Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion 'Outliers', anyone reading it??

Hi Everyone!

I'm very late to the party here, and freely admit to the fact that I have only skimmed through the book (xmas present) and this discussion. But I had such a strong negative reaction to the book that I put it in the "To be returned' pile after perhaps 15 minutes of browsing.

My quick take on the book was that it was more important to be in the right place at the right time for success, rather than natural ability, talent, or IQ. In particular, he sites birthdates for hockey players as the greatest prediction of success. Hockey player born in the beginning of January, according to the author, hold a greater chance of being successful in hockey, than a hockey player born later in the year. Here is a quote:

This would be equivalent to advocating academic redshirting, in my book. He thinks that all kids are equal, and that a few months advantage in age will make all of the difference. Similarly, all kids are born with the same talent for hockey. Sheer size, in his opinion, makes all of the difference. I took him to task on this and looked up the Hockey Hall of Fame web site. Starting with 2008 and working backwards, I recorded the birthdates of the players who were inducted into the Hall of Fame. I went back 40 years (and at least 80 players), and other than Wayne Gretzky and one other person, there were no other January birthdays. Plenty of Octobers, Septembers, Junes, etc. I think his argument just doesn't hold. Maybe it holds for an average team with average player, say in high school, where size and practice have a small effect. But it completely excludes the idea that someone could be born with a natural talent that pushes them above the curve.

Bleck! I freely admit to forming an opinion based solely on the beginning of the book. By page 28, I was so frustrated that I hurled the book across the room. I was also probably influenced by the fact that the good friend who gave it to me usually sends me these odd books, such as dream symbols and interpretation (my last birthday present). Though we are very close friends, our reading material tends to differ dramatically!! Chris, please do let me know if the book improves in the later pages. I will happily go back and revisit it if you, or anyone else, found it interesting.

Y'know, I haven't made it past the chapter where he talks about various airlines, so I can't say I loved the entire thing, but I did interpret it pretty differently. I really thought he was coming across as saying talent is important - even for those hockey players, but a big chunk of them just get cut out of the picture, at least in the way that players get picked in the last couple of decades.
My main take away was that circumstance is a bigger deal than we realize - and I think he was advocating against this. In other words, I think he's trying to say 'let's have some [i]*much[/i]* better way to get our best minds positioned for success!!'
Maybe by the end of the book he wraps up well and really makes this point vividly, but I haven't gotten there yet...
anyone else?

Thanks for the enthusiastic opinion!

It's interesting how different the take-aways for each person are. It seems like he's not doing a fabulously great job of making his points, since I think we're a pretty sharp group...

Oh Chris, let me know what you think right after you read the very last chapter.


Very astute. I was definately left with the impression he was begging the question.

I'm certainly not trying to bash Gladwell, as mentioned, I've enjoyed his other books. I just don't think this was his best work. Well, that's being a little too kind.....

Ok, I am picking it back up!
I wanted to list out the couple of chapters that I think are most relevant to this board, that I *did* read: The trouble with geniuses parts 1 and 2.
In part 1, he describes a quality of the successful talented person that he says is part of why a high-iq person might out-succeed a very high-iq person: creativity. I think most folks here have creativity on their radar, I know the gt program my ds is in has a strong emphasis on problem solving, divergent thinking skills, mapping out problems to see other ways to solve them. There are some learnable aspects to what Gladwell only describes but doesn't really even name...
In Part 2, he has a discussion of those more 'chance' aspects of success: family background being the very strongest. According to him, and it makes sense to me, it plays into whether someone feels capable and inclined to speak up for themselves to turn a bit of bad luck into just a bump in the road instead of a career ending mis-step. There is some aspect of creativity in this ability too, which he refers to as 'practical intelligence'. The tale of Oppenheimer is used to illustrate this pretty dramatically. I think the chapters stand alone enough that one could skip straight to them...
no pressure!

