10 ms·

Malcolm Gladwell's Reponse to the Culturalism Post

• marrusl 13y ago
  After I read: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-into-the-life-work-of-americas-most-successful-propagandist.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/malcolm-gladwell-unma... I was no longer able to take Malcolm Gladwell seriously on _any_ subject.
  • swinnipeg 13y ago
    How does your ad hominem attack add to the discussion of this article?
    • marrusl 13y ago
      I'd say it adds to the discussion by pointing out that widespread respect for anything Mr. Gladwell has to say is misplaced. Though I can't deny it's at best tangential to the specific point at hand. Well spotted. [no really, guilty as charged.]
      • Gigablah 13y ago
        In any case, commentators above have done the exact same thing by pointing out the askakorean blog author's post in defense of fan death.
• jamesaguilar 13y ago
  I'm not a huge Gladwell fan, but it is always a pleasure to read a considered and respectful reply that shows a depth of research, no matter who the reply is coming from or going to. I only wish I was an expert at everything so I could actually judge whether Gladwell is right or wrong.
  • w1ntermute 13y ago
    Since "The Korean" (the author of the linked blog) is not an aviation expert either, but is a well-known cultural apologist (see his (admittedly quite well-written) post rationalizing fan death, a widely held Korean superstition: http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2009/01/fan-death-is-real.html http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2009/01/fan-death-is-real.htm...), I would give Gladwell the benefit of the doubt for now.
    • moogleii 13y ago
      Well, I'm glad "The Korean" didn't resort to a simple "Sorry, you've missed the point" response like he did towards other commenters. But I really like Gladwell's response. FYI: Here is Gladwell's response to "The Korean"'s response to Gladwell: http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-thoughts-on-gladwells-response.html?showComment=1374062410180#c2015340896628841675 http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-thoughts-on-gladwe... I actually find "The Korean's" posts on these matters to be pretty irritating. Culture is a collection of ideas, and like all ideas, they can be bad sometimes, and regardless they are all subject to criticism. While he claims to understand this, he seems hellbent on showing that such negative cultural outliers (if and when they exist), will have "negligible" effect (which he doesn't seem to realize is a totally arbitrary claim; how did he arrive at "negligible" vs, I don't know, any other quantifiable amount). The fact is, the effects can't be measured, but a case showing non-negligible effects can still be made.
      • jamesaguilar 13y ago
        He totally disengages after Gladwell's last post. Not the actions of a man who is seriously interested in getting to the ultimate truth of the matter.
    • jamesaguilar 13y ago
      Yeah, defending the belief in fan death is really damaging to his credibility in my eyes.
      • 13y ago
• robotcookies 13y ago
  I think Gladwell makes some good points and that cultural factors can play a role in these things. But I can't help but wonder if these same cultural factors can go both ways and maybe we're obsessively focusing on just one effect. For example, it might be that deference to hierarchy and older people leads to children taking responsibility and care of their parents in old age more. It might even be that the elderly in these places live longer and more happier lives as a result and that this outweighs the (still tragic but rare) plane accident. It reminds me a bit of the terrorism situation in the US. We obsess over these things which are relatively rare and spend great effort to eliminate. But what are we losing in the process?
  • marshray 13y ago
    But no one is talking about whether or not Korean culture is superior or inferior in general, we're talking about whether it's optimal for the very specific situation of airline cockpit communications when the more senior pilot has made an error in judgement.
    • robotcookies 13y ago
      Let's say a country had a higher than average rate of infant mortality. Let's also say that it was speculated the cause was cultural... due to parents in this imaginary country allowing their babies to sleep in their beds. And although very rare, a story gets out in the news about a baby that suffocates in bed. Thousands of articles come out speculating about how this cultural habit is killing innocent babies. Let's also say that it turns out babies that sleep in bed with their parents turn out to have a higher survival rate that those that don't, after the first year. These babies do better in school, have much lower suicide rates as teens and are happier in their life. Maybe a higher percent actually make to adulthood than the ones who sleep in cribs even accounting for the rare suffocations. What would you think if the media ONLY discussed the rare infant deaths and not the other effects? Don't you think it would be a bit unfair and biased? You could even argue it might be harmful. BTW, the example above is made up and I'm not claiming anything about parenting or Korean culture, good or bad. I'm just saying the media and public usually only look at horrific deaths and ignore everything else. This applies to terrorism, plane accidents, roller coasters, etc.
• Avshalom 13y ago
  I don't really have a dog in this fight but as a response "Lots of people thought Koreans make terrible pilots" sort of ignores the fact that racism kinda by definition involves a widely held systematic bias.
