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I have heard the genre (which includes Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, the Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond) described as "insight porn". The idea is to del

I have heard the genre (which includes Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, the Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond) described as "insight porn". The idea is to deliver small chunks of insight that is just counter-intuitive enough to be novel, but not so counter-intuitive that we can't take it at face value. It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else. I think the same rush we get from learning something counter-intuitive and novel is the same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones. Edit: It occurs to me that this comment could be seen as an example of what it describes...

mmaunder 13y ago
Upvoted comment for making me feel just a little bit smarter.
svantana 13y ago
Just like with music, people prefer just the right amount of cognitive dissonance - noone likes to be told exactly what they already know, and hardly anyone likes to hear something that's completely the opposite of what they already knew/thought. In music, just a little bit of (harmonic) dissonance catches the listener's attention, but too much gives you a headache. Funny how that metaphor carries over so well, haven't thought of it before.
- jamesrom 13y ago
  You should write a book about it...
- visakanv 13y ago
  So I think of people like Gladwell as pop-fusion artists, like say, Jamie Cullum or Michael Buble. They often get disproportionately rewarded (as compared to "real" jazz artists), but they DO do a lot for a lot of people by introducing them to something they otherwise might not have considered.
- yesbabyyes 13y ago
  Interesting theory. I like it. Nice to see you around here, Svante!
- nileshtrivedi 13y ago
  I have read this elsewhere. "Interestingness" is a fine balance between familiarity and surprise.
someperson 13y ago
This might also apply to NPR Planet Money. Seems to plague the softer/human sciences like economics, psychology and anthropology more than physics/chemistry/maths (though these fields have there own poor journalism)
- valleyer 13y ago
  > This might also apply to NPR Planet Money You think so? Planet Money routinely brings on actual economists to explain things in plain language. And when they don't, they're just describing not-very-technical but interesting things (e.g., how the music industry works, what those complex securities that ruined the economy were, etc.). They don't often (ever, that I can recall) come up with new phenomena.
- dcre 13y ago
  I worry about this when I listen, but in general I agree with the other commenter that they do pretty well at giving a voice to real experts.
agravier 13y ago
It's like Daniel Dennett's deepities, just a little less shallow, to cater for the intellectually self-absorbed. (<s> Look at my mice bite-size analysis! </s>)
downandout 13y ago
It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else. IMO, this is what appeals to many about HN....the desire to find share-worthy things that will help cement their image as the smart person within their social group. Nothing wrong with it, just an (unscientific) observation.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  "IMO, this is what appeals to many about HN....the desire to find share-worthy things that will help cement their image as the smart person within their social group." Don't forget those of us who come to HN primarily to post comments about why the linked article is obviously stupid and wrong, or is right but just saying things that we've been aware of for a while now.
  - mysterywhiteboy 13y ago
    I've been saying this for a while now.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - d23 13y ago
    > Don't forget those of us who come to HN primarily to post comments about why the linked article is obviously stupid and wrong, or is right but just saying things that we've been aware of for a while now. This is why I hate being around a good deal of "smart" people (or atleast, people who have smartness attached to their identity, which seems to be rarely the same group). Every statement, every conversation, every fact is just another opportunity for them to put something down or puff themselves up.
    - arjunnarayan 13y ago
      That sounds infuriating. Why would you hang around with those "smart" people?
IsaacL 13y ago
Is this where you came across the concept of "insight porn"? http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/trying-to-see-through-unified-theory-of.html http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/trying-to-see-... There's an interesting possibility that our brain actually gives us a neurochemical "hit" every time we encounter a particularly juicy piece of insight porn. The reason for this is evolutionary: insights are basically the recognition of deep patterns that explain seemingly unrelated phenomena, which lets us "compress" our knowledge and so increase our understanding of the world. (It's not that our stone age ancestors were developing scientific theories, but they had many complex things in their environment to predict: the weather, animal behaviour, their own social networks, other hunter-gather tribes, etc). The pleasure gained from studying mathematics, or listening to complicated pieces of music (esp classical, where complex pieces might be based on simple underlying patterns) are good examples. Humour might be a complementary reward circuit, giving us a psychological hit when we discover something that contradicts our worldview. (I'm aware that the preceding paragraphs was themselves a piece of insight porn :)
