6: Kefka.