[HN Gopher] When pop history bombs: a response to Malcolm Gladwell
___________________________________________________________________
When pop history bombs: a response to Malcolm Gladwell
Author : diodorus
Score : 165 points
Date : 2021-06-14 18:19 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lareviewofbooks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lareviewofbooks.org)
| chmod600 wrote:
| Moral question:
|
| Being objective and moral has lead to amazing amounts of peace,
| cooperation, and prosperity. But I always think about an example
| that seems to say you can be _too_ objective and maybe too moral:
|
| Let's say a wolf is hungry and wants to eat you. Your options are
| (1) let it eat you; (2) run away to safety; or (3) shoot the
| wolf. No matter what, something will die. Either you die, another
| prey animal dies, or the wold dies (of starvation or being shot).
|
| Being too objective means you will be the one that dies, because
| you can't find a reason to take an action like shooting the wolf
| or running away.
|
| I have a hard time getting past this example when it comes to
| questions of war and morality. If there is little cost to you, of
| course it's easy to make the moral choice and avoid needless
| deaths of your enemies. But if the cost starts to become
| significant (e.g. protracted bloody war), then you need to make
| the choice that's right for you and your allies. Right?
| greggman3 wrote:
| A much better account of WW2 in the Pacific is the latest
| Hardcore History series.
|
| The 6 part "Supernova in the East"
|
| https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/
| elevaet wrote:
| When I first heard Dan Carlin's macho vocal persona, I expected
| a very hawkish and USA-centric view of history. But he
| completely defied my bias. He really makes an effort to present
| a balanced and nuanced view of history, from all perspectives
| in a conflict.
|
| Thanks for the tip on part VI, I've been eagerly awaiting the
| release of that.
| 1986 wrote:
| His voice sounds / sounded so uncannily like Alex Jones'
| (maybe just to me?) that I had a similar initial reaction,
| and similarly was pleasantly surprised
| piyh wrote:
| Carlin's interview on the Lex Fridman podcast was great.
| mayneack wrote:
| Carlin actually had Gladwell on recently to talk about the
| book. He wasn't anywhere close to as critical as this review,
| however.
|
| https://pca.st/5rvqo9kz
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > He wasn't anywhere close to as critical as this review,
| however.
|
| When someone with a much (much!) bigger following than you
| parachutes into your field and joins you on your platform
| (where you are currently covering the same topic), you maybe
| withhold your most severe criticism of their work.
| mezentius wrote:
| Carlin's podcast on this subject, summarizing other well-
| researched histories, gives a much better idea of why
| firebombing and the atomic bomb were considered within bounds.
| The Japanese government was willing to throw away an appalling
| number of military and civilian lives in order to delay
| inevitable defeat, or at the very least attempt to bargain for
| better terms on which to end the war. (Carlin accurately
| describes this as "a form of political murder.") In places like
| Burma, New Guinea, and Peleliu, Japanese soldiers were thrown
| into utterly hopeless actions in order to inflict as many
| Allied casualties as possible. Beyond this, Japanese soldiers
| generally refused to surrender, and often had to be killed to
| the last man.
|
| Firebombing and the atomic bomb, while obviously subjects of
| internal bureaucratic and ideological jockeying, were
| considered viable primarily because they _might_ shorten a long
| and very brutal war. Whether they did so or not is debatable,
| but we 'd be on very shaky ground to debate the morality of the
| attempt from the comfort of posterity.
|
| I don't particularly care for Gladwell's glib nonsense, but I
| also find fault with the sort of anti-Gladwell Brooklyn-
| podcaster history (e.g.
| https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin) that
| engages in righteous hand-wringing over supposed American
| atrocities, without once mentioning any of the context above,
| nor Japan's atrocities in China in the 1930s leading up to the
| conflict, nor the very obvious fact that _America didn 't start
| the war._
| coliveira wrote:
| This is a bunch of nonsense. The real reason Americans wanted
| to finish the war with Japan quickly (at any cost) is that
| they were afraid that Russia would invade Japan.
| slipframe wrote:
| Nonsense? How about you read up on Operation Ten-Go and the
| senseless suicidal demise of the battleship Yamato, wasting
| the lives of two and a half thousand Japanese men to
| accomplish absolutely nothing except a show of defiance. In
| total more than 4,000 Japanese men lost their lives that
| day, while less than 100 Americans were killed. They knew
| it was suicide and they did it anyway.
|
| > _The ships ' crews were briefed on the nature of the
| mission and given the opportunity to stay behind if
| desired; none did._
|
| Your parent post is right, the Japanese military were
| absolute fanatics.
|
| Edit:
|
| And another point. After the _second_ atomic bombing,
| military officers attempted to overthrow the Japanese
| emperor to prevent the surrender. After the _second_ atomic
| bombing. Let that sink in. If not for the heroic actions of
| a few Japanese men, they might have succeeded in
| suppressing the broadcast of the surrender:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
| mezentius wrote:
| This is a good example, although I would be careful about
| characterizing the entire Japanese military as fanatics.
| (To his great credit, Carlin is also careful in this
| regard, and discusses the issue at some length.)
|
| The average Japanese soldier was certainly _perceived_ as
| a fanatic--due a combination of the evidence at hand at
| the time, deliberate Japanese policy and propaganda, and
| also a lot of rather nasty racial narratives--which had a
| lot to do with why total war was seen as unavoidable.
| slipframe wrote:
| I think the word fanatic is justified, but I see that it
| has derogatory connotations. Let's put it this way, the
| Japanese military, soldiers, sailors and officers, all
| provided their extreme courage and devotion numerous
| times over in that war. Courage and devotion to a
| horrible cause, but nonetheless they certainly weren't
| quitters.
|
| Another example: 21,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima,
| but only 216 taken as prisoners. They fought for five
| weeks until the bitter end. The stubborn defiance
| demonstrated at the Battle of Iwo Jima and Operation Ten-
| Go both played a role in the decision to drop atomic
| bombs on Japan.
| mezentius wrote:
| You're right that these are the sorts of figures that
| influenced the decision. It's also worth remembering that
| there were high-ranking members of the Japanese military
| who questioned the logic of the war or ordered retreats
| from indefensible positions, but were often arrested,
| assassinated, or ordered to commit suicide. Any stance
| other than loud, defiant resistance proved dangerous
| within a military hierarchy dominated by extremists.