- StavrosK 13y ago
  Whenever someone says "There's a possibility X is evolutionary", nowadays, I mentally continue it with "The reason for this is rationalization". As an aside, what's it called when you come up with an explanation of something to fit the facts the way you want them? Hindsight bias comes to mind, but it's not exactly that. More like a mixture of hindsight/confirmation bias and wishful thinking.
  - diroussel 13y ago
    post-hoc rationalisation?
    - StavrosK 13y ago
      Sounds right, thank you.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    It's not scientific, but criticism of this kind of rationalization often applies the term "just-so story", as does the Chabris review that started this discussion. It's borrowed from Kipling, who told fanciful but childishly plausible tales of "How the Camel Got His Hump", etc.
mtts 13y ago
Jared Diamond counter-intuitive? I'm with you on the other three but Guns Germs & Steel always struck me as very "D'uh".
- crntaylor 13y ago
  One of his ideas is that the development of agriculture was "the worst mistake in the history of the human race"[0] contra the popular belief that agriculture improved food yields and freed people up to spend time developing science, technology and art -- and could therefore be considered one of the greatest achievements in the history of the human race. I'm not saying that his argument is wrong, but it definitely runs against the prevailing wisdom. Similarly "Collapse" (the idea that the success or failure of societies is predictable) and "Guns, Germs and Steel" (the advantages of old-world people over new-world people in the 1500s were due to the influence of geography and climate, not inherent superiorities). Maybe those things are obvious to you, but I don't think they're obvious to most people. [0] http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race#.UlZhK8a_H64 http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in...
  - paganel 13y ago
    > Guns, Germs and Steel" (the advantages of old-world people over new-world people in the 1500s were due to the influence of geography and climate, not inherent superiorities). I'm too lazy to look for the actual references, but in one form or another climate-related arguments for the "superiority" of Europeans were made in the late 1700s and in the 1800s (and towards the end of the 1800s a more racist undertone emerged, but that's another story). Something like "one can only be productive in a temperate climate", while those poor souls that have to live at the Tropics will never become industrious peoples. What's funny is that way earlier than that, the early Greeks were saying that their dry climate was perfect for talking about philosophy and related stuff, and that a more "humid" climate would have been against that (I'm thinking about Heraclitus, mainly).
    - crntaylor 13y ago
      My recollection is that Diamond's argument is slightly different. He argues that the east-west orientation of Eurasia meant that societies were more easily able to expand, because you experience relatively little climate variation moving along parallels than you do moving up and down meridians, which you are forced to do when you expand in a north-south oriented continent like America or Africa. Similarly Eurasia had a wider variety of indigenous grains suitable for cultivation, and more large mammals suitable for domestication, and these could be taken with a population when the migrated (because of the aforementioned east-west orientation). These advantages meant that populations were able to increase more rapidly, which necessitated an earlier development of agriculture, which lead to further productivity gains as improving food yields meant that people could spend more time developing more advanced technology. The increased population densities had two further advantages - firstly, it meant that wars were more frequent, so Eurasians developed more advanced weaponry (the "guns" and "steel" of the title). Secondly, evolutionary pressures selected for resistance to diseases that could spread easily in crowded environments (the "germs"). So it's a little bit more subtle than just "our climate is inherently better for deep philosophical thoughts" or "our climate means that we are more productive workers".
jokull 13y ago
Add Michael Lewis to the list
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
math 13y ago
And if you combine insight porn with finance porn are people extra addicted? (we hope so: http://backrecord.com http://backrecord.com .. blatent plug)
- math 13y ago
  I don't think this deserved to be down-voted - the website is relevant to the discussion and we've put countless hours into trying to make a useful tool and we've already taken the concept further than anyone else that I'm aware of. My comment is making fun at what we're doing, but what we're doing is not a joke. I would sharing what we've done as one of my more useful comments, yet it is the only one to be downvoted.
6ren 13y ago
"new scientist" etc also play this role. Though fairly accurate as far as it goes, it is pop-science. http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1777 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1777
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  There's another great one from SMBC about how to tell the difference between a math enthusiast from a mathematician. I won't try to find it since I'm on mobile, but it's just as good.
