The new Malcolm Gladwell book.
And now for something not completely different: Here is Robert Mundell’s hypothesis about Taxi Driver. And yes it is that Robert Mundell.
Outliers
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Darn it. Yet another technical word has been co-opted into the realm of the pseudo-intelligentsia. I suppose statisticians are going to have to come up with a new word for out-lying data points if they want to communicate with lay audience without connoting this bunk.
Didn’t someone already write this book? Wasn’t it called “Fooled by Randomness”? I have the feeling his explanation for success is not the same (mostly luck), unfortunately .
Gladwell writes better than Taleb.
Aaaaaaarararrarararrararaagggghhhh!!! Another Gladwell book for the latte-sipping chinstroking pseudo-intellectuals.
If Gladwell sold 1/10 as many books as he does, then most of his critics would regard him as a very interesting and thought provoking popularizer of neat ideas in the sciences and social sciences. At the least they would ignore him. But he’s been very successful, which means that a lot of the “wrong” sorts of people read his books, and thus he must be scorned.
Taleb of course relentlessly kisses the asses of his readers (Oh the world is vain and foolish but you, gentle reader, have been initiated into the mysteries), and thus he’s very popular with the misanthrope crowd. His actual ideas are trite, and only fill up books because his writing is bloated and repetitive.*
* I remember seeing a review of the Black Swan book on a blog when it came out and mistakenly assuming that it was written by someone who was just now picking up Taleb’s first book. The description of the central argument was of course familiar to me from having read Fooled by Randomness a couple years back. Only later did I realize that indeed, Taleb had re-released substantatively the same book under a different name.
I agree with “sd.” “But he’s been very successful, which means that a lot of the “wrong” sorts of people read his books, and thus he must be scorned.”
God forbid “the public” reads about topics usually reserved for academics. And oh the horror that an author write well enough for people to at least get a grasp on the concept of an outlier or whatever the cherished sacred topic of academics might be. Even worse a student might read a “popular” book and decide to learn more about by taking stats or something with actual rigor. Oh the horror . . .
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