What The Dog Didn't Tell

I think Malcolm Gladwell slipped up; or whoever in charge of publicity of his latest book What the Dog Saw has.
They only had to leak out the information that one of the essays in the book is on Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
That alone should have ensured a good readership - I am going by his followers on twitter (@nntaleb); they number 9035 at the time of typing (not a huge number but considering the fact that he has people like Tom Peters (@tom_peters) and Rosabeth Moss Kanter (@Rosabethkanter) as followers). Not that Malcolm Gladwell needs to beg for readership. His books always have been best seller. But a little extra always helps.
In his essay, Blowing Up, Gladwell has done a wonderful job of bringing to life Taleb's personality.
If you have read Fooled By Randomness or The Black Swan, and have wondered about the man, then you must read this essay.
By the way, I had blogged about Gladwell's and Taleb's connection some time ago. A lot of it was guesswork. Seems like one has been studying the other more closely that I thought. Check out Black Swan Tipping Over and decide for yourself.

Blink - Book Review

'Blink' was due for a review for a very long time. Luckily I have a copy (see Why Do I Buy Books)

You can read the book review here => Blink - Book Review

Party Games

This could be a party game.

Heard of wine tasting? This one is cola tasting.

Get a few bottles of Pepsi and Coke.
Each of your guest gets to be a tester by turn.
Give your tester 3 glasses.
Fill two of the glasses with, let's say, Coke and one with Pepsi.
The tester is *not* required to say which is Pepsi and which is Coke.
All you they need to say is which one is different from the other two.

You think it is easy. Here's what I read in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell:

In the beverage business, this is called a triangle test. ... Believe it or not, you will find this task incredibly hard. If a thousand people were to try this test, just over one-third would guess right - which is not much better than chance; we might as well guess.


Of course, Gladwell does not recommend this as a party game. I just thought this could be one.

If conducted with flair it could engage your guests for some time. The success lies in everyone having equal opportunity to win.

Free Will and external influence

You're the man! (or woman!)
You believe in free will.
You make your own decisions.
What you are today is because of your efforts and because you were ready for the opportunities that presented themselves.

I don't dispute this. But did you know how easy it is to manipulate you.
"Manipulate me?". you say with a scorn.

Okay. Let us touch on another topic.
Have you heard of 'priming'?

Psychologists have conducted experiments that show that it is possible to make you act differently merely by seeding your brain with relevant words, without your knowledge, of course.

You must have experienced this yourself. At the watering hole you talk to a bunch of guys talking negative. Haven't you come away feeling miserable?

An experiment devised by a psychologist John Bargh shows how this works. If you are given a scrambled-sentence test, such as ...

1. him was worried she always
2. shoes give replace old the
3. sky the seamless gray is
4. sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins
etc.

The idea is to form 4 word-sentences.

It turns out that people giving this test walked slowly. Their brain was being primed with words, "worried", "old", gray", "wrinkle". These made the brain think of being old.

To quote further from Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell:

Even more impressive, however, is how mysterious these priming effects are. When you took that sentence completion test, you didn't know that you were being primed to think "old." Why would you? The clues are pretty subtle. What is striking, though, is that even after people walked slowly out of the room and down the hall, they still weren't aware of how their behavior had been affected. ... Aronson and Steele [two psychologists] found the same thing with the black students who did so poorly after they were reminded of their race. ... The results of these experiments are obviously quite disturbing. They suggest that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on autopilot, and the way we think and act - and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment - are a lot more susceptible to outside influence than we realize.

Hmmmm... So, there is merit in listening to 'positive mental attitude' CDs when you drive to work after all. Imagine your effectiveness improving just be listening to something that seeds your brain with words like "can do", "good", "effective", "smart", "positive", and "tops"

Outliers Reviewed

I jumped the gun!
Remember the three questions I asked about Malcolm Gladwell in my previous post?

Now that I completed the book, Outliers, I feel a little foolish. Of course, Gladwell has addressed the three questions. The last chapter, A Jamaican Story, is all about legacies and opportunities. It is also amazing.

In any case, now that I am done, you can read the review of Outliers here:

To become an author

I really envy authors like Malcolm Gladwell, Nicholas Taleb, James Michener, actually all of them.

As I read their books, I am overwhelmed by the amount of 'research' that goes into writing. No wonder this is a full time job.

I am reading Outliers now. Unfortunately just before I started on that I read a scathing criticism of Outliers in, guess? Scientific American (April 2004, Vol 4 Number 4). This is by Michael Sermer, who says:

"Journalists unconstrained by research protocols churn out self-help books that focus on select variables that interest them. Few do better than Malcolm Gladwell.

Obviously, I started off Outliers with a biased mindset. But I am half-way through the book. The amount of research done is huge. The supporting evidence dug out to support the thesis of the Outliers is compelling. It is easy to deride such an effort as unscientific. Perhaps, it may be true to a large extent.
But it is also unfair.

I am glad I read Outliers despite my misgivings after reading the Scientific American article. It might be unscientific, but it is pretty damn convincing.

Anyways, coming back to the point. There are 9 chapters in Outliers. Each chapter is supported by on an average 10 reference sources. That makes it about 90 books, journals and internet sources. I am assuming to shortlist these 90 sources, Gladwell must have sifted through 400-500 sources. And this is just a 285 page thick book. Phew!

The interesting questions for Gladwell are:

a) Has Malcolm Gladwell put in his 10,000 hours of hard labour?
b) Did he have the correct opportunity?
c) Is he a product of correct legacy?

The interesting questions for me are:

a) Will I ever write a book?
b) Will I ever write a successful book?

I wouldn't even know where to begin.
And knowing fully well that successful books are Black Swans, I am definitely not going to quit my job to take a plunge.
Perhaps, after I retire.

I therefore need to start now.

The formula to write a non-fiction seems to be

(i) Arrive at a conclusion through random observations.
(ii) Support your observations by reading books in related field. (Don't forget to keep taking notes!)
(iii) Support your observations by reading books in totally unrelated field.
(iv) Try and establish a connection.
(v) Find a publisher.
(vi)I think I am drunk!

And by the way, constrain by research protocols may actually constrain your imagination. Let your imagination fly!

Is your job meaningful?

It is obvious that any sensible person would do meaningful tasks as opposed to what could be called a drudgery. So what makes a task - your job, blogging, serving others - meaningful?

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Outliers, lists out three characteristics that make any task meaningful:

These are:

1. There should be a clear relationship between effort and reward.
2. The task should be complex. It should engage your mind and imagination.
3. One should have autonomy. You should be your own boss.

Now, evaluate your job satisfaction around these factors.

Hmmm... come to think of it, I now know why blogging is so hugely popular. It requires imagination and the mind is engaged. You are your own boss and most of the time there is a relationship between effort and rewards (readership, money, whatever). The more you blog