I’m somewhere in the middle, having only listened to the Freakonomics version. I thought Hobbes was way out over his skies in terms of discussing statistical issues involved in particular research studies.
On the other hand, Peter had a fantastic quote that really captured the overall vibe of the book. Paraphrased: “Economists like Levitt trumpet their focus on data and facts, but then wrongly confer all of the objectivity inherent in data to the subjective narratives that they attach to that data, and conclude that their own preferred interpretation must be infallible because their interpretation is objective.”
The thing about Gladwell, at least when it comes to Outliers, is that his work is based on either misreading (or just being dishonest about) studies or taking an interesting bit of data and spit-balling an idea or two about it all while treating it as something that’s been proven.
Like the hockey players being born in January thing is interesting and an effect I was unaware of. His conclusion seems entirely sound. The chapter still smelled because rather than use stats 101 math to show that Canadian NHL players are far more likely to have been born in early months of the year he cherry picks a few rosters where the effect looks clearcut. This is the best thesis presented in the entire book, as well as perhaps the only falsifiable one, and he still can’t be bothered to back it up!
There’s no need for rigorous academic studies to call out the bs.
There are 22 sources in the Freakonomics episode notes, the vast majority linked.
The point of the YWA method of taking turns leading the podcast is partially to have more content and partly so that one podcaster plays the role of the listener, making it a more natural conversation. This is a valid podcasting device and not laziness.
Your criticisms of this podcast just aren’t very good. It’s okay not to like something just because you don’t like it.
Thought it was a bit better but still find the tone too flippant and not based enough in actual analysis.
I also think over these two episodes there is a super weird resistance to cultural explanations. This is an odd take for progressives. We are the side the acknowledges cultural differences play a role in social outcomes!
It was also super odd for them to argue policy decisions are not cultural! If Asian students spend more time in school that is definitionally a cultural difference.
They keep doing exactly what they accuse the authors of doing. They take a failure of a chapter and use it to discount an entire field of economics or sociology.
They constantly conflate race and ethnicity as well which is so odd given who they are.
The plan crash chapter is a good example. It’s terrible in gladwells book but there is a ton of evidence the core idea is right. So much so there was an entire new way created to manage cockpits in the 80s to help mitigate resistance to questioning seniors. Several crashes have been attributed to this.
FWIW Stuff You Should Know clearly has bith hosts research and prepare the topic, they reach their conversational dynamic by not comparing notes before recording (in some episodes ist feels like they have more of a per-arranged General structure than in others, bit both are clearly knowledgable about the topic in all episodes)
I feel like the resistance to cultural definitions comes from, not wrongly, seeing conservatives fall back from generic explanations to cultural explanations. As in blacks are poor because they’re genetically inferior to blacks are poor because of inner city gang culture. Also from my experience in international business norms classes the cultural explanations veer uncomfortably close to stereotypes.
I mean Gladwell’s cultural explanation is that Koreans are deferential to superiors, but the one disaster they teach everywhere is the Challenger disaster where an engineer was too deferential to pressure from superiors and let the known issues with the O rings slide.
If you switch out “cultural” with “institutional” explanations I think you’d get less resistance from more liberal elements, but no buy in from more conservative elements.
In any case I think them showing that, what, 25% to 50% of the Korean airline crashes were the result of terrorism or military action was pretty good at showing that the data that Gladwell used can’t really support any conclusion.
I agreed gladwell made a bad argument but I don’t like the hosts assumption that because one author made a bad argument the whole line of thinking is stupid. They do this over and over.
As I pointed out the plane crash one is very solidly supported. It’s just gladwell did a shitty job explaining it.
There’s the case of Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509 in 1999, in which some of the reason for the crash was determined to be the first officer being unwilling to be assertive with the captain. The UK’s equivalent of the NTSB, in the words of Wikipedia:
issued recommendations to Korean Air to revise its training program and company culture, to promote a more free atmosphere between the captain and the first officer.
Korean Air subsequently, in 2000, brought in a guy from Delta Airlines to improve their cockpit communication. One of his directives was that only English was to be spoken in the cockpit, in order to escape from the cultural norms which are to some extent embedded in the Korean language. So there is a core of truth here around which Gladwell has constructed a more sweeping narrative which is mostly false (e.g. that Korean Air’s plane-loss record in general is related to cultural factors).
Am listening to the Gladwell episode, and the Plane Crash discussion is great. This part was just lol:
Overall, I much prefer Peter to Michael in this setting. Peter’s ability to articulate bullshit reasoning in court decisions translates perfectly to taking down pop science books. Michael’s arguments (to me) tend not to be as convincing, and this applies to his YWA episodes as well. (The obesity episode on YWA is an all time doozy.)