IGX

I know there are some fans of Malcolm Gladwell here, as there have been repeated discussions of his works like Outliers and Blink. He also happens to be a lying pile of shit. Enjoy!

http://exiledonline.com/malcolm-gladwel ... pagandist/

Fuck. Crushed.

Fuck that guy, I had to read his tipping point book for a psych class in undergrad. I thought it was a piss poor book from a garbage author at the time, so this does not surprise me.

I guess he put 10,000 hours into that.

The author should have put 10,000 hours into editing that piece.

Pinky wrote:The author should have put 10,000 hours into editing that piece.

+1

I just finished "What The Dog Saw", which is a compilation of some of his New Yorker articles and noticed zero shilling. Very interesting book.

Pinky wrote:The author should have put 10,000 hours into editing that piece.

Big Tobacco's not getting their money's worth-- I've never read something from the NBER and thought "I really need a cigarette."

The author, Yasha Levine, doesn't think much of Freakonomics author Levitt either. http://exiledonline.com/s-h-a-m-e-profi ... extremist/

I decided Freakonomics was a suspect piece of shit when I noticed that every chapter heading started with a NY Times quote "Gee Whiz, Steven Levitt is Wonderful"...
...written by Stephen Dubner, Levitt's co-author of F'n nomics.

The self-promotion puts Scott Sonnon in the shade.


*Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs & Steel, is another one I don't trust.

Don't tell Fatty that Levine is a Zionist.

Turdacious wrote:Big Tobacco's not getting their money's worth-- I've never read something from the NBER and thought "I really need a cigarette."

I can't believe that a paper about smoking reducing the Social Security system's liability by killing people prematurely didn't make you want to light up.

I laughed when I saw the NBER referred to as "notorious".

FRKCTL wrote:The author, Yasha Levine, doesn't think much of Freakonomics author Levitt either. http://exiledonline.com/s-h-a-m-e-profi ... extremist/

Gladwell is a bit of a hustler, bet Levitt's reputation is that he's incredibly sharp.

Grandpa's Spells wrote:

FRKCTL wrote:The author, Yasha Levine, doesn't think much of Freakonomics author Levitt either. http://exiledonline.com/s-h-a-m-e-profi ... extremist/

Gladwell is a bit of a hustler, bet Levitt's reputation is that he's incredibly sharp.

...and that he needs to pick better grad students to do his regression analysis.

johno wrote:*Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs & Steel, is another one I don't trust.

woa woa wao, What?!?

There's another Gladwell hit floating around. I think both are pretty weak indictments of him (HE LIKED REAGAN IN 1982!!!), but that's irrelevant - Gladwell is a harebrained ninny. That's all the damning he needs.

Levitt falls into the usual economist trap of thinking economics is a hard science rather than social science/philosophy (depending on the day).

milosz wrote:Levitt falls into the usual economist trap of thinking economics is a hard science rather than social science/philosophy (depending on the day).

Go on.....

How does Seeahill fit into all of this?
I just know he does somehow

milosz wrote:There's another Gladwell hit floating around. I think both are pretty weak indictments of him (HE LIKED REAGAN IN 1982!!!), but that's irrelevant - Gladwell is a harebrained ninny. That's all the damning he needs.

Levitt falls into the usual economist trap of thinking economics is a hard science rather than social science/philosophy (depending on the day).

I've never thought of Gladwell as a corporate shill, I just thought of him as a shaggy dog tale teller and lazy cherry pickers of data.

Fact is, as Gladwell and Levitt have made careers pointing out, popular perceptions are often wrong, and both Gladwell and Levitt are popular authors, which means that they themselves are often wrong.

Turdacious wrote:

milosz wrote:Levitt falls into the usual economist trap of thinking economics is a hard science rather than social science/philosophy (depending on the day).

Go on.....

Sorry. That's all the illiterati has. Levitt's problems haven't come from being too sloppy with the regressions he runs. They come from him acting as though he's a physicist (whatever that means).

Pinky wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

milosz wrote:Levitt falls into the usual economist trap of thinking economics is a hard science rather than social science/philosophy (depending on the day).

Go on.....

Sorry. That's all the illiterati has. Levitt's problems haven't come from being too sloppy with the regressions he runs. They come from him acting as though he's a physicist (whatever that means).

I dunno.
This: http://www.economist.com/node/5246700?story_id=5246700 was climate science bad.

Are you counting climate science as a "hard science"? What's next, epidemiology?

Pinky wrote:Are you counting climate science as a "hard science"? What's next, epidemiology?

And phrenology!

CharlieBob wrote:

johno wrote:*Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs & Steel, is another one I don't trust.

woa woa wao, What?!?

I don't trust him either, after seeing his TV version of the book mentioned above. He's one of those who believes that Western civilization is positioned as it is due to a bunch of accidents.