  - gjm11 13y ago
    Do you mean this one? It's the only one I can quickly find that includes "math enthusiast" and "mathematician", though it's not exactly "how to tell the difference". http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2320 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2320
    - dylangs1030 13y ago
      Yeah that's the one! I probably should have just googled for it, but yep, that's it. My memory was a bit hazy.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    See also "You're not a nerd, geeks are not sexy, and you don't 'fucking love' science" about the "I fucking love science" facebook page. http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd
    - Killah911 13y ago
      About time a Maddox reference made it on here! Though is not quite the Gladwell type, his insights are interesting and had quite a few geeks visiting his site. Matter of fact it was a popular pastime during our CS Lab when our brains were fried from coding. So, sure this stuff isn't science, but the Gladwell types also give "cultural context" to many geeks I know.
lsc 13y ago
the destructive thing about this style of writing[1] isn't that the readers like to feel smart or superior to others; the destructive thing about it is that instead of distilling research with an aim to convey useful information, he distills that research with an aim to find the most shocking or counterintuitive possibility, even if the evidence isn't really strong enough to support an 'extraordinary claim' You actually get dumber (well, not dumber, but you gain incorrect models, which can make you look and act dumber) from reading Gladwell's work. Really, though, I'd argue that most business books I've read had a similar feel. 99% bullshit, and the 1% based on actual science is often based on very shaky evidence. [1]Gladwell's style is pretty familiar if you've read many business books. Very light, very easy to read; it sounds very authoritative, but is at best 99% fluff and 1% actual solid information. When the fluff is actual fluff (case studies, etc...) so long as you find it entertaining, there's no harm. The problem comes when the fluff is demonstrably incorrect and contributes to you making real-world poor decisions.
- bluecalm 13y ago
  One important difference is that Gladwell is pretty good writer and doesn't really go too much into specific personal/business advice. Vast majority of business/personal development books on the other hand display crappy writing and live off people buying their promises hoping to actually find some practical advice. In that landscape Gladwell stands out: he actually give a lot of references you can check yourself, he doesn't give harmful advice and he delivers what should be expected from him - entertainment and great topics for conversations.
nefasti 13y ago
Here in Brazil, people love to cite Gladwell 10k hours like he is a GOD. In a recent startup accelerator demo day it was cited by both a famous entrepreneur and a journalist. I always cringe when I see it cited as pure truth and in a bad context. My conclusion is people do it do sound cool and smarter. The "insight porn" was spot on.
ebbv 13y ago
In my experience this stuff is not nearly as popular with actual nerds/geeks/hackers as it is with MBA/CEO/executives.
FrojoS 13y ago
I'm afraid you are spot on. I often realize the bs and then keep on reading, because A) Its so fun. B) I hope I might still learn something useful. I suspect school and teachers are part of the problem. Even at the best universities I would spot professors claiming things which were obviously wrong or not based on strong scientific evidence but presented as if. So all you can do is keeping to plow on hoping you learn more truth than not. Ok, so, as someone who admits to read this stuff I would like to ask. Is there anyone who was able to break their addiction? And if so, what helped? Also, is there a good book review source which spots "insight porn". I usually check Amazon before buying a book to check if its outright bullshit but that approach doesn't work all that well.
dhimes 13y ago
The field of popular nutrition is exploding with this. "Warrior diet" and "Paleo diet" are two recent ideas that come to mind. But as I type this it occurs to me: This might extend to beyond nerds. This effect might be what is addictive about Oprah or Dr. Phil (relationship insights), or even the bobble-heads on tv talking about the latest source of their political rage, or even sports junkies.
- darkarmani 13y ago
  The Paleo or Primal diet idea has been around for a long time. I think it has gotten more momentum as more cherry-picked scientific studies have been found.
triplesec 13y ago
I believe it's unfair to include Diamond in this genre, as although he's popular, he's also a thinker (and prof) with an academic's consistency and attention to data. The Freakonomics guys are also closer to data, but episodically popularising rather than Diamond's coherent meta-narratives. The biggest argument you could level against Diamond might be one of leaning too heavily on "geographical determinism", which he can veer towards at times.
- ijk 13y ago
  Diamond is a little different, but he is working outside of his original field and produces very mixed responses from anthropologists (e.g. http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-does-jared-diamond-make-anthropologists-so-mad http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-does-... ).
  - notahacker 13y ago
