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Judging by the comments around here, quite a few of you seem to really want Gladwell's analogies to work. However, the story of David and Goliath is not one of

Judging by the comments around here, quite a few of you seem to really want Gladwell's analogies to work. However, the story of David and Goliath is not one of trying new techniques after failed attempts with old ones, it is the story of an act of God (and possibly technology.) Additionally his basketball example doesn't work. I think his point is as simple as: "when what you're trying doesn't work, try something new." Terrific! But the objection is with the clarity of his examples.

anamax 17y ago
Actually, Gladwell's basketball analogy does work, it just doesn't work the way folks seem to think that it does. The basketball team didn't win because it decided to use a full court press. Reread the story. The kids trained so they could run a full court press the whole game. The other teams didn't have the athletic ability to keep up. You can't just play the game differently. You have to do what it takes to be successful playing the game differently.
- jpwagner 17y ago
  So you're saying people misinterpreted Gladwell's argument? So his argument was unclear?
  - ahoyhere 17y ago
    I read it while suffering from the flu, meaning I was a bit out ofit, and that is the takeaway I had - not just the full court press, but the training, and the wearing the other team out. He says it explicitly. The guy who trained his girls to do it says it explicitly. "I have them running around for hours" etc. and that other coaches A) don't train their kids to have that level of athletic endurance, and B) don't respond to the use of the strategy by changing their routines. If people miss it, they are either bad at reading comprehension or deliberately wanting to misunderstand to lampoon Gladwell. I'm not a huge Gladwell fan. I felt totally ripped off by Blink. But I was pleasantly surprised by the essay.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > So his argument was unclear? I didn't think so. Then again, I read the story as written instead of treating it as a basketball lesson and changing the facts to fit my world view. I've no doubt that a full court press can be broken with sufficient skill and althetic ability and that a broken press is worse than no press. (I suspect that that's why NBA teams rarely use the press.) However, if your opponents don't have that skill/ability, using the press apparently does put them at a disadvantage. That disadvantage may be sufficient to make up for other advantages that they have. I find the "optimal" talk somewhat amusing. We're talking about playing an opponent that has made certain decisions. You can win by taking advantage of those decisions. It doesn't matter what would happen against a different opponent until you run into said opponent. That's especially true of perfect opponents. The fact that one strategy would fail worse than another against a perfect opponent doesn't matter unless you're playing a perfect opponent. Since they rarely exist and you're going to lose anyway, worrying about them seems dumb. In some sense, there are no points for approximating optimality. You're rarely playing an optimal opponent and there are no points for "optimality".
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]

anamax 17y ago

Actually, Gladwell's basketball analogy does work, it just doesn't work the way folks seem to think that it does. The basketball team didn't win because it decided to use a full court press. Reread the story. The kids trained so they could run a full court press the whole game. The other teams didn't have the athletic ability to keep up. You can't just play the game differently. You have to do what it takes to be successful playing the game differently.

jpwagner 17y ago
So you're saying people misinterpreted Gladwell's argument? So his argument was unclear?
- ahoyhere 17y ago
  I read it while suffering from the flu, meaning I was a bit out ofit, and that is the takeaway I had - not just the full court press, but the training, and the wearing the other team out. He says it explicitly. The guy who trained his girls to do it says it explicitly. "I have them running around for hours" etc. and that other coaches A) don't train their kids to have that level of athletic endurance, and B) don't respond to the use of the strategy by changing their routines. If people miss it, they are either bad at reading comprehension or deliberately wanting to misunderstand to lampoon Gladwell. I'm not a huge Gladwell fan. I felt totally ripped off by Blink. But I was pleasantly surprised by the essay.
- anamax 17y ago
  > So his argument was unclear? I didn't think so. Then again, I read the story as written instead of treating it as a basketball lesson and changing the facts to fit my world view. I've no doubt that a full court press can be broken with sufficient skill and althetic ability and that a broken press is worse than no press. (I suspect that that's why NBA teams rarely use the press.) However, if your opponents don't have that skill/ability, using the press apparently does put them at a disadvantage. That disadvantage may be sufficient to make up for other advantages that they have. I find the "optimal" talk somewhat amusing. We're talking about playing an opponent that has made certain decisions. You can win by taking advantage of those decisions. It doesn't matter what would happen against a different opponent until you run into said opponent. That's especially true of perfect opponents. The fact that one strategy would fail worse than another against a perfect opponent doesn't matter unless you're playing a perfect opponent. Since they rarely exist and you're going to lose anyway, worrying about them seems dumb. In some sense, there are no points for approximating optimality. You're rarely playing an optimal opponent and there are no points for "optimality".
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]