4 ms·

Gladwell, on creeping determinism

36 points by staticshock 17y ago

anatoly 17y ago
I can't, dammit. I'm trying to read the article, but all I'm seeing is "igon value igon value igon value". Damn you, Steven Pinker! I will never enjoy Gladwell again.
- MartinCron 17y ago
  I just read it for you and there's not a single reference to linear algebra, it should be a safe read.
  - anatoly 17y ago
    Thanks! I take it there's no reference to Bel Air either?
- xiaoma 17y ago
  I listened to the audio version of Outliers a while back. One lengthy section was about how Chinese children have an advantage in learning math over English speaking children due to the regularity and brevity of the number words. Gladwell gave examples in which he absolutely murdered the pronunciation of the number 7. I'm not talking about tone problems. He pronounced it as "kwee". It was clear that he hadn't even bothered to listen to the number words that he devoted a section of his book to. Of course I don't expect someone who isn't a student of a language to speak it well, but he could have at least gone to wikipedia or chinesepod and listened to the numbers once or twice!
  - scott_s 17y ago
    As a westerner with extremely limited exposure to asian languages, I'm not sure if I would do any better. I found a website where I can listen to (I hope) a native speaker say "seven" in Chinese. The way I would say it would be similar to the English word "tea."
    - kalvin 17y ago
      In Mandarin it's much closer to "chee" (elongated "chi") than it is to "tea"
      - scott_s 17y ago
        I thought I heard a "ch" sound, but I have difficulty distinguishing it. Anyway, this supports my point that people who aren't accustomed to a family of languages will take more than a few hours to get pronunciation of even a single word correct.
  - carbon8 17y ago
    Here's the section in question: http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt3.html http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt3.html Personally, I find it incredibly strange for someone to criticize an author for mispronouncing a single syllable word from a language he presumably doesn't know while reading an excerpt of a book he didn't write. He doesn't claim expertise and acknowledges his sources, who are experts, and he explicitly states that these are their arguments. What's the problem?
    - xiaoma 17y ago
      He was discussing the phonetic properties of Chinese words. If he'd just missed the tone or if he'd even have gotten remotely close, it wouldn't have been so bad. The problem is that he decided to include the excerpt in his argument and didn't even bother to listen to the numbers, even when it would have been simple to do so if he wanted. Edit: I guess the problem is the same as the igon values. He regularly writes with an air of authority about things he doesn't really have much understanding of. He's limited to quoting others' arguments as a journalist would.
      - carbon8 17y ago
        "quoting others' arguments as a journalist would." He writes "as a journalist would" because he is a journalist. I'm not sure why anyone would read his writing as much of anything else, nor why writing as a journalist is a bad thing.
    - rgrieselhuber 17y ago
      It's like saying that Star Track is one of your favorite shows. In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter but goddamn is it annoying to people who care.
      - carbon8 17y ago