    The difference between Gladwell and Diamond (and for that matter Levitt) is that Gladwell is attacked for his work being atheoretical; it's basically a collection of anecdotes that belongs on a bookshelf with Bill Bryson. Diamond is criticised for stretching his grand unified theories too far and missing all the evidence to the contrary. Levitt is accused of picking bad hypotheses and doing sloppy econometric analysis to support them. Gladwell doesn't have any grand unified theories, or any theories substantial or original enough to be controversial. and doesn't do any comparable statistical analysis.
- ghaff 13y ago
  I agree with both your points--at least with respect to Guns Germs and Steel. Arguably he way overextended his basic research in later works. An interesting supplement to Diamond is Ian Morris' Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. To greatly oversimplify, Morris endorses the idea of a Western core headstart (with credit to Diamond) but then basically says "Well, yeah, of course that's the case." But how does that explain how things ended up millennia later. A good read. Another broader point though is that serious researchers are always going to put down popularizers who write books people actually read. But no one is going to read serious researchers except other serious researchers. Of course, you can go too far in the popularization direction and I tend to agree Malcolm Gladwell is a great example of that.
jonnathanson 13y ago
"developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else." It doesn't seem limited to nerds, though. These books are always top sellers in places like airport book stores, so there's got to be a wider audience than that. If anything, I'd say these are very middlebrow books that hit a sweet spot in making college-educated (though not necessarily nerdy or even particularly smart) people feel smarter. They're like the USA Today distillations of behavioral and neuroscience research. The nerdier equivalent would be TED.
flanbiscuit 13y ago
It's also probably why we read sites like HN, so we can feel like we know something others don't... or know something before others.
Sheepshow 13y ago
Is it really fair to lump Jared Diamond in with Malcom Gladwell? Diamond writes about a career of firsthand research, and has won a Pulitzer prize. His field of study (traditional societies) is by its very nature shrinking daily, and requires serious dedication to observe firsthand. In contrast, every single human on earth has experienced a difficult assignment. So yes, while both Diamond and Gladwell overgeneralize based on a small sample size, Diamond's pool of potential samples is orders of magnitude smaller.
larrys 13y ago
"the same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones." [1] The question is would anyone have thought anything of PG's essays before he became "PG" that he is today? Not that people didn't read them but it seem now that anything that he has written or writes takes on such status that people are less likely to question or disagree with any conclusions. [1] Also noting that PG's (at least the ones's I've seen) essays are always proofed by others it would be interesting to get a sense of the type of comments and changes that are made post that proofing.
- meowface 13y ago
  Well, it's not just that he's been successful in the past, but that to this day his advice and mentoring helps produce many successful startups. When someone achieves repeated and consistent success over many years (say, Warren Buffett), it is wise to listen to what they have to say if they're willing to share their knowledge and experience. And also, HN isn't full of nearly as many mindless zombies as many other sites. When pg posts something contentious or controversial, usually there's debate about it in the comments.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  The reason PG is the YC founder we hear about is his essays, not the other way around. Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, and Jessica Livingston were all just as much founders as he was.
wmil 13y ago
Gladwell's books aren't aimed at nerds in the HN sense. They're actually targeted at people in communications / advertising who want an edge and also something to read on the plane. That's what makes him so influential.
wisty 13y ago
The Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond are more or less scientists. Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist. There's a difference. Both Steven Levitt and Jared Diamond devote a lot of ink over whether or not their theories are testable, while Malcolm Gladwell tends to just find anecdotes which seem to back his theories up.
pajop 13y ago
I'm trying to think now what would be the opposite of this? Books that are completely counter-intuitive, that forces you to rethink your original Weltanschaunng in the first place - Niall Ferguson's "Civilization: The West and the Rest" and Nassim Taleb's "AntiFragile: Things that Gain from Disorder" comes to mind. Even rereading Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" can give you this counter-intuitive insight.
Tycho 13y ago
The problem I have with your comment is that you describe something auspicious and then slap a derogatory label on it and thus unfairly decry it as problematic. If insight equates to truth, and counter-intuitiveness equates to challenging our flawed assumptions, and 'face-value' equates to lucid and well-argued, then what exactly is there to complain about? Just because you find a formula behind something, doesn't make it a problem.

