2176: What Malcolm Gladwell Can Teach Us About The Joy Of Intellectual Disagreements by Margo Aaron of ThatSeemsImportant

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Relationships Daily, Episode 2176. What Malcolm Gladwell Can Teach Us About The Joy Of Intellectual Disagreements by Margo Aaron of ThatSeemsImportant.com. Hello everybody and welcome to another weekly bonus episode of ORD, with me your host Greg Audino.

[00:00:45] And what we do in our weekly bonus episodes such as this is actually share audio from the other shows on our network so you can see all that we have to offer. And this week we'll be hearing a post from Optimal Living Daily narrated by Justin, our

[00:00:58] host over on that show. So with that, let's hear it from Justin as we optimize your life. What Malcolm Gladwell Can Teach Us About The Joy Of Intellectual Disagreements by Margo Aaron of ThatSeemsImportant.com.

[00:01:17] A few years ago my friend David went to an event in Manhattan where Malcolm Gladwell was speaking. Gladwell presented some theories on the mortgage lending crisis in that way only Gladwell can, a captivating story that borders on conspiracy theory but appears to be founded on research

[00:01:34] and investigative journalism. The audience was enraptured. The man is a master storyteller. At the end Gladwell took questions. My friend David raised his hand and said, I worked in the company you're talking about and the facts you have are wrong.

[00:01:51] I wasn't there but I imagine the attention was palpable. I know what it feels like to be contested in public on a stage and it's not something I would call pleasant. But instead of being defensive or argumentative, Gladwell seemed delighted. Shall we grab coffee?

[00:02:07] Gladwell wanted to know everything. Hungry for where his facts were incorrect, curious as to why, and grateful that my friend David pointed them out. He devoured the reading my friend gave him and ended up revising the ideas he was working on to include the new information.

[00:02:24] In the two-parted ways. Gladwell gets a lot of flack for his storytelling. He's either praised as a genius or righted as a fool. I like him and I'll tell you why, but it requires jumping back a few years to when Outliers came out.

[00:02:40] In the book, Gladwell cited a study that he claimed said 10,000 hours was the magic number that got you to mastery. If you spent 10,000 hours playing piano or singing, that's when you go from good to unbef***ing leaveable. Allegedly.

[00:02:57] This detail is the least interesting part of the book in my opinion, but a lot of people clung onto this particular point because it appeared to be evidence of the American Dream. It's not a matter of talent, you just gotta put in the time. Holy sh**.

[00:03:12] Everyone and their mom started citing this study and debunking natural talent. In my circles it became the rally cry for toxic hustle culture. Get in your hours, hustle. We all know now it's not true. The 10,000 hours rule is false, or rather incomplete.

[00:03:29] Business Insider was one of a bajillion media outlets that profited from character assassinating Gladwell for it using fun headlines like, New study destroys Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 rule. In theory, it's no big deal if new research debunks old research. In fact, that's the point. That's how the scientific method works.

[00:03:50] In Gladwell's case, he allegedly took some liberties with what he found in the research, and that is a legitimate problem. But your job is not to take everything you read as Bible. Even what I write. Challenge. Contest. Ask questions. But don't character assassinate for the purpose of clicks.

[00:04:11] Character assassinations like the ones Inc., Vox, Business Insider, and the rest of the Confederacy of Dunces published make you look stupid. If you want to make a good point, attack the idea, not the person. Now we've arrived at why I like Gladwell, the person.

[00:04:29] Because amidst all the outrage, guess who wasn't outraged? Gladwell. Quote, the 10,000 hour stuff that I put in Outliers was really only intended to perform a very specific narrative function. Or not narrative function, but argumentative function.

[00:04:47] To me, the point of 10,000 hours is, if it takes that long to be good, you can't do it by yourself. If you have to play chess for 10 years in order to be a great chess player, then that means that you can't have a job.

[00:04:59] Or maybe if you have a job, it can't be a job that takes most of your time. It means you can't come home, do the dishes, mow the lawn, take care of your kids. Someone has to do that stuff for you. That was my argument.

[00:05:12] That if there's a kind of incredibly prolonged period that is necessary for the incubation of genius, high performance, elite status of one sort or another, then that means there always has to be a group of people behind the elite performer making that kind of practice possible.

[00:05:30] And that's what I wanted to say." Basically, he says, you missed the bigger point. It gets better. Anders Erikson, the author, first author of the original study that found the 10k result, was also not outraged. He is a Gladwell fan and said this, quote,

[00:05:47] I think he's really done something very important, helping people see the necessity of this extended training period before you reach high levels of performance. But I think there's really nothing magical about 10,000 hours. Just the amount of experience performing may, in fact, have very limited chances to improve

[00:06:06] your performance. The key seems to be that deliberate practice where you're actually working on improving your own performance. That is the key process. That's what you need to try to maximize." There was no controversy. Moreover, everyone missed the point.

[00:06:24] The point was, if you want to achieve mastery, you need enormous amounts of privilege and a team of people behind you making it possible. That's the part everyone missed, and in my opinion, the real reason for the outrage.

[00:06:38] It debunks the American Dream where the 10,000 hours rule supported it. Outliers was about how the stories we tell about rugged individualism are false, or more accurately, missing enormous amounts of context. When you have people's attention, you have a moral and civic responsibility not to abuse

[00:06:56] that power, to have integrity. You're welcome to challenge Gladwell's ideas, in fact he wants you to, but to attack his character, even if it's warranted, is to destroy your point. If your contention is with an idea, get educated on the idea, then challenge it with reason,

[00:07:15] none of this strawman ad hominem baloney everyone is spewing. Defend your ideas, contest ideas, and remember the rule, this is supposed to be fun. That's why I like Gladwell. Unlike everyone else online baiting each other into ad hominem attacks, he seems like he's genuinely having fun.

[00:07:34] Adam Grant noticed this about Gladwell too, and in a conversation between them at 92Y, Grant tells Gladwell, You're my favorite sparring partner. They take turns jabbing each other on issues and laugh through the entire thing. You really take joy in intellectual disagreement, says Grant.

[00:07:51] I'm happy to lose arguments to you any time you want, Gladwell replies. They're having fun. Take joy in intellectual disagreement. When was the last time you took joy in intellectual disagreement? What my friend David saw was a man enjoying the process, obsessed with ideas, not his attachment

[00:08:10] to them or his identification with them. You can and you should have conviction, but when that conviction turns into blind loyalty to an unexamined idea and an inability to go to bat for your idea beyond logical fallacies, you don't have conviction, you have fanaticism.

[00:08:29] Integrity can't live where there is fanaticism, and in order to disagree effectively, you need integrity. Because when you fight from a place of integrity, it's fun. You just listened to the post titled, What Malcolm Gladwell Can Teach Us About the Joy

[00:08:49] of Intellectual Disagreements by Margot Aaron of ThatSeemsImportant.com. Thank you to Margot, another example of why I read to you from different authors that often disagree with each other. You'll have some minimalists who can count the number of things they own and even take

[00:09:05] a picture of it all in one photo, to people who like acquiring things purposefully and everywhere in between. As she said, it's up to us to challenge what we read and hear, question, and then from there we can use our best judgment.

[00:09:21] So keep using that brain of yours, have a great day, great weekend if you're listening in real time, and I'll see you tomorrow, where optimal life awaits.