April Book of the Month: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Himeo

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In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

Posting schedule:

Book thread posted 1st of the month.
Reading begins 8th of the month.
Spoilers lifted 22nd of the month and next month's poll opens.

No posts from 1st-7th about the book or plot, can only post that you're participating.


 

Grimmlokk

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I am participating, and obeying the rules so this post isn't about the book or plot. Just to say it's way better than Snow Crash.






Seriously, fuck Snow Crash.
 

Void

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Read the whole thing.

It isn't really my type of book, but I didn't hate it. It kind of surprises me how much acclaim it is getting though, because it is basically saying that you can be successful with hard work and perseverance, but you will never be REALLY successful unless you are in the right place at the right time (which includes things you typically have little control over, like when you were born, where you went to school, even who your parents were, where they were from, etc.). I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me what he is saying, but doesn't anyone else find that just a little bit depressing? If you're born even three years too soon or too late in some cases, you missed your window. Or you weren't the right ethnicity, or lived in the wrong city.

On the other hand, all I have to go off of is these hand-picked cases too. I'd be interested in seeing a wider list of some of these particular occupations and see if every single person that is mega-successful fits the mold he is describing, or only some of them.

Stuff about rice farmers, hillbillies, etc. was interesting, but in a book about outliers, it seems strange that he devoted about half the book to that. He showed me why asians were better at math, sure, but they weren't light years better at math like Bill Gates is light years better than others in his field (so to speak anyway, you get my point). That's not an outlier really, that's just one group being somewhat better than another group at something. Even if they are substantially better, they still aren't really outliers.

Also couldn't have cared less about his family history. It just showed the sequence of events leading up to him being here, writing this book. We could all come up with some random sequence of events like that if we tried. He didn't even make the claim that he's anything special (an outlier), so how is one family's history any more astounding than millions of others?

Just seemed like he completely got away from the whole "outlier" thing after the first half of the book. It made me think about things, which is the point I guess, but it seemed like it should have been two separate books to me. Or called something else.
 

Grimmlokk

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Pretty much agree with Vvoid.

I suppose "Opportunity + Practice" would have been a boring title.

Really felt more like a rambling version of an excerpt from Freakonomics than a full fleshed out book.

Early on it's crazy interesting having these things laid out and explained. But after a while you're just rehashing the same points over and over with a slight twist. Good premise for a college thesis.


Still, it's only 200 pages and it gave me plenty of things to spout out to my friends and sound like I'm not the retard I really am. The primary redeeming quality of the last BOTM would be that you could bludgeon Merkins with it if you owned a physical copy.

How does The Tipping Point compare? Is it similarly focused on the one single premise, which is pretty similar to Outliers? Should I read it, or just re-watch theHow Mac Got Fatepisode of Always Sunny again?
 

chaos

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I'm not done yet, I just finished teh pilot chapter, but I agree with Vvoid except for one minor point...

I think his point was not that with hard work and whatever you can be successful, I think that is pretty much the opposite of his point. This whole chapter on Chris Langan was intended to drive home the fact that here is the smartest man on Earth and he works a damn horse farm. I don't think anyone would describe what he has as success, especially not with his natural talents. A guy like him is much, much smarter and more capable than people we consider giants among men, world famous scientists like neil deGrasse Tyson or even guys like Bill Gates. But he doesn't have the skills to work within our social structure and so he fails at everything. Did anyone buy his stories about what happened to him in college? I'm in school right now, these people bend over backwards to help me and I am far from what this guy could be. If he walked into GMU's Engineering department right now the Professors would cream their pants at the potential. How did he fuck that up?

So on one hand you have some of the most successful men on Earth and they are intelligent and everything of course and worked hard. But I'm sure Chris Langan worked just as hard, or rival garment manufacturers in the early 1900s who went bust instead of making it. Hard work and intelligence can still land you in the streets.

It's good though, I like this kind of pop statistics stuff.
 

Grimmlokk

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I'm not done yet, I just finished teh pilot chapter, but I agree with Vvoid except for one minor point...

I think his point was not that with hard work and whatever you can be successful, I think that is pretty much the opposite of his point. This whole chapter on Chris Langan was intended to drive home the fact that here is the smartest man on Earth and he works a damn horse farm.
Yeah that's why I said it was "Opportunity + Practice". The comparison between Langan and Oppenheimer was pretty clear about how big the Opportunity part is. I mean, the whole damn book was, but that was a really specific example gone in to with more detail and the school kids etc. Langan never had the opportunity to learn how to interact with people to get what he wants, so all his smarts are worth fuckall since he can't get in to position to leverage them.
 

Void

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I'm not done yet, I just finished teh pilot chapter, but I agree with Vvoid except for one minor point...

I think his point was not that with hard work and whatever you can be successful, I think that is pretty much the opposite of his point. This whole chapter on Chris Langan was intended to drive home the fact that here is the smartest man on Earth and he works a damn horse farm. I don't think anyone would describe what he has as success, especially not with his natural talents. A guy like him is much, much smarter and more capable than people we consider giants among men, world famous scientists like neil deGrasse Tyson or even guys like Bill Gates. But he doesn't have the skills to work within our social structure and so he fails at everything. Did anyone buy his stories about what happened to him in college? I'm in school right now, these people bend over backwards to help me and I am far from what this guy could be. If he walked into GMU's Engineering department right now the Professors would cream their pants at the potential. How did he fuck that up?

So on one hand you have some of the most successful men on Earth and they are intelligent and everything of course and worked hard. But I'm sure Chris Langan worked just as hard, or rival garment manufacturers in the early 1900s who went bust instead of making it. Hard work and intelligence can still land you in the streets.