mmaunder 13y ago

Upvoted comment for making me feel just a little bit smarter.

svantana 13y ago

Just like with music, people prefer just the right amount of cognitive dissonance - noone likes to be told exactly what they already know, and hardly anyone likes to hear something that's completely the opposite of what they already knew/thought. In music, just a little bit of (harmonic) dissonance catches the listener's attention, but too much gives you a headache. Funny how that metaphor carries over so well, haven't thought of it before.

jamesrom 13y ago
You should write a book about it...
visakanv 13y ago
So I think of people like Gladwell as pop-fusion artists, like say, Jamie Cullum or Michael Buble. They often get disproportionately rewarded (as compared to "real" jazz artists), but they DO do a lot for a lot of people by introducing them to something they otherwise might not have considered.
yesbabyyes 13y ago
Interesting theory. I like it. Nice to see you around here, Svante!
nileshtrivedi 13y ago
I have read this elsewhere. "Interestingness" is a fine balance between familiarity and surprise.

someperson 13y ago

This might also apply to NPR Planet Money. Seems to plague the softer/human sciences like economics, psychology and anthropology more than physics/chemistry/maths (though these fields have there own poor journalism)

valleyer 13y ago
> This might also apply to NPR Planet Money You think so? Planet Money routinely brings on actual economists to explain things in plain language. And when they don't, they're just describing not-very-technical but interesting things (e.g., how the music industry works, what those complex securities that ruined the economy were, etc.). They don't often (ever, that I can recall) come up with new phenomena.
dcre 13y ago
I worry about this when I listen, but in general I agree with the other commenter that they do pretty well at giving a voice to real experts.

agravier 13y ago

It's like Daniel Dennett's deepities, just a little less shallow, to cater for the intellectually self-absorbed. (<s> Look at my mice bite-size analysis! </s>)

downandout 13y ago

It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else. IMO, this is what appeals to many about HN....the desire to find share-worthy things that will help cement their image as the smart person within their social group. Nothing wrong with it, just an (unscientific) observation.

georgemcbay 13y ago
"IMO, this is what appeals to many about HN....the desire to find share-worthy things that will help cement their image as the smart person within their social group." Don't forget those of us who come to HN primarily to post comments about why the linked article is obviously stupid and wrong, or is right but just saying things that we've been aware of for a while now.
- mysterywhiteboy 13y ago
  I've been saying this for a while now.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- d23 13y ago
  > Don't forget those of us who come to HN primarily to post comments about why the linked article is obviously stupid and wrong, or is right but just saying things that we've been aware of for a while now. This is why I hate being around a good deal of "smart" people (or atleast, people who have smartness attached to their identity, which seems to be rarely the same group). Every statement, every conversation, every fact is just another opportunity for them to put something down or puff themselves up.
  - arjunnarayan 13y ago
    That sounds infuriating. Why would you hang around with those "smart" people?

IsaacL 13y ago

Is this where you came across the concept of "insight porn"? http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/trying-to-see-through-unified-theory-of.html http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/trying-to-see-... There's an interesting possibility that our brain actually gives us a neurochemical "hit" every time we encounter a particularly juicy piece of insight porn. The reason for this is evolutionary: insights are basically the recognition of deep patterns that explain seemingly unrelated phenomena, which lets us "compress" our knowledge and so increase our understanding of the world. (It's not that our stone age ancestors were developing scientific theories, but they had many complex things in their environment to predict: the weather, animal behaviour, their own social networks, other hunter-gather tribes, etc). The pleasure gained from studying mathematics, or listening to complicated pieces of music (esp classical, where complex pieces might be based on simple underlying patterns) are good examples. Humour might be a complementary reward circuit, giving us a psychological hit when we discover something that contradicts our worldview. (I'm aware that the preceding paragraphs was themselves a piece of insight porn :)