        "It's like saying that Star Track is one of your favorite shows" No, it's not. It's like someone who doesn't know english mispronouncing a single syllable english word while reading an excerpt of a non-english book written by someone else that he quoted in his non-english book. And criticism of it would be just as silly.
- sharpn 17y ago
  It appears that Gladwell wasn't in error - 'his webmaster' fesses up here (sorry for the horribly long url): http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/letting-igons-be-igons.html?cid=6a00d83451c8bb69e20120a6b77cd8970b#comment-6a00d83451c8bb69e20120a6b77cd8970b http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/letting-igon...
  - anatoly 17y ago
    I don't see how this means that Gladwell wasn't in error. All it says is that the webmaster missed the error when he uploaded the text version to the site. So what? he/she's a webmaster, not a copyeditor. The error had to come from somewhere originally, right? It couldn't have come from the correct version that appeared in the magazine or its PDF version. The comment mumbles something about HTML editors and their "errors", but it's ridiculous to suggest that an HTML editor would change 'eigenvalue' to 'igon value' when automatically importing text from PDF. No sane program would do that, least of all an HTML editor. It couldn't have been an autospell error either because "igon value" isn't in any spellcheck list. No, it remains likely that "igon value" was there in the article as Gladwell wrote it, got fixed by the New Yorker's famously punctual fact-checkers, and the fix was ignored by Gladwell as the original text version was posted to the site and later made it to the book.
cstross 17y ago
Shorter Gladwell: "if you seek certainty, and someone gives it to you, sooner or later you'll trip over a rounding error and fall flat on your face."
- wicknicks 17y ago
  Seems to me that he talked about two things: 1. We have sooo much data, its just too hard to ask "what is the useful information"? 2. The second problem is more deeply rooted in the system and that is with the people. More the number of people, more the difficulties in managing them.
billswift 17y ago
In a bunch of mostly uninteresting detail, he basically says that although hindsight can pick out missed facts, at the time they are lost in a sea of data with no reason to favor them over other, useless facts. This has been know to intelligence agencies for many decades, there is nothing new here that makes it worth the time to read.
- benmathes 17y ago
  That's all Gladwell does -- he spins yarns around widely accepted knowledge in a subfield into stories for "everyone".
  - edj 17y ago
    Isn't this actually useful to everyone not an expert in or associated with these subfields?
    - benmathes 17y ago
      Sure it's useful -- in a world of ever-increasing specialization it helps to have a few people who take breadth-first approaches to learning and to effectively spread the knowledge of subfields to masses. But I've always had the feeling that both (1) he often musses the message for the sake of the yarn and (2) he might be trying to play it off as if he were more than a reporter.
- brown9-2 17y ago
  This has been know to intelligence agencies for many decades, there is nothing new here that makes it worth the time to read. Well that's the thing, and what makes it worth the time to read it: while intelligence agencies have known about this for decades, regular people don't know it. Worse, the Congress doesn't seem to know it. Don't forget that this article was written in March 2003, when the whole country - or at least the government - was still on a "how did we miss 9/11?" kick.

