July 27, 2009

"May I be the first to say that I believe Malcolm Gladwell is overconfident of his ability to write about science well."

The scoffing begins with comment #1 in the Metafilter discussion of the new Malcolm Gladwell article about overconfidence ("Cocksure").

8 comments:

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

We are not confident, nor glad with Malcolm in the middle of these very challenging times ;)

rhhardin said...

I can tell it's a New Yorker article from the beginning.

It tells you it's paid by the word and there are no editors.

KCFleming said...

I pointed out Gladwell's remarkable tendency to mis-write and misread in Chicago Boyz back in 2005, here: Malcolm Gladwell Tips Over, in which he botched an article on national health care in THE MORAL-HAZARD MYTH, The New Yorker, 8/29/05.

He wasn't happy, as I wrote subsequently in Malcolm Gladwell Responds.


I quit reading his stuff back then.

The Exalted said...

Gladwell is overconfident in every areas that he botches...

rhhardin said...

The worst thing is to be too overconfident.

kentuckyliz said...

Is an overconfident woman "cuntsure"?

What an odd word. I never think to use it. Titus probably uses it all the time. Of that I am cocksure.

Zach said...

Gladwell does kind of have a formula. The person who came up with the idea the article is pushing is always the intelligent, sensitive audience identification character. Anyone who behaves crassly is the subject of explanations, not the provider. And nobody ever gets to push back at the big idea at the center of the article.

hdhouse said...

""May I be the first to say that I believe Malcolm Gladwell is overconfident of his ability to write about science well.""

wow...overconifent in his ability perhaps? and "science well"...someone get the cursor and move well over near "write"...

pot/kettle.