StavrosK 13y ago
Whenever someone says "There's a possibility X is evolutionary", nowadays, I mentally continue it with "The reason for this is rationalization". As an aside, what's it called when you come up with an explanation of something to fit the facts the way you want them? Hindsight bias comes to mind, but it's not exactly that. More like a mixture of hindsight/confirmation bias and wishful thinking.
- diroussel 13y ago
  post-hoc rationalisation?
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    Sounds right, thank you.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  It's not scientific, but criticism of this kind of rationalization often applies the term "just-so story", as does the Chabris review that started this discussion. It's borrowed from Kipling, who told fanciful but childishly plausible tales of "How the Camel Got His Hump", etc.

mtts 13y ago

Jared Diamond counter-intuitive? I'm with you on the other three but Guns Germs & Steel always struck me as very "D'uh".

crntaylor 13y ago
One of his ideas is that the development of agriculture was "the worst mistake in the history of the human race"[0] contra the popular belief that agriculture improved food yields and freed people up to spend time developing science, technology and art -- and could therefore be considered one of the greatest achievements in the history of the human race. I'm not saying that his argument is wrong, but it definitely runs against the prevailing wisdom. Similarly "Collapse" (the idea that the success or failure of societies is predictable) and "Guns, Germs and Steel" (the advantages of old-world people over new-world people in the 1500s were due to the influence of geography and climate, not inherent superiorities). Maybe those things are obvious to you, but I don't think they're obvious to most people. [0] http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race#.UlZhK8a_H64 http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in...
- paganel 13y ago
  > Guns, Germs and Steel" (the advantages of old-world people over new-world people in the 1500s were due to the influence of geography and climate, not inherent superiorities). I'm too lazy to look for the actual references, but in one form or another climate-related arguments for the "superiority" of Europeans were made in the late 1700s and in the 1800s (and towards the end of the 1800s a more racist undertone emerged, but that's another story). Something like "one can only be productive in a temperate climate", while those poor souls that have to live at the Tropics will never become industrious peoples. What's funny is that way earlier than that, the early Greeks were saying that their dry climate was perfect for talking about philosophy and related stuff, and that a more "humid" climate would have been against that (I'm thinking about Heraclitus, mainly).
  - crntaylor 13y ago
    My recollection is that Diamond's argument is slightly different. He argues that the east-west orientation of Eurasia meant that societies were more easily able to expand, because you experience relatively little climate variation moving along parallels than you do moving up and down meridians, which you are forced to do when you expand in a north-south oriented continent like America or Africa. Similarly Eurasia had a wider variety of indigenous grains suitable for cultivation, and more large mammals suitable for domestication, and these could be taken with a population when the migrated (because of the aforementioned east-west orientation). These advantages meant that populations were able to increase more rapidly, which necessitated an earlier development of agriculture, which lead to further productivity gains as improving food yields meant that people could spend more time developing more advanced technology. The increased population densities had two further advantages - firstly, it meant that wars were more frequent, so Eurasians developed more advanced weaponry (the "guns" and "steel" of the title). Secondly, evolutionary pressures selected for resistance to diseases that could spread easily in crowded environments (the "germs"). So it's a little bit more subtle than just "our climate is inherently better for deep philosophical thoughts" or "our climate means that we are more productive workers".

jokull 13y ago

Add Michael Lewis to the list

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

math 13y ago

And if you combine insight porn with finance porn are people extra addicted? (we hope so: http://backrecord.com http://backrecord.com .. blatent plug)

math 13y ago
I don't think this deserved to be down-voted - the website is relevant to the discussion and we've put countless hours into trying to make a useful tool and we've already taken the concept further than anyone else that I'm aware of. My comment is making fun at what we're doing, but what we're doing is not a joke. I would sharing what we've done as one of my more useful comments, yet it is the only one to be downvoted.