It's good though, I like this kind of pop statistics stuff.
I don't agree that it is the exact opposite, because he mentions several times how people can be relatively successful DESPITE their opportunities (to borrow Grimmlokk's term)...you just can't be mega-successful (an outlier). No one is going to say that those guys that worked in the "established" law firms weren't successful, they just missed out on the opportunity to be the "superstars" due to whatever accident of birth, nationality, what have you. At least, that's what I took from the book.
 

chaos

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I don't agree that it is the exact opposite, because he mentions several times how people can be relatively successful DESPITE their opportunities (to borrow Grimmlokk's term)...you just can't be mega-successful (an outlier). No one is going to say that those guys that worked in the "established" law firms weren't successful, they just missed out on the opportunity to be the "superstars" due to whatever accident of birth, nationality, what have you. At least, that's what I took from the book.
Those guys are examples of people born at the right time, though. Or into privilege. He gave examples of Jewish lawyers born a couple of decades before who live in virtual poverty. To me it seemed that he is trying to make a larger point that there are many situations in which success just can't happen. Or doesn't. Those garment manufacturers, you have the guys who made it big and everyone else who toiled in poverty, there's really no middle ground there.

I just can't get over this Langan guy. How has NASA or the NSA not scooped him up yet?
 

Void

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Those guys are examples of people born at the right time, though. Or into privilege. He gave examples of Jewish lawyers born a couple of decades before who live in virtual poverty. To me it seemed that he is trying to make a larger point that there are many situations in which success just can't happen. Or doesn't. Those garment manufacturers, you have the guys who made it big and everyone else who toiled in poverty, there's really no middle ground there.

I just can't get over this Langan guy. How has NASA or the NSA not scooped him up yet?
You might be right, maybe I'm not reading it the way he intended it, but that just means that my original point about it being a fairly depressing book is even more apt, so why do people think this is such an inspiring book?? It is basically telling you that you're fucked unless you put in all the work AND have the opportunity, but if you lack the opportunity all that work is worthless. Unless it makes people feel better about having a lackluster life I suppose, because they can point to something they couldn't control, like their birthday, and say, "See, I was destined to fail anyway, so I didn't even try!"

I just don't get why people praise it so much if that is the entire message. We all sort of knew what he is saying to one extent or another anyway, but we don't ever really think it will limit us. But this is like he's laying out a universal law for why pretty much every single one of us is fucked, and that seems sort of depressing to me, and thus I have no clue why so many people spout that it changed their lives, etc.
 

Eomer

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I haven't read the book, it's on my reading list though. I just felt the need to comment that I thought it was hilarious you guys are using spoilers for a non-fiction, non-plot oriented book.
 

chaos

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Yeah it feels kind of weird doing that, but I don't want to somehow ruin the book for some sensitive lady out there in RR-land.
 

Eomer

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Fair enough. I looked in to that Chris Langan dude, and it's pretty interesting. I also found it hilarious that as smart as he is, he's a huge proponent of intelligent design. Like the saying goes, really smart people can believe in really stupid things.
 

a_skeleton_03

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I felt the point of the book was a sort of mental band-aid. Saying that its ok if you haven't changed the world. There is only so much room in this world for innovation. On top of that there are only so many opportunities to leverage your innovation. If the market isn't ready it just isn't and we see that in the tech world all the time with certain technology randomly resurfacing. Like tablets.
 

chaos

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I felt the point of the book was a sort of mental band-aid. Saying that its ok if you haven't changed the world. There is only so much room in this world for innovation. On top of that there are only so many opportunities to leverage your innovation. If the market isn't ready it just isn't and we see that in the tech world all the time with certain technology randomly resurfacing. Like tablets.
I didn't get that at all. I got from the book that it was just trying to kill the myth of "hard work (or natural ability) conquers all" that some have built into dogma in this country. Bill Gates and The Beatles didn't work harder than everyone else, they just had opportunities that everyone else didn't have. That isn't good or bad, it just is.
 

Eomer

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That's pretty much it, and more or less what he states in that interview: natural ability and hard work are certainly important. But so are your circumstances. You're not going to be an "outlier" unless all of those factors come together. But just the same, even if you have the right circumstances, without ability and work ethic, it's not going to happen either.
 

Lusiphur

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Finished it the other night. Really enjoyed it and probably wouldn't have looked at it if not for the book club hint.
No surprises a_skeleton_03 didn't get it. Bromer summed it up nicely.
I felt it was a good summary of the subject and chose it's examples well. It read easily and flowed nicely.
Here, in Scotland, in my day there was such a thing as a February intake to schools (seems there still is). Thus people like me born in January (September to February is the range) got half a year's more school than everyone else. I wonder how that fits in with how the book looked at it, especially in the first chapter. If I wasn't so lazy I would go look
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a_skeleton_03

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Finished it the other night. Really enjoyed it and probably wouldn't have looked at it if not for the book club hint.
No surprises a_skeleton_03 didn't get it. Bromer summed it up nicely.
I felt it was a good summary of the subject and chose it's examples well. It read easily and flowed nicely.
Here, in Scotland, in my day there was such a thing as a February intake to schools (seems there still is). Thus people like me born in January (September to February is the range) got half a year's more school than everyone else. I wonder how that fits in with how the book looked at it, especially in the first chapter. If I wasn't so lazy I would go look
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I haven't read it
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The wife did, she gave me a synopsis I guess it was poorly done. I am reading it tomorrow, I have a couple hours to kill.
 

The Dauntless One

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I read about half of The Tipping Point and a couple chapters of Outliers a couple years ago. Both books to me were just stating the obvious and something I have known all my life, so I stopped reading them. Personally, I don't get the acclaim Malcolm Gladwell receives.