|
| There is also some evidence that Japanese Army officers
| created a deliberate culture of extreme violence,
| ordering ordinary soldiers to commit atrocities, for
| example, as a way of ruling out surrender as an option.
| The soldiers would then assume that their treatment by
| the other side would be identical.
|
| I don't object to the word "fanatic" out of some semantic
| pedantry or because it's derogatory per se, but I think
| it robs us of some consideration of the individuals in
| question, and the various strands of policy, training,
| propaganda, fear, group pressure, and nostalgic death-
| worshipping cultural narratives to which they were
| subjected. The result was certainly the perception of
| fanaticism, which was intended to demoralize the Allies
| but backfired terribly, like the decision to prosecute
| the war itself. (And, as you point out, produced an
| enormous wastage of lives for no real gain.)
| ww2buff wrote:
| There was a faction of right wing Republicans who wanted to
| end the war quickly in order to forestall Russia, but they
| wanted to end the war quickly by forgoing an invasion and
| allowing Japan to surrender conditionally, without an
| occupation or a forced change of government or
| constitution, because they thought an armed and relatively
| intact militarist-run Japan would be a good buffer against
| the Soviet Union. This was unacceptable to the liberal new
| deal faction running the US government, who believed that a
| disarmed and democratic Japan was the only way to prevent
| another war.
|
| "They only wanted to keep the commies out" is a nicely glib
| line, but one that glosses over the many, many political
| considerations that shaped the end of the pacific war and
| reveals an almost total ignorance of the scholarship on the
| subject
| mezentius wrote:
| There is no convincing evidence for this argument. The
| Soviet Union was deeply engaged in its war against Nazi
| Germany until the very bitter end, and fully mobilized in
| that direction. Beyond that, America provided immense
| quantities of aid to the Soviet Union in the form of Lend-
| Lease, including military hardware. Some would argue that
| this was profoundly short-sighted given the realpolitik of
| Stalin's approach to the war, with an eye on what the
| Soviet Union would do in the conquered territories of
| Eastern Europe after the war (as a realization of tsarist
| fantasies going back a hundred years or more). But the fact
| is that--while every decision has various complicating
| factors related to political and institutional concerns--
| America's primary focus was on ending the war as quickly as
| possible _with an unconditional surrender._
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| Coincidentally, I just started reading Downfall: The End of the
| Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank [1]. The very
| first chapter details survivor accounts of the March 45 fire
| bombing of Tokyo. Later chapters go into the difficulties LeMay
| had when trying to precision bomb industrial facilities and how
| ineffective the bombing was.
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/Downfall/cJXtAAAAMAAJ?h...
|
| For a general; history of bombing as a tactic, I recommend A
| History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist [2]. A short and unusual
| book in that the author gives instructions on how to read the
| book in two ways, either chronologically as a history book, or
| thematically, following the themes and ideas of bombing
| strategies.
|
| [2].
| https://books.google.com/books?id=Wws_HAAACAAJ&newbks=0&hl=e...
| billfruit wrote:
| Barbara Tuchman's "Stilwell and the American Experience in
| China" is a good booklength treatment of WW2 in Asia, also
| prominently featuring a prominent proponent of air warfare,
| General Chennault.
| afterburner wrote:
| Carlin has also been criticized for being loose with history in
| favour of story.
|
| Carlin's podcast series are much, much longer than Gladwell's
| typical podcast treatments though, so at least it lets him
| include a lot more details.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Carlin has also been criticized for being loose with
| history in favour of story.
|
| How so? He seems to be pretty upfront in talking about his
| sources, quoting from them, and saying repeatedly that he's a
| journalist and not a historian.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| In one of his podcasts, he talks about the "pendulum of
| history" and how it swings, depending on the time, between
| more story (ie more emotion and look as to feelings of the
| time) or more fact (ie 10k people died in this battle). He
| mentioned that he preferred to be on the more story side;
| giving eyewitness accounts and showing the emotion of the
| history. I wouldn't put him near Gladwell though, but on
| the more story side of the pendulum.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I think there's a difference between Dan Carlin's "I'm
| interested in exploring what it felt like to be in some
| moment of history, and why the people there made the
| decisions they made" and Malcolm Gladwell's "I'm going to
| cherrypick facts until my 'history' fits the just-so
| fable I'm trying to tell".
| mastax wrote:
| Carlin spends a lot of time telling you where he gets
| information, who he's quoting from, how reliable they are,
| what the historical consensus is, etc. In a word,
| historiography.
|
| That's not to say he never gets anything wrong, he and his
| researchers aren't steeped in the subject for their whole
| careers so they'll miss things. He is biased towards the
| exciting stories and sources, but usually qualifies them with
| "I'll tell you this fun story but historians disagree about X
| Y Z because of A".
|
| I'll have to look into the criticisms but my impression just
| from listening is far better than any other pop history.
| rjtavares wrote:
| From what I read, historians generally like him. The main
| criticism is that he sometimes uses outdated sources or
| oversimplifies stuff.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I've heard somewhat mixed things from my historian
| friends.
|
| But you'll be happy to hear that "sometimes uses outdated
| sources or oversimplifies stuff" is a common criticism of
| basically all academic history written outside of the
| last 20 years, so he is in decent company.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Esssh. How many times does Malcolm Gladwell need to be exposed as
| a fraud before he looses his pulpit?
|
| (So much for post-truth being a mere problem for the rabble...)
| arkaic wrote:
| Twitter style comment right here.
| groby_b wrote:
| There isn't much else to say. Malcom Gladwell is an utter
| hack. The mainstream media refuses to acknowledge that and
| glorifies everything he says.
|
| Meanwhile, pretty much _anybody_ whose field has been touched
| by Gladwell reports that his account of their field is
| utterly uninformed, lacking nuance, and shaped to reach a
| foregone conclusion.
|
| What more is there?
| jfoutz wrote:
| Malcom Gladwell writes clearly and persuasively. I don't
| believe he uses his rhetoric to deceive, I don't think it's
| full on sophistry. That said, he clearly won't let the
| facts get in the way of a good story. As much as I want
| truth, evidence and proof to have one true meaning, the
| words really mean different things to different people.
| Heck, they mean different things to the same person in
| different contexts.
|
| Malcom Gladwell (in my humble opinion) is very good at
| making political arguments, not scientist arguments. They
| sound true. They engage in intellectual and emotional ways.