6ren 13y ago

"new scientist" etc also play this role. Though fairly accurate as far as it goes, it is pop-science. http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1777 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1777

dylangs1030 13y ago
There's another great one from SMBC about how to tell the difference between a math enthusiast from a mathematician. I won't try to find it since I'm on mobile, but it's just as good.
- gjm11 13y ago
  Do you mean this one? It's the only one I can quickly find that includes "math enthusiast" and "mathematician", though it's not exactly "how to tell the difference". http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2320 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2320
  - dylangs1030 13y ago
    Yeah that's the one! I probably should have just googled for it, but yep, that's it. My memory was a bit hazy.
- DanBC 13y ago
  See also "You're not a nerd, geeks are not sexy, and you don't 'fucking love' science" about the "I fucking love science" facebook page. http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd
  - Killah911 13y ago
    About time a Maddox reference made it on here! Though is not quite the Gladwell type, his insights are interesting and had quite a few geeks visiting his site. Matter of fact it was a popular pastime during our CS Lab when our brains were fried from coding. So, sure this stuff isn't science, but the Gladwell types also give "cultural context" to many geeks I know.

lsc 13y ago

the destructive thing about this style of writing[1] isn't that the readers like to feel smart or superior to others; the destructive thing about it is that instead of distilling research with an aim to convey useful information, he distills that research with an aim to find the most shocking or counterintuitive possibility, even if the evidence isn't really strong enough to support an 'extraordinary claim' You actually get dumber (well, not dumber, but you gain incorrect models, which can make you look and act dumber) from reading Gladwell's work. Really, though, I'd argue that most business books I've read had a similar feel. 99% bullshit, and the 1% based on actual science is often based on very shaky evidence. [1]Gladwell's style is pretty familiar if you've read many business books. Very light, very easy to read; it sounds very authoritative, but is at best 99% fluff and 1% actual solid information. When the fluff is actual fluff (case studies, etc...) so long as you find it entertaining, there's no harm. The problem comes when the fluff is demonstrably incorrect and contributes to you making real-world poor decisions.

bluecalm 13y ago
One important difference is that Gladwell is pretty good writer and doesn't really go too much into specific personal/business advice. Vast majority of business/personal development books on the other hand display crappy writing and live off people buying their promises hoping to actually find some practical advice. In that landscape Gladwell stands out: he actually give a lot of references you can check yourself, he doesn't give harmful advice and he delivers what should be expected from him - entertainment and great topics for conversations.

nefasti 13y ago

Here in Brazil, people love to cite Gladwell 10k hours like he is a GOD. In a recent startup accelerator demo day it was cited by both a famous entrepreneur and a journalist. I always cringe when I see it cited as pure truth and in a bad context. My conclusion is people do it do sound cool and smarter. The "insight porn" was spot on.

ebbv 13y ago

In my experience this stuff is not nearly as popular with actual nerds/geeks/hackers as it is with MBA/CEO/executives.

FrojoS 13y ago

I'm afraid you are spot on. I often realize the bs and then keep on reading, because A) Its so fun. B) I hope I might still learn something useful. I suspect school and teachers are part of the problem. Even at the best universities I would spot professors claiming things which were obviously wrong or not based on strong scientific evidence but presented as if. So all you can do is keeping to plow on hoping you learn more truth than not. Ok, so, as someone who admits to read this stuff I would like to ask. Is there anyone who was able to break their addiction? And if so, what helped? Also, is there a good book review source which spots "insight porn". I usually check Amazon before buying a book to check if its outright bullshit but that approach doesn't work all that well.

dhimes 13y ago

The field of popular nutrition is exploding with this. "Warrior diet" and "Paleo diet" are two recent ideas that come to mind. But as I type this it occurs to me: This might extend to beyond nerds. This effect might be what is addictive about Oprah or Dr. Phil (relationship insights), or even the bobble-heads on tv talking about the latest source of their political rage, or even sports junkies.

darkarmani 13y ago
The Paleo or Primal diet idea has been around for a long time. I think it has gotten more momentum as more cherry-picked scientific studies have been found.

triplesec 13y ago

I believe it's unfair to include Diamond in this genre, as although he's popular, he's also a thinker (and prof) with an academic's consistency and attention to data. The Freakonomics guys are also closer to data, but episodically popularising rather than Diamond's coherent meta-narratives. The biggest argument you could level against Diamond might be one of leaning too heavily on "geographical determinism", which he can veer towards at times.