I finally finished the darn thing!
Page 268 - I really think he does bring it on home.
(Spoiler alert)
"To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success - the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history - with a society that provides opportunities for all. If Canada had a second hockey league for those children born in the last half of the year, it would today have twice as many adult hockey stars. Now multiply that sudden flowering of talent by every field and profession. The world could be so much richer that the world we have settled for."

The last chapter is interesting, sometimes gross (the punishment part), but a pretty good wrap up on the concept of family background having so much to do with actual success. Just broadening it out to demonstrate how our parents got the way they are (their parents/their era) and so on...

I am ok with the book; certainly he does a bit of baiting here and there, and it ended up feeling a bit scatter-shot to me, but I think his intentions are good.
I am sufficiently 'scared' about a variety of new things now and feel well warned not to let myself or my kids rest on their IQ laurels...

Hm.

Culture has a lot to do with language. But not always. A culture can survive a language change intact.

His chapter on the Scots-Irish clan-feuding transplanted to the Kentucky Hills is one. My DW and I laughed all the way through that chapter since that is my heritage and its on display whenever we visit my dad's side of the family. There is no Gaelic spoken in the hills of that area, and Culloden was over 250 years ago, but there are a lot of Scottish flags flying in that area to this day!!

There is more to culture than language - but language can make some things easier.

Gladwell does dwell on the Chinese numbering nouns, indicating they are easier to grasp and say than the English equivalent, allowing Chinese speaking kids to move ahead more quickly. I have to agree. The English counting nouns like eleven and twelve are bizarre - in English we have squished three different numbering concepts together and three different bases and three languages withing from 0 to 20. And then there is our system of weights and measures!!!

And language can retard certain concepts because that language does not have a deep diffusion of key ideas.

For instance, China never discovered, codified, and popularized Logic like the Greeks did. And the political legacy of the strong central state control over education and ideas meant that theoretical knowledge was never developed to the great degree in the West. In fact, theoretical knowledge was frowned upon.

The West was able to advance and surpass China and Japan due to advances in science brought on by theoretical studies which were encouraged by the Greek and Jewish cultures and later adopted by the Romans, Christians, early Muslims and then Western Europeans. The Greek cultural legacy permeates Western culture very, very deeply - and no one speaks Aeolian Greek today!

A cultural legacy he does not mention in his book, but which has been extensively studied, are the Sensei/Nisei - most of which founded and ran truck farms in California. The immigrant Japanese who formed the Sensei were carefully chosen by the Meiji to come to the US. IIRC, they and the Neisei did very well, but their offspring reverted to the mean as they moved away from their cultural roots.

Good test, but I have to ask:

Did you correct for the age cutoffs in the leagues the players played in when they were growing up? They change over time and differ from nation to nation. You have got to look at the details of each player.

Gladwell looks at other examples from other sports, too.

His argument is that it is small advantages that accumulate over time due to chance, work ethic, and culture that then add up to a significant advantage.


Yep.

Talent is where you find it. Each and every one of us is capable of so much more than we like to think.

Most GT kids are NEVER identified and given the opportunities they should have.

Question:

On the book on tape I listened to, he has an Epilogue wherein he talks about the forced miscegenation in his past. Is it in the book, too?

I find it Ironic that he is accused of some things, when Gladwell's outlook is clearly post-racial and he is of mixed race himself!!!

Kriston said it well.

But you can go on disability pay at the same rate that you get in Canada. My DW got 60%. She stayed away for 6 weeks, then went back. She did pay about $40 a month for the Disability Ins and the firm carried the rest.

One quirk of US law is that you cannot be paid for working if you are on disability. Stupid. They will prosecute you.

Some firms are flexible. I was told to take as much time as I needed. I just shifted my hours and got less sleep.

A lot of people just quit their job - its not fair to the team to be absent for so long - and then re-enter the work force when the kids start school.

Jobs in the US are more plentiful and very easy to get versus other nations. This makes this work.

Well, if you are speaking of me, I'll just point out I never "accused" Malcolm Gladwell of being racist.

I have to argue with your logic, however, being bi-racial certainly does not automatically immunize a person from racism.