|
| I have, with multiple Gladwell books, been led down the
| garden path. But golly it's a pretty and enjoyable walk.
| And eventually that walk leads me to other interesting
| stuff, like _thinking fast and slow_.
|
| I guess, it's useful to me to read stories dressed up as
| science (kinda). Otherwise, how could I tell if the science
| I'm reading is just a story?
| idolaspecus wrote:
| You say you don't think it's "full on sophistry" then you
| go on to describe a full on sophist.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I agree, Gladwell tells a great story and he's absolutely
| entertaining to read. But I can't quite wrap my head
| around how you began your comment by saying Gladwell
| doesn't use rhetoric and end it by describing his writing
| as "stories dressed up as science (kinda)". Is that not
| rhetoric?
| jfoutz wrote:
| "rhetoric to deceive"
|
| He asks questions with many possible answers. He leads to
| one specific answer. He picks his favorite and dresses it
| up.
|
| the difference would be, he knew for a fact that Bob
| murdered Alice. Saw it with his own eyes. He doesn't
| write books about how Bob couldn't possibly have killed
| Alice, it must have been Charlie.
|
| He picks a favorite, says that's a good answer -
| rhetoric. I don't think he's leading people to an answer
| he believes to be wrong. He's not lying.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The book review cites much concrete evidence --- done by
| actual scholars doing the tedious work of digging through
| "boring" archives --- undermining Gladwell's conclusions.
|
| Yes, there are many conclusions to draw about these sorts
| of things, but getting facts wrong and omitting other
| information does not for a valid interpretation make.
|
| He's a sophist storyteller.
| groby_b wrote:
| You don't get to claim an unproven alternate science just
| because it's a good story unless you're in the Fiction
| aisle. Gladwell would like to be in the non-fiction
| aisle, and he really _utterly_ fails there.
|
| He's "not lying" only in the sense that he spouts
| completely uninformed opinion. He _knows_ that he does
| that, because it 's not like he hasn't been told
| repeatedly. He continues anyways.
|
| At that point, the line to flim-flam becomes tenuously
| thin.
| lubujackson wrote:
| It is hard to read this as a positive thing. You are
| basically describing a con-man (or more neutrally, a
| politician) who is skilled at convincing people of things
| through stories that are not factually accurate but feel
| accurate - "Truthiness" as Jon Stewart called it.
|
| At best, it is a shortcut to convince groups of people of
| a point but it is the opposite of informative - people
| come away with bad information, not partial information
| and curiosity to learn more.
|
| He is specifically disliked because he is selling the
| "take-aways" as knowledge when they are the opposite,
| then says he is just a storyteller - which is good and
| fine except he is marketed and digested as a layman's
| source of truth. Which is why we have people walking
| around thinking they can be a concert-grade pianist with
| 10,000 hours of practice even though the argument falls
| apart with the slightest analysis.
|
| If Hacker News caters to curious "hacker mindset" types I
| think Gladwell is the opposite of curiosity: insights
| without discussion or understanding.
| jfoutz wrote:
| I guess, I like Gladwell for the same reasons you dislike
| him. He's popular and picked apart. I can read his books
| and be convinced, then find out about all of the ways
| he's wrong. Where did I screw up? What did I fall for?
|
| Blink was probably the one that had the biggest impact on
| me. There are some gems there. It lead me to other
| thinking about thinking ideas. I learned a bit about
| quality of sources. I learned a bit about skinner boxes.
| Ironically I'm here, refreshing HN. So clearly I didn't
| learn that lesson particularly well.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Goodwin's law warning.
|
| If you go into it with a critical eye and compare it to
| other sources, then you didn't fall for anything.
|
| Reading mein kampf can be really insightful if you read
| it from a historical perspective and use the hueristics
| of skepticism. You can still dislike the original intent
| and think it is a missinformative work in general, but
| hold that the world would be better off without it.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| But "Mein Kampf" is an important primary source
| propaganda, whereas Gladwell's books are trash secondary
| sources, unless the object of research is "comforting
| false narratives of the early 21st century".
|
| I don't think that's fair to "Mein Kampf" (!).
| geodel wrote:
| > The mainstream media refuses to acknowledge that and
| glorifies everything he says.
|
| For some reason I find it utterly hilarious. Because on any
| subject I know a bit I find reporting by media utterly
| wrong or willfully ignorant. And it just makes me think
| what about all the subjects on which I have little or no
| knowledge. Can I trust anything at all here.
|
| I guess the point is same, like Gladwell media is obsessed
| with narrative often at cost of details/truth.
| cpleppert wrote:
| Michael Crichton's Gell-Mann Amnesia strikes again.
|
| >>You open the newspaper to an article on some subject
| you know well... You read the article and see the
| journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the
| facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it
| actually presents the story backward--reversing cause and
| effect. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
| adolph wrote:
| > Meanwhile, pretty much anybody whose field has been
| touched by Gladwell reports that his account of their field
| is utterly uninformed, lacking nuance, and shaped to reach
| a foregone conclusion.
|
| _"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as
| follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some
| subject you know well. In Murray 's case, physics. In mine,
| show business. You read the article and see the journalist
| has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the
| issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents
| the story backward--reversing cause and effect. I call
| these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of
| them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement
| the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to
| national or international affairs, and read as if the rest
| of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine
| than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and
| forget what you know."_
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-
| ge...
| mc32 wrote:
| Can't most of TEDx be classified in the same vein as Gladwell?
| A bunch of people self congratulating each other for finding a
| way to make their ideas saleable?
|
| It's like the Amway of selling ideas.
| strbean wrote:
| TEDx ended up as a way for cranks and snake oil salesmen to
| launder their ideas through a facade of reputability with the
| TED name, because most people don't realize that _anyone_ can
| organize / speak at a TEDx event with no oversight from TED.
| TheTrotters wrote:
| TED isn't necessarily much better. Plenty of talks are
| based on low-quality psychology research that doesn't
| replicate (e.g. power poses).
|
| TED should be viewed as high-quality feel-good,
| inspirational YouTube videos, not an educational resource.
| wassenaar10 wrote:
| Best illustrated by Sam Hyde in 2013
| cubano wrote:
| Isn't ALL written history somewhat revisionist?
|
| Well it sure is hard to tell because, of course, I wasn't there
| of course, but isn't that exactly the problem here?
|
| For my entire life I've heard the _bot mot_ that "History is
| written by the victorious"...well doesn't that mean at its base
| level that ALL of it bathes in its own bullshit?
|
| I like Malcom's writing and his pod...and at least he has the
| honesty to call it "Revisionist History" as he is obviously
| telling us that HERE, yes, narrative story might win out over
| historical accuracy (which, once again, we have been taught is BS
| anyway).
|
| Why shouldn't non-textbook history reflect the shades and biases
| of its author? As long as its well written and presents fair
| reflections upon this history, why should the author be pummeled
| by critics for doing so?
|
| Too many questions and not enough answers...as usual.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That's not what "revisionist" means in the context of history.
