All the Malcolm Gladwell stuff, specifically Outliers. Pretty much everything he writes falls apart with any intellectual rigor and is always presented in the formula of: anecdote, anecdote, interesting fact, sweeping theory presented as truth.
Like the "10,000 hour rule," which sucks from so many directions. So it doesn't matter how you practice or with what regularity? Why are there so many life-long musicians and only 4 Beatles then? How come EVERY task takes the same amount of time to master? What exactly is meant by mastery? Doesn't the precision of 10,000 hours seem suspiciously convenient? Is there ever a noticable division between mastery/pre-mastery? And if the exactness of 10,000 hours is fuzzy and the concept of mastery is fuzzy, then isn't the "rule" just saying "you will improve with lots of time and effort"? What is the useful insight again?
The book seems to have found success as a kind of an earworm for people who like sharing the interesting facts and neat anecdotes packaged into marketable nuggets, but the sheen of genius insights and intelligent discourse is exactly counter to the product being sold. It feels to me exactly like an intellectual scam.
Like the "10,000 hour rule," which sucks from so many directions. So it doesn't matter how you practice or with what regularity? Why are there so many life-long musicians and only 4 Beatles then? How come EVERY task takes the same amount of time to master? What exactly is meant by mastery? Doesn't the precision of 10,000 hours seem suspiciously convenient? Is there ever a noticable division between mastery/pre-mastery? And if the exactness of 10,000 hours is fuzzy and the concept of mastery is fuzzy, then isn't the "rule" just saying "you will improve with lots of time and effort"? What is the useful insight again?
The book seems to have found success as a kind of an earworm for people who like sharing the interesting facts and neat anecdotes packaged into marketable nuggets, but the sheen of genius insights and intelligent discourse is exactly counter to the product being sold. It feels to me exactly like an intellectual scam.