ijk 13y ago
Diamond is a little different, but he is working outside of his original field and produces very mixed responses from anthropologists (e.g. http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-does-jared-diamond-make-anthropologists-so-mad http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-does-... ).
- notahacker 13y ago
  The difference between Gladwell and Diamond (and for that matter Levitt) is that Gladwell is attacked for his work being atheoretical; it's basically a collection of anecdotes that belongs on a bookshelf with Bill Bryson. Diamond is criticised for stretching his grand unified theories too far and missing all the evidence to the contrary. Levitt is accused of picking bad hypotheses and doing sloppy econometric analysis to support them. Gladwell doesn't have any grand unified theories, or any theories substantial or original enough to be controversial. and doesn't do any comparable statistical analysis.
ghaff 13y ago
I agree with both your points--at least with respect to Guns Germs and Steel. Arguably he way overextended his basic research in later works. An interesting supplement to Diamond is Ian Morris' Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. To greatly oversimplify, Morris endorses the idea of a Western core headstart (with credit to Diamond) but then basically says "Well, yeah, of course that's the case." But how does that explain how things ended up millennia later. A good read. Another broader point though is that serious researchers are always going to put down popularizers who write books people actually read. But no one is going to read serious researchers except other serious researchers. Of course, you can go too far in the popularization direction and I tend to agree Malcolm Gladwell is a great example of that.

jonnathanson 13y ago

"developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're just a little bit smarter than everyone else." It doesn't seem limited to nerds, though. These books are always top sellers in places like airport book stores, so there's got to be a wider audience than that. If anything, I'd say these are very middlebrow books that hit a sweet spot in making college-educated (though not necessarily nerdy or even particularly smart) people feel smarter. They're like the USA Today distillations of behavioral and neuroscience research. The nerdier equivalent would be TED.

flanbiscuit 13y ago

It's also probably why we read sites like HN, so we can feel like we know something others don't... or know something before others.

Sheepshow 13y ago

Is it really fair to lump Jared Diamond in with Malcom Gladwell? Diamond writes about a career of firsthand research, and has won a Pulitzer prize. His field of study (traditional societies) is by its very nature shrinking daily, and requires serious dedication to observe firsthand. In contrast, every single human on earth has experienced a difficult assignment. So yes, while both Diamond and Gladwell overgeneralize based on a small sample size, Diamond's pool of potential samples is orders of magnitude smaller.

larrys 13y ago

"the same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones." [1] The question is would anyone have thought anything of PG's essays before he became "PG" that he is today? Not that people didn't read them but it seem now that anything that he has written or writes takes on such status that people are less likely to question or disagree with any conclusions. [1] Also noting that PG's (at least the ones's I've seen) essays are always proofed by others it would be interesting to get a sense of the type of comments and changes that are made post that proofing.

meowface 13y ago
Well, it's not just that he's been successful in the past, but that to this day his advice and mentoring helps produce many successful startups. When someone achieves repeated and consistent success over many years (say, Warren Buffett), it is wise to listen to what they have to say if they're willing to share their knowledge and experience. And also, HN isn't full of nearly as many mindless zombies as many other sites. When pg posts something contentious or controversial, usually there's debate about it in the comments.
the_watcher 13y ago
The reason PG is the YC founder we hear about is his essays, not the other way around. Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, and Jessica Livingston were all just as much founders as he was.

wmil 13y ago

Gladwell's books aren't aimed at nerds in the HN sense. They're actually targeted at people in communications / advertising who want an edge and also something to read on the plane. That's what makes him so influential.

wisty 13y ago

The Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond are more or less scientists. Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist. There's a difference. Both Steven Levitt and Jared Diamond devote a lot of ink over whether or not their theories are testable, while Malcolm Gladwell tends to just find anecdotes which seem to back his theories up.

pajop 13y ago

I'm trying to think now what would be the opposite of this? Books that are completely counter-intuitive, that forces you to rethink your original Weltanschaunng in the first place - Niall Ferguson's "Civilization: The West and the Rest" and Nassim Taleb's "AntiFragile: Things that Gain from Disorder" comes to mind. Even rereading Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" can give you this counter-intuitive insight.

Tycho 13y ago

The problem I have with your comment is that you describe something auspicious and then slap a derogatory label on it and thus unfairly decry it as problematic. If insight equates to truth, and counter-intuitiveness equates to challenging our flawed assumptions, and 'face-value' equates to lucid and well-argued, then what exactly is there to complain about? Just because you find a formula behind something, doesn't make it a problem.