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism
| protomyth wrote:
| How do you have a book about WWII bomber strategy and not have
| Billy Mitchell in it? His influence is pretty large.
| gre wrote:
| Billy Mitchell the general, not the gamer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell
| protomyth wrote:
| Why would anyone think the gamer is important to this
| discussion?
| gre wrote:
| He's the only one I'd heard of.
| barry27 wrote:
| "What does he describe upon setting foot in this solemn space, a
| site dedicated to the very subject of his book? Himself."
|
| I think that sums it up. There is little point in reading
| anything written by Malcolm Gladwell.
| 99_00 wrote:
| https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
| lurquer wrote:
| I saw Blink in the bookstore. My gut feeling, just looking at the
| cover, was that it would suck. Didn't buy it.
| barry27 wrote:
| whenever someone says they judged a book by its cover i have to
| assume they're being ironic
| openasocket wrote:
| There's also some more nitty-gritty critiques I found in this
| thread:
| https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1395770118785966086 . And
| also I found this review interesting as well:
| https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin
| afterburner wrote:
| It's not like Gladwell doesn't criticize LeMay. He even accuses
| the entire US strategic command of waving away the responsibility
| of considering the morality of such a brutal firebombing
| campaign.
|
| I didn't come away from the audiobook thinking LeMay had "won"
| even the battle, let alone the war (meaning ultimately precision
| bombing has won the argument in modern times). Granted, I already
| knew plenty about this before, but my impression in the end from
| Gladwell was that both Hansel and LeMay were wrong in different
| ways, just that LeMay's aggressive firebombing looked like it was
| "doing something" to the higher ups. The technology of the time
| simply did not allow the precision bombing approach to "look"
| like it was even "doing something" (and it was certainly failing
| by its own primary metric, hitting the target). Indiscriminate
| bombing is easy, so you can point at photos and say you succeeded
| in doing it.
|
| Gladwell of course simplifies it a lot and wraps it up in a bow,
| because his strength is telling a story, not conducting a
| detailed analysis. At the very least, perhaps a lot of people
| will become aware of these events and be made to think about
| them.
|
| Fact is, no one _really_ knows if the firebombing hastened
| Japanese surrender or convinced the Japanese population that they
| really had lost. Maybe it did, and maybe it was important. Or
| maybe not. And it was certainly horrifying. Gladwell doesn 't
| dwell enough on the uncertainty, but he doesn't forget to mention
| the moral issues.
| escape_goat wrote:
| It is a shame that nobody really knows the impact of this thing
| that was experienced by millions of people and extensively
| documented by the Japanese and subsequently studied by Japanese
| historians as well as all historians of the war and of East
| Asia everywhere. I guess it will always be the case that
| perhaps we achieved ends that offer some justification to the
| means we employed.
| afterburner wrote:
| Gladwell did describe the horrific nature of the firestorms
| in detail. I don't know why this review acts like he didn't.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Because it, too, has a story to tell?
| soperj wrote:
| >And it was certainly horrifying
|
| It was also a war crime as defined by the Hague conventions
| that the US had signed on to.
| adolph wrote:
| If the ordinance recipient was defended or was unintended was
| a war crime committed?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_.
| ..
| patwolf wrote:
| I enjoy Revisionist History, but I have learned to take
| everything he says with a grain of salt. He throws out much of
| the nuance of history in order to neatly meld it with his
| narrative. The Boston Tea Party episode, for example, tried to
| paint the revolution as a bunch of rich smugglers upset about
| losing business. That may have been a small part of it, but it
| definitely is not the whole story.
|
| I'm afraid to ever mention anything I heard from him in casual
| conversation because someone more knowledgeable would probably
| call me out.
| nverno wrote:
| "I am a story-teller, and I look to academic research... for
| ways of augmenting story-telling." --Malcolm Gladwell
|
| The author of this article is operating on the wrong premise-
| in his own words Gladwell considers himself more a storyteller
| than an arbiter of truth.
| Ishmaeli wrote:
| Ugh. I have enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's writing in the past,
| but this smacks of the Tucker Carlson defense.
| topaz0 wrote:
| The author of this article is writing for the casual reader
| of Gladwell's book who comes away thinking they have learned
| some history. That person may weigh their enjoyment of the
| story more or less strongly against whether it says something
| true about history, so may or may not appreciate Gladwell's
| emphasis. Either way, this article allows them to put the
| story better into the context of the history it purports to
| describe.
| bee_rider wrote:
| He clearly presents his stories in a manner that makes it
| easy to mistake them for the whole truth, though. I find this
| kind of excuse pretty thin coming from anyone more serious in
| tone than, like, Jon Stewart.
| mdoms wrote:
| The first couple of seasons of Revisionist History were podcast
| gold. Lately though? I only listen if I'm desperate for
| content. It has taken a massive nosedive.
| ErrantX wrote:
| I think that episode is one of the good ones. Because in it
| he's challenging the standard narrative of a well known piece
| of history.
|
| You need to take it with a grain of salt (and I think it's fair
| criticism that he goes a bit ott on presenting alternative
| perspectives as dominant)
| NullInvictus wrote:
| I think Gladwell cares about history, and he cares about story,
| but if (as is often the case in history) he has to choose one
| at the expense of the other, it is going to be _story_ that he
| chooses every single time.
|
| As an overly broad generalization, Gladwell is at heart a
| journalist, not a historian (even though he has a bachelor's in
| history). I enjoy listening to Revisionist history and reading
| some of his books, because some things in history are revealed
| by trying to form some kind of narrative (e.g., Historical
| Materialism), but he's not telling you history. He's forming a
| story from history. But I think his work is often an excellent
| stepping off point to real history texts, and it sometimes gets
| you to think about the second-order effect of things (his
| episode on Brown v. Board was extremely interesting).
