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It's funny that people here are mocking Gladwell and Diamond for presenting popularized, simplified interpretations of the science, but those people are doing t
by onebaddude 13y ago
It's funny that people here are mocking Gladwell and Diamond for presenting popularized, simplified interpretations of the science, but those people are doing the same thing by simplifying the works of the authors.
There's nothing "magic" about 10,000 hours. The implication is that hard work, practice and luck play a bigger role in success than most people believe. It's a theory. Sorry if it was too nuanced for you.
- georgemcbay 13y agoMy intention wasn't really to mock Gladwell, but the act of throwing out the snippet of "10,000 hours" as a way of saying "I'm smart, I've read this book, here's a snippet of it to prove I 'get it'". This isn't really specific to Gladwell and also comes up with memes that aren't so closely tied to one of these "insight porn" authors. Other examples: People invoking Betteridge's Law, or the Dunning-Kruger effect, or "You aren't Google's customer, you are Google's product", and other such bits of techo-folksy wisdom that aren't wrong or even inapplicable to the context of the conversation, but which get beaten to death on places like HN the way that "the old reddit switcharoo" or recursively-circlejerky meta jokes get beaten to death on reddit. I should point out that while I was mocking this sort of thing, I know I'm totally guilty of participating in it myself, both the HN version (on HN) and the reddit version (on reddit).
- vertr07 13y agoThey are "mocking" Gladwell for presenting anecdotes as science, not for simplification.