  • brg 13y ago
    Gladwell is very clear that the corporation Korean Air had terrible pilots an terrible piloting procedures, not that Koreans were terrible pilots. He is very clear that Korean Air admitted this, and worked throughout the nineties to change it. He said nothing about the Korean pilots working for Asiana or smaller regional airlines like Air Busan or Jeju.
    • shadowfox 13y ago
      > Gladwell is very clear that the corporation Korean Air had terrible pilots an terrible piloting procedures, not that Koreans were terrible pilots I may have misunderstood the 2 posts. But I sort of understood that Gladwell was arguing that Korean cultural aspects, including the nature of the language, play(ed) a vital role in the airplane accidents. And if that is the case, you could say that he is arguing that Koreans are bad pilots (Of course he is excluding Koreans who don't subscribe to the culture; but is that such a huge number?) I probably completely misunderstood his original argument.
  • hannibal5 13y ago
    Racism is the belief that some people or cultures are inherently inferior. I think it should be obviously clear that all cultures have their weak and strong points, and sometimes cultures should change and fix these problems. This is true for corporate cultures and cultures of whole nations.
    • jrarredondo 13y ago
      That is a simplistic definition. You exclude actions or systemic patterns, just to name a few things to think about. Go to implicit.harvard.edu for a couple of eye opening experiments and tests.
• npguy 13y ago
  Gladwell also needs to learn a few things from the Indian parent - http://statspotting.com/malcolm-gladwell-meet-this-genius-called-the-indian-parent/ http://statspotting.com/malcolm-gladwell-meet-this-genius-ca...
• bjourne 13y ago
  Eh, I think Gladwell has a point here. "Captain, Guam condition is no good." doesn't count as "speaking up" when a situation is potentially life-threatening. Then you say something like "This approach is very dangerous, I think we should try something else."
  • SilasX 13y ago
    The set of practices known as Crew (or Cockpit) Resource management formalize this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management#Communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management#Commun... So in this case, the proper action would be: 1) Get attention: "Captain ..." 2) State concern: "I'm concerned that a visual approach is too risky in this weather." 3) State the problem: "Visual approaches only work in low wind (or whatever conditions), and the weather report says we're not within those conditions." 4) State a solution: "I suggest we change plans and prepare for [alternate landing method], starting with [first step]." 5) Get buy-in: "Do you agree with that course of action, Captain?" (Note that the pilot did just the first two ... or maybe only half of the second or third.)
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• tokenadult 13y ago
  The response by Malcolm Gladwell is very thoughtful. The key point is that when the airline company Korean Air (which had already had to change its name after an earlier pilot error disaster) went into problem-solving mode, the airline itself identified changing cockpit communication culture as a step in solving its pilot error crash problem. Whatever else you can say about an airline company owned and based in Korea, you wouldn't expect it to have an inherent prejudice against Korean culture. It was thoughtful of the blog author to quote Gladwell's reply in full (as it appears he did). Gladwell is easy enough to misunderstand that I have had occasion to mention this on Hacker News before. Gladwell is a professional writer, and he does quite a lot of research on unfamiliar subjects that promise to include interesting story angles. In the subjects that I research for my own writing, I have more often than not discovered that Gladwell does a better than average job of finding and citing good sources. He originates few new scientific hypotheses himself, but he writes interesting and thought-provoking stories about leading scientists in disciplines facing tough problems. Any reader of a Malcolm Gladwell book (as I know, from being a reader of the book Outliers ) can check the sources, and decide from there what other sources to check and what other ideas to play with. Gladwell doesn't purport to write textbooks, but I give him a lot of credit for finding interesting scholarly sources that haven't had enough attention in the popular literature. He is equaled by very few authors as a story-teller who can tie ideas together in a thought-provoking assembly. Gladwell has said in an interview by a journalist that he writes to try out ideas: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html "Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little? "A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."
  • 482924 13y ago
    http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ "Malcolm Gladwell began as a college right-wing Reagan supporter, was trained by the tobacco-funded far-right National Journalism Center, and throughout his career has inserted pro-tobacco, pro-banking industry and pro-PHARMA messages into his books and articles. Gladwell can earn $1 million a year as a paid corporate speaker, sometimes from the very same corporations and industry groups he happens to promote and defend in print."