|
| Ironically the Boston Tea Party episode was also the one that
| broke me and made me bring a lot more grains of salt to my
| experience of his work. I think it's one of his worst episodes,
| and one where he tips his hand a little too far and breaks the
| illusion for anyone who has even casually read any serious
| works on the period. It's a _piece_ as you said, but it's an
| incredible oversimplification.
| schnable wrote:
| This is the problem for journalism today as well - a desire
| to push a particular narrative over reporting of facts
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That is the problem that most journalism has always had.
| There has never been a time when the most of the media
| wasn't pushing one narrative over another - usually in the
| interest of someone powerful.
|
| One excellent example is Watergate. It was an
| extraordinarily well-reported story, and it remains to this
| an iconic story that everyone remembers as a major outrage.
| In the same era, there was the COINTELPRO leak, where a few
| people broke into an FBI building and found documents
| detailing extensive, egregious FBI Gestapo-style activities
| against the Civil rights movement (including trying to
| blackmail MLK into committing suicide, and working with the
| guy who assassinated Malcolm X, and many others). This was
| barely reported by a handful of papers, and even though it
| sparked actual legislative action, Senate committees,
| hearings etc, it has been all but forgotten. It never
| really fit the narratives deemed important by the kinds of
| people who write the news (who were largely against the
| Civil rights movement at the time).
|
| This is not to say that extraordinary journalists haven't
| existed, to whom we owe great debts. It's not even to say
| that journalism hasn't degraded - there may well be fewer
| great journalists today than in other periods.
| pas wrote:
| People live and breathe narratives. We are storytelling
| animals. We need to string those facts into a sort of
| coherent whole. We crave understanding, and we do it
| through stories. Facts don't matter, because they can be
| interpreted, weighted, viewed in such and such light, post
| hoc rationalized away...
| sjg007 wrote:
| Most of history is a story written by the victors and what
| has survived. Unless there is primary evidence and even then
| most of that contains interpretation.
|
| But I'm interested in what do you think the Boston Tea Party
| episode gets wrong?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The part where it was obvious then that picking a fight
| with England over taxes is not going to secure you a better
| economic outcome than either paying the taxes and grumbling
| or finding a new way to dodge them. If picking a war with a
| superpower makes you rich the Taliban should be rolling in
| the dough.
|
| They wanted to give England the bird. The taxes were just
| the flimsy pretense. Pretty much all of them paid for it in
| opportunity cost at a bare minimum.
| xapata wrote:
| You're using an ambiguous pronoun reference. Who's
| picking the fight? I don't think it was so obvious that
| war would be the consequence.
|
| If I'm a tea smuggler beating the competition by avoiding
| taxes and my competitor is granted an even better tax-
| avoidance method (an exemption), then I'm going to pick a
| fight. I still might find a different business, but I'd
| see how far I could push it, first.
| xapata wrote:
| You're right in general; Gladwell is often wrong, but that's
| actually a pretty good take on the Boston Tea Party.
| jonstewart wrote:
| Judge Posner took down Gladwell years ago. I periodically reread
| this: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-reviews-blink
| screye wrote:
| My experience with Gladwell has been a positive one, but I would
| never consider him the source/expert on anything.
|
| I put him between John Oliver (cherry picked truths veering on
| lies) and Nate Silver (will have an opinion, but will separate it
| from the source data).
|
| He tries to reach a conclusion through honest means and good
| research. However, his narration will skip over / bend the
| specifics to make the journey to the conclusion more digestible.
|
| He has been an excellent entry point for a lot of my peers who
| are less inclined to read textbooks or non-fiction novels.
| Similarly, his podcast is always interesting enough to keep the
| attention of a random person despite covering what they would've
| otherwise not been interested in.
|
| There is something to be said for that skill.
| meroes wrote:
| Personal anecdote about a book of his: I had a lunch interview
| and the CEO winced when I quoted _What the Dog Saw_ , and
| corrected me using their actual experience running a large
| corporation. I think about not having to get along with
| coworkers, and the CEO said that was nonsense.
|
| *No I didn't say I don't get along. They asked what books I was
| reading
| fighterpilot wrote:
| The Igon Value Problem:
|
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem
| yboris wrote:
| Classic - thank you for sharing!
| tptacek wrote:
| Every time someone posts this, I wonder if they'd be able to
| solve some basic (albeit symbolic) eigenvalue problems. Could
| you? Like just some 2x2 problems that you can't just plug into
| Wolfram Alpha?
|
| It seems a little odd to hold a journalist to a standard
| software engineers themselves don't generally meet.
| pas wrote:
| Wow, and everyone said that all that math for a CS degree is
| useless, finally the time has come! /s
|
| So, how come no one caught the error before publication? How
| come Gladwell did not even look up what an igon value is?
| Etc.
|
| Everyone makes mistakes, but seemingly the more successful
| the author the more responsibility they should bear that
| their overall point is correct and useful. And Gladwell
| serially misses these marks. At least that's how I interpret
| these arguments.
| greedo wrote:
| It's not that Gladwell just place loose with his facts,
| conveniently leaving out things that contradict his central
| thesis. It's that he's often just flat out wrong. So wrong that
| he doesn't even realize how he blows up his own credibility:
|
| "The sole thing the Marianas had going for them was that they
| were within range of Japan. But even that was an exaggeration.
| The truth is that they were within range only under perfect
| conditions. To reach Japan, a B-29 first needed to be loaded up
| with twenty thousand pounds of extra fuel. And because that made
| the plane dangerously overweight, each B-29 also needed a
| ferocious tailwind to lift it off the runway. This was as crazy a
| situation as anyone faced throughout the whole war."
| aidenn0 wrote:
| IS the horribly wrong thing that an overweight plane would want
| a headwind to takeoff, or something else?
| greedo wrote:
| Yes. It demonstrates his complete lack of understanding how
| flight works. Lift is generated by air moving from the front
| of a plane's wing towards the rear. Having a tailwind reduces
| the amount of air traveling in this direction, reducing lift.
|
| Generally, planes prefer to land and take off into the wind.
| Tailwinds are nice once you're already in flight, since they
| give you free speed.
| jollybean wrote:
| I think this is a bad reason to worry.
|
| Knowing how 'lift' works is basically irrelevant to
| anything in the rest of the story.