36 points by staticshock 17y ago

I can't, dammit. I'm trying to read the article, but all I'm seeing is "igon value igon value igon value". Damn you, Steven Pinker! I will never enjoy Gladwell again.

MartinCron 17y ago
I just read it for you and there's not a single reference to linear algebra, it should be a safe read.
- anatoly 17y ago
  Thanks! I take it there's no reference to Bel Air either?
xiaoma 17y ago
I listened to the audio version of Outliers a while back. One lengthy section was about how Chinese children have an advantage in learning math over English speaking children due to the regularity and brevity of the number words. Gladwell gave examples in which he absolutely murdered the pronunciation of the number 7. I'm not talking about tone problems. He pronounced it as "kwee". It was clear that he hadn't even bothered to listen to the number words that he devoted a section of his book to. Of course I don't expect someone who isn't a student of a language to speak it well, but he could have at least gone to wikipedia or chinesepod and listened to the numbers once or twice!
- scott_s 17y ago
  As a westerner with extremely limited exposure to asian languages, I'm not sure if I would do any better. I found a website where I can listen to (I hope) a native speaker say "seven" in Chinese. The way I would say it would be similar to the English word "tea."
  - kalvin 17y ago
    In Mandarin it's much closer to "chee" (elongated "chi") than it is to "tea"
    - scott_s 17y ago
      I thought I heard a "ch" sound, but I have difficulty distinguishing it. Anyway, this supports my point that people who aren't accustomed to a family of languages will take more than a few hours to get pronunciation of even a single word correct.
- carbon8 17y ago
  Here's the section in question: http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt3.html http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt3.html Personally, I find it incredibly strange for someone to criticize an author for mispronouncing a single syllable word from a language he presumably doesn't know while reading an excerpt of a book he didn't write. He doesn't claim expertise and acknowledges his sources, who are experts, and he explicitly states that these are their arguments. What's the problem?
  - xiaoma 17y ago
    He was discussing the phonetic properties of Chinese words. If he'd just missed the tone or if he'd even have gotten remotely close, it wouldn't have been so bad. The problem is that he decided to include the excerpt in his argument and didn't even bother to listen to the numbers, even when it would have been simple to do so if he wanted. Edit: I guess the problem is the same as the igon values. He regularly writes with an air of authority about things he doesn't really have much understanding of. He's limited to quoting others' arguments as a journalist would.
    - carbon8 17y ago
      "quoting others' arguments as a journalist would." He writes "as a journalist would" because he is a journalist. I'm not sure why anyone would read his writing as much of anything else, nor why writing as a journalist is a bad thing.
  - rgrieselhuber 17y ago
    It's like saying that Star Track is one of your favorite shows. In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter but goddamn is it annoying to people who care.
    - carbon8 17y ago
      "It's like saying that Star Track is one of your favorite shows" No, it's not. It's like someone who doesn't know english mispronouncing a single syllable english word while reading an excerpt of a non-english book written by someone else that he quoted in his non-english book. And criticism of it would be just as silly.
sharpn 17y ago
It appears that Gladwell wasn't in error - 'his webmaster' fesses up here (sorry for the horribly long url): http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/letting-igons-be-igons.html?cid=6a00d83451c8bb69e20120a6b77cd8970b#comment-6a00d83451c8bb69e20120a6b77cd8970b http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/letting-igon...
- anatoly 17y ago
  I don't see how this means that Gladwell wasn't in error. All it says is that the webmaster missed the error when he uploaded the text version to the site. So what? he/she's a webmaster, not a copyeditor. The error had to come from somewhere originally, right? It couldn't have come from the correct version that appeared in the magazine or its PDF version. The comment mumbles something about HTML editors and their "errors", but it's ridiculous to suggest that an HTML editor would change 'eigenvalue' to 'igon value' when automatically importing text from PDF. No sane program would do that, least of all an HTML editor. It couldn't have been an autospell error either because "igon value" isn't in any spellcheck list. No, it remains likely that "igon value" was there in the article as Gladwell wrote it, got fixed by the New Yorker's famously punctual fact-checkers, and the fix was ignored by Gladwell as the original text version was posted to the site and later made it to the book.

cstross 17y ago

Shorter Gladwell: "if you seek certainty, and someone gives it to you, sooner or later you'll trip over a rounding error and fall flat on your face."

wicknicks 17y ago
Seems to me that he talked about two things: 1. We have sooo much data, its just too hard to ask "what is the useful information"? 2. The second problem is more deeply rooted in the system and that is with the people. More the number of people, more the difficulties in managing them.

billswift 17y ago

In a bunch of mostly uninteresting detail, he basically says that although hindsight can pick out missed facts, at the time they are lost in a sea of data with no reason to favor them over other, useless facts. This has been know to intelligence agencies for many decades, there is nothing new here that makes it worth the time to read.

benmathes 17y ago
That's all Gladwell does -- he spins yarns around widely accepted knowledge in a subfield into stories for "everyone".
- edj 17y ago
  Isn't this actually useful to everyone not an expert in or associated with these subfields?
  - benmathes 17y ago
    Sure it's useful -- in a world of ever-increasing specialization it helps to have a few people who take breadth-first approaches to learning and to effectively spread the knowledge of subfields to masses. But I've always had the feeling that both (1) he often musses the message for the sake of the yarn and (2) he might be trying to play it off as if he were more than a reporter.
brown9-2 17y ago
This has been know to intelligence agencies for many decades, there is nothing new here that makes it worth the time to read. Well that's the thing, and what makes it worth the time to read it: while intelligence agencies have known about this for decades, regular people don't know it. Worse, the Congress doesn't seem to know it. Don't forget that this article was written in March 2003, when the whole country - or at least the government - was still on a "how did we miss 9/11?" kick.