• ShabbyDoo 13y ago
  Gladwell notes how military culture differs from civilian culture in Korea. Surely, differences of similar magnitudes exist in the US. I wonder how the US military has changed culturally over the past few decades. As an outsider, I have presumed that the purpose of degrading training programs, continual demonstrations of the power of officers (parade reviews, etc.), and required social proof of the officers' power and authority (stand and salute upon the officer entering a room) all were designed to avoid argument, hesitation, or doubt when an officer tells his soldiers in battle to charge forth toward an enemy firing upon them. To win an infantry battle, such obedience probably is necessary. Imagine if only a small fraction of the soldiers were willing to advance -- they would likely be much worse off than if all the soldiers advanced at once. However, this nearly blind obedience surely comes at a price. Can a junior guy tell an officer that he is unsure of a drone target's validity? It strikes me that a modern military operation is much more like a large scale construction project or perhaps software development than traditional trench warfare. In these civilian endeavors, the price of hesitation to consider alternative opinions likely is low compared to the cost of being wrong. Has the military changed?
  • w1ntermute 13y ago
    I would guess that there's a much greater difference between the military and civilian cultures for the US than for South Korea, simply because the SK military conscripts all able-bodied males.
    • ShabbyDoo 13y ago
      An interesting lack of selection bias which I had never considered. I presume that those choosing to be career officers opt-in or at least are chosen based on desire/talent/etc.?
      • w1ntermute 13y ago
        The vast majority of conscripts obviously have no interest in continuing after their mandatory period is up, so yes, the ones who want to be career officers probably go in with that intention. There are probably some who develop an interest after joining, though.
• jplewicke 13y ago
  I would like to see his response to this article by Phillip Greenspun that argues that the real reason why American airlines have a better track record than Korean ones is that American pilots have roughly 30 times more hours in the air by the time they become a pilot at a major airline: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety . It sounds like Malcolm Gladwell's publisher never bothered to fact check the piece with an actual airline pilot before publishing.
  • conroy 13y ago
    > It sounds like Malcolm Gladwell's publisher never bothered to fact check the piece with an actual airline pilot before publishing. "Why did I fail to interview a Korean pilot? If you had bothered to ask me before your published your article, I could have answered that question for you. I researched that chapter over the course of many months. I spoke to numerous pilots, Korean and otherwise. I interviewed crash investigators and human factors experts I interviewed the pilots who ran the Korean Air training program. I read internal Korean Air memorandum, the audit by Delta Airlines, as well as every relevant NTSB document related to crashes involving cultural deference. The only thing I did not do was interview current Korean Air management. They repeatedly declined my requests for interviews. " From: http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-thoughts-on-gladwells-response.html?showComment=1374062410180#c2015340896628841675 http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-thoughts-on-gladwe...
  • notahacker 13y ago
    In Gladwell's example of KAL801 the captain and first officer were in their forties (not to mention there also being flight engineer his late fifties) and had ample hours of commercial experience and military backgrounds; certainly comparable to Greenspun's examples of that required at US majors. If I was to do fact checking with an actual airline pilot I certainly wouldn't choose Greenspun either, not with statements like "Unless the country is very large, there won't be any regional airlines"
• chetanahuja 13y ago
  I'm surprised by the supposedly ultra-rational hacker news crowd to be swayed by this feeble defense of a theory, charitably being called "culturalism"... (but which is basically a rehashed version of oriental exoticism made slightly more palatable for the highly educated, western upper middle classes he's pandering to.) My simple question to Gladwell is this: If Korean culture explains the bad safety record of Korean air, what explains the excellent safety record of the japanese airlines. All Nippon (No fatal accidents in more than 40 years) and JAL (last fatal crash in 1985 and even that due to mechanical failure) ? Does that record prove that Japanese culture is not only completely different from Korean culture (in-as-much as respect for elders and superiors is concerned) but it would also imply that Japanese culture is somehow better for air-safety than that of all the other national airlines of the world who've had a far worse safety record than those two airlines. I'd be really interested in hearing how Gladwell's cockamamie, quasi-racist theories explain the above. Either directly from Gladwell or anybody else who might care to defend him in this matter.
  • foobarbazqux 13y ago
    I'm not a Gladwell fan, but surely the idea that people in different cultures behave differently is not too surprising, is it? After all, you said yourself that the HN culture is ultra-rational. Or maybe I misunderstood what you are upset about.
    • chetanahuja 13y ago
      The idea that I'm objecting to is that the culturally prescribed behaviour is somehow the root cause of so many plane crashes. The argument I've presented is that Korean and Japanese (and indeed, most Asian cultures -- and just to be clear, Asia includes India too.) are very similar when it comes to deference towards elders, teachers and other people considered socially superior. And yet there's a large gap between the airline safety record of these two cultures. The japanese airlines I mentioned are not just safer than their Korean counterparts, but actually two of the safest airlines in the world. Any theory pinning Korean airlines' safety record on the Korean (really, Asian) culture must also include an explanation of the exactly contrary observation seen in japanese airlines.