|
| Over 500 pages, you're going to get things wrong.
|
| The important facts of that para related to the strategic
| importance of the Island. The minute details of 'why lift
| works' are not really relevant.
|
| What's relevant is that "The islands importance is as an
| airstrip/base and even then it's barely 'in range'".
| cpleppert wrote:
| It isn't irrelevant in the context; by saying that they
| are only in range under 'perfect conditions' he makes it
| sound like the operation was barely doable.
|
| This is misleading. Air operations in WWII where
| continuously dependent on weather conditions and the wind
| conditions make a large difference to the payload a
| piston powered aircraft of that era can carry. The B-29
| was specifically designed to accomplish the strategic
| bombing mission in a pacific war; it would not have been
| accepted into production if it could not reach Japan from
| the Marianas Islands. In fact, it could comfortably reach
| the vast majority of Japan and its industrial centers,
| only the north of japan was outside of its normal range.
|
| The removal of most self-defense weaponry (except the
| tail cannon) made the entirety of Japan reachable; they
| simply weren't needed for night operations and Japan's
| fighter force was negligible by the end of the war. In
| fact, future b-29's were built with only a tail cannon in
| the first place.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Plus the B-29 was previously bombing Japan from China,
| which was farther than the Marianas, right?
| cpleppert wrote:
| The entire book is written like that. It should be pretty clear
| by even his tone that he just speculating and creating his own
| opinions to form a story. On top of that it is casually written
| like a series of blog posts; I found it incredibly hard to take
| seriously.
| Animats wrote:
| _" What does he describe upon setting foot in this solemn space,
| a site dedicated to the very subject of his book? Himself."_
|
| So he's writing like a blogger.
| imNotTheProb wrote:
| Blink- "you can figure out a person's intentions from split
| second facial expressions"
|
| Talking to strangers- "everyone and their culture is different,
| it's impossible to know if someone is lying"
| specialist wrote:
| Just finished Talking to Strangers. That's an unfair ungenerous
| depiction, by omission. Specifically, the punch line.
|
| Wide spread cargo cult adoption of Kansas City's policing
| strategy ignored the science, explaining why few reproduced
| KC's successes, with all sorts of terrible consequences,
| resulting many senseless deaths, and destroying trust and
| legitmacy of policing.
|
| Just another tale of bad policy, unintended consequences,
| railing against entrenched dogma.
|
| In this case, Gladwell's quixotic suggestion is to step back,
| reassess, try again. Daylighting the science during this cycle
| of turmoil seems reasonable. Might even help.
|
| What more could he do? What would you do?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Ideological consistency is often a barrier to amassing personal
| wealth.
| CalChris wrote:
| _Talking To Strangers_ was a choice for Zoom book club I was in
| during the shutdown. I was looking forward to it a little since
| I recognized but didn 't know the name. I couldn't make my way
| through it and dropped out.
|
| He has a New Yorker writing style but without having anything
| to say.
| feintruled wrote:
| Yeah, Blink was the first and last of his books I read. Nice
| anecdotes but it struck me as nothing more than saying "Your
| gut feeling is right, except when it's wrong"
| Applejinx wrote:
| More like, your intuitive jump related to areas in which you
| are experienced and expert, can and does give you conclusions
| way way quicker than it gives you justifications.
|
| Hoving looking at a fake sculpture and instantly going 'NOPE'
| is not a Joe Average reaction, but draws on lots of
| experience. The story of gamblers giving stress reactions to
| unfamiliar and dangerous card games is GAMBLERS.
|
| Your gut feeling has nothing to do with it. What are you so
| expert at, that you can just glance and you'll know? (as in,
| more than would be justified by the lack of analysis and
| prolonged exposure)
|
| Being able to plausibly form hugely accelerated judgements
| and have them check out, is interesting. It's also plausible
| to me that few people build up that much expertise, to be
| able to do that. But for those who do... and it can be in any
| field, from any person... it's an interesting perspective.
| ksd482 wrote:
| Same!! I watched his TED talk on David and Goliath story and
| I thought he was interesting. Then I picked up Blink. 25
| pages in, I realized he was full of shit.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I used to work on a government project where we were tasked
| with building lie detectors based off the concepts of blink
| (micro expressions) (and really Paul Ekman [1], where the
| concepts in blink came from)
|
| After a few years at it, I came away thinking the whole thing
| was bullshit. Unfortunately, countless tax dollars were wasted.
|
| [1] https://www.paulekman.com/blog/signs-of-lying/
| jandrese wrote:
| The only Gladwell book I have read is "Outliers". When reading
| it I couldn't shake the feeling that he was cherry picking his
| examples. It never pulled back far enough to study the
| phenomenon systematically and the examples he did use were
| scattered all across the world and decades. I ended up being
| fairly disappointed and have not bothered with any of his other
| work.
|
| I guess I was most disappointed because it was getting
| absolutely stellar reviews at the time and I'm not sure why.
| underseacables wrote:
| I miss his old work, when it was focused more on pop-culture, and
| less on idealism, and politics. The podcast was going really well
| but as soon as he started going off on politics I lost interest
| really quick.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| I love the idea that any history/philosophy can be divorced
| from politics. Like, I only enjoy hearing this human beings
| thoughts and opinions, but only if they exist in this narrow
| band of what I deem acceptable.
|
| His ideas on satire are extremely valuable IMO, explicitly
| because of the political nature of his arguments. It critiques
| the inability of modern social systems inability critique those
| in power, and skillfully intermixes the politics of the time to
| enhance his point (that part about A Wonderful Country is
| beautiful, how an extremely political point can be made through
| satire, leagues beyond SNL)
| jedimastert wrote:
| Yeah, I kinda dipped when I felt like there were more opinions
| than history. Like, I understand that all history is colored by
| the person telling it, and that was kinda the whole idea behind
| Revisionist History in the first place, but I felt like he
| moved from highlighting less known aspects of history to
| highlighting basically where _he_ thought history had gone
| wrong.
| Tactician_mark wrote:
| Was there a time when Gladwell wasn't political? The Tipping
| Point was his first book, and it helped popularize broken
| windows policing.
| sjg007 wrote:
| That style of policing was popular before Gladwell. It was
| Giuliani who really doubled down on it in NYC as the
| exemplar.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
|
| It is also known as stop and frisk. This type of policing has
| also been adopted to traffic stops as well and arguably has
| lead to warrior cop policing.
|
| Gladwell discusses the implications of this in Talking to
| Strangers.
|
| So if you want a perspective on guns, gun violence, policing
| from the 1970s until today, I recommend it.
| slg wrote:
| >The only issue is that Gladwell's account doesn't withstand
| serious scrutiny. As a piece of writing, The Bomber Mafia is
| engaging. As a work of history, it borders on reckless. Setting
| aside the numerous errors of fact and interpretation, Gladwell
| consistently cherry-picks from the historical record. Wittingly
| or not, he omits or downplays evidence that undermines the very
| premise of the book.
|
| Sub out history for science in the above paragraph and it is the
| same criticism that Gladwell has been receiving for literally
| decades. The guy is a good writer and storyteller but he
| seemingly prioritizes good writing and story over telling the
| most honest story. That isn't an unusual trait among pop-non-
| fiction writers. The reason they become popular is what they
| write is interesting and it is easier to make things interesting
| if you are a little loose with the truth.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Lol. I see his critics did exactly that. The whole anti-ten-
| thousand-hours people cherry picks borderline arguments and
| ignores overall correctness of his general point.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Where I see people get 10k hours wrong is they think it
| *guarantees* top shelf world class success. That's a
| misinterpretation. The 10k rule is: *If* you make it to the
| top, you will almost certainly have put in at least 10k
| hours.
|
| I'm not a Gladwell fan so I'm not certain about what he said.
| I'm only wanting to point out the difference between the rule
| and how very many misinterpret it.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Two common misinterpretations:
|
| - 10k hours guarantees top success
|
| - 10k hours practice is required for top success
|
| The 10k hours rule does not say either. The 10k hours rule
| only says 10k hours deliberate practice is generally
| required to be a top expert in most fields. So there are
| cases where 10k hours practice is not sufficient, and there
| are cases where talent people (Mozart?) need way fewer
| practice than regular people.
|
| The 10k hours rule also does not say top experts need more
| hours to be better. So there is "debunk" claiming no
| correlation found among top expert performance and practice
| which is kind of strawman attack.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Correctness of what? That a single variable explains success?
| Its completely ludicrous
| temp8964 wrote:
| "single variable explains success"? It is not what it
| about.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Its exactly that when you keep saying 10 000 hours is a
| magic number.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I think the whole ten-thousand-hours is doing exactly that,
| it presents some cherry-picked facts and ignores giving
| substantial evidence. The main point of the book is quite
| obvious before Gladwell wrapped it into pop science: hard
| work does pay off one way or another but the extent of his
| generalization is ... pop science
| iainctduncan wrote:
| Came here to say exactly that! Years ago he was a springboard
| for me to read further on various topics, each time leading me
| to conclude he doesn't give a shit about presenting the truth
| if it gets in the way of his story. :(
| mdeck_ wrote:
| > The guy is a good writer and storyteller but he seemingly
| prioritizes good writing and story over telling the most honest
| story. That isn't an unusual trait among pop-non-fiction
| writers.
|
| It's not fair at all to cast Malcolm Gladwell as typical of pop
| nonfiction writers--there are tons of great and serious writers
| in the genre. It's truly a shame that Malcolm Gladwell, an
| utter hack, has been consistently publishing garbage for
| decades and that he has such a wide audience.
| quadrangle wrote:
| Despite the undeniably pattern of problematic framings
| (particularly how Gladwell invites readers to feel that they
| now have the answers as opposed to the scientific mindset of
| now feeling that they have so many more questions), I don't
| think "utter hack" is fair.
|
| Gladwell is not only a superb storyteller, he's sincerely
| interested in learning himself, has intriguing ideas... it's
| sloppy (almost in a Gladwellian manner) to be angry about the
| problems with his approach and then just insist that the
| conclusion is that his stuff is just garbage and he's just a
| hack.
| wsinks wrote:
| really great usage of Gladwellian here
| slg wrote:
| I'm not going to disagree with the merits of your point, but
| I do want to provide clarification that I think there is a
| gap between "not unusual" and "typical". I think the former
| means it isn't rare while the later means it applies to most
| people. To make up a number, if this applied to 20% of people
| it would be both "not unusual" and "not typical".
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| "Look at the incentives and I will show you the outcome"
|
| It's easy to make LeMay look more evil than he was. Once you've
| got the villain you need a hero if you want to tell a good story.
|
| We're talking an author someone who does a layman level history
| podcast here. You can't expect him to fight over facts like a
| lawyer. That's just not what you do when you produce that kind of
| content. He's gonna find a bunch of facts, point the ones he
| likes in the direction of the point he wants to make and then
| turn them loose. And if the result is a good story he's gonna
| sell a whole bunch of books to the kinds of people who listen to
| his podcast.
|
| It's a shame that making a mess out of history is a good business
| model but the fact of the matter is that it is.
| dlivingston wrote:
| I quite like Malcolm Gladwell. Here's why:
|
| I view empirical truth as having layers. There is one objective
| truth, of course, but there are higher-order concentric rings of
| abstractions above those that aren't strictly true but serve as
| an accurate enough first-order approximation of the truth.
|
| The cliched example of this would be the Bohr model of atoms
| being the first "ring" of truth, and quantum mechanics being a
| second or third "ring". Another example would be "everything
| revolves around the earth" -> "everything revolves around the
| sun" -> "Newtonian gravity" -> "Einsteinian general relativity".
|
| As a first-order approximation of the truth, Gladwell is fine.
| There are serious criticisms of him in this article that may
| cause me to rethink this, but as long as they aren't full-on
| manipulations of reality, I view them as a useful entry point
| into a subject.
|
| Nuanced and rigorous history requires careful and objective study
| to truly understand. Gladwell, on the other hand, I can read in
| the bathtub with a cold beer. He's fun in a way that the more
| academic approach to history necessarily can't be (unless there
| is a Feynman-esque character writing history books that I'm not
| aware of?)
| prepend wrote:
| Truth having layers of detail seems accurate to me. Outer
| layers conflicting with inner layers is foolish and means that
| the outer layer wasn't true at all.
|
| Fiction claiming to be non-fiction is annoying and should at
| least be labeled accurately.
| xapata wrote:
| You'd not be able to label anything as non-fiction, unless it
| were from the mouth of Cthulu. No matter how dryly something
| is presented, the reader should still be skeptical.
| jmkni wrote:
| I like Adam Curtis for the same reason
| mjburgess wrote:
| Curtis is trying to create a certain sort of dream state in
| which the free association of ideas takes place and you
| reframe your perspective on society.
|
| I'd hesitate to call it even something that could be true.
| It's more like an abstract painting.
|
| I went through quite a hostile phase, as it's clearly
| masquerading as something it isn't. It's more a work of
| aesthetic-political creation, than any kind of "history".
|
| It's a made up history of a possible world view possible dead
| people might have had; for the sake of saying something about
| our world views today.
| mopsi wrote:
| > _It 's more like an abstract painting._
|
| Or a music video: Massive Attack x Adam Curtis
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e3I1mLc3RM&t=54s
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| > Nuanced and rigorous history requires careful and objective
| study to truly understand.
|
| It seems like the most objective account of history one can
| create is merely a recollection of all facts, with no room for
| editorialization. I've read some books by historians and I find
| it hard to follow when reading in the 20 minute increments my
| free time is divided into. Maybe that's just my problem, but it
| makes me understand why some people reach for pop history.
| chillacy wrote:
| Given finite resources (limited pages in a book), the
| decision to put some facts over others into said book is by
| nature a form of editorialization.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Academic history is storytelling rather than a recollection
| of facts. This is why there are different analysis modes and
| multiple views of the same events can all be valid work.
|
| That said, it is definitely the case that academic history is
| written for other academics and is often _terribly_ dry for
| people outside of the field. There are exceptions, but little
| about a book itself will tell you whether it is one of the
| ones that are well suited for amateur readers.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| And that's fair enough, except he doesn't present his work as
| merely "first ring of truth" - he presents it as a _deeper_
| ring, or at least certainly does not indicate that it 's merely
| an introduction.
|
| So laypeople read his books and listen to his podcasts and
| don't know that the truth has been fudged so much for the sake
| of storytelling that it borders on outright misleading. But it
| was so entertaining in the meantime that it feels like
| additional insight - which of course is the brilliant trick of
| his marketing.
| enriquepablo wrote:
| > Nuanced and rigorous history requires careful and objective
| study to truly understand.
|
| Have you read https://acoup.blog/?
|
| Another reader above (@iainctduncan) said:
|
| > Years ago he was a springboard for me to read further on
| various topics, each time leading me to conclude he doesn't
| give a shit about presenting the truth if it gets in the way of
| his story. :(
|
| If everyone were like her or him, it would be fine to write
| sloppyly and engagingly about science and history posing as if
| you were a real authority. But that doesnt seem to be the case
| (this is HN).
| mcguire wrote:
| That is fine, of course, but be careful not to believe the
| conclusions you draw from Gladwell alone and be _very_ careful
| about asserting those conclusions as guides to future behavior
| without going to the effort of finding out where he is simply
| wrong.
| didibus wrote:
| > There is one objective truth, of course
|
| Not necessarily, I think it's very likely that the foundation
| of truth is ever changing in itself, nothing has to be fixed in
| time and space.
|
| > but there are higher-order concentric rings of abstractions
| above those that aren't strictly true but serve as an accurate
| enough first-order approximation of the truth
|
| I think one thing that was a big "haha" moment for me was
| actually reconsidering what I'm even trying to accomplish when
| discussing "truth". I realized that in actuality, we are simply
| framing facts and observations into conceptual models that
| allows us to predict or infer further conclusions. This means
| we really only care about the practicalities.
|
| Like you said, quantum physics and general relativity are
| simply two conceptual models, in practice they each work well
| for certain things, but we've found they are incompatible right
| now, and what one is good at the other not so much. And that's
| fine, unless you wrongly obsess over "truth", which you will
| never find. But if you focus on your practicalities, then it's
| a question of finding the most effective conceptual model you
| can, and then applying it to your life.
|
| When it comes to history, it's the same. It doesn't really
| matter what actually happened and why. What matters is the
| conceptual model you use to look at the artifacts you've got,
| and what that allows you to do today in your life. It might be
| that one framing of history helps you keep together a free
| society and keep authoritarian agents at bay, if so, it's a
| pretty good model of history. If it doesn't allow you to do
| this, and actually does the opposite, and that's not your goal,
| than it's a bad model of history.
|
| Start thinking that way, and history becomes a means to protect
| yourself from future mistakes using past data. Now your model
| of history can be objectively measured in how good it is at
| doing that.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| This 'means to an end truth' should never be confused for the
| actual truth. QM and GR are both as true as we can make them.
| Newtonian mechanics is even more useful of a model, since
| it's much easier to work with, but it just isn't true at some
| point.
|
| The lesson to learn from the current limits of physics isn't
| that you should construct whichever narrative best serves
| your propaganda and stop obsessing about the truth. The only
| lesson they should teach you in history is to not obsess too
| much about details that just can't be known (like the
| internal motivations or beliefs of historical figures) and
| instead to focus on what actually happened (like the impact
| their actions had).
| carbonguy wrote:
| > as they aren't full-on manipulations of reality, I view them
| as a useful entry point into a subject.
|
| But then, this is exactly the critique the article advances: in
| this book Gladwell presents a narrative that gives readers (to
| put it charitably) an incomplete understanding of the nature of
| American air doctrine in WWII. Omission of facts IS
| manipulation of reality, and what Gladwell has created seems to
| be more akin to a third- or fourth-order representation of
| reality where a heavily biased selection of (to be fair, mostly
| true) facts is then glossed and presented in a form where one
| "can read it in the bathtub with a cold beer" and have a good
| time. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's pretty
| remarkable to assume that such a work gives you any meaningful
| grasp of a subject in addition to being entertainment.
| joshuak wrote:
| I think by "manipulations" the parent's implication is,
| manipulation to some purpose, as in to fabricate support for
| some political or philosophical belief. It's so common to
| manipulate reality for the purpose of entertainment that we
| have a fairly benign term for it: poetic license.
| xenophonf wrote:
| Then label Gladwell's works as the fictions they are.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > "The only issue is that Gladwell's account doesn't withstand
| serious scrutiny. As a piece of writing, The Bomber Mafia is
| engaging. As a work of history, it borders on reckless."
|
| So it's classic MG? He's a good easy - often feel good - read.
| However, the pattern that's too clear is he rarely supplies a
| counter argumemt or counter view. He takes his position and then
| plays pile on with "the facts."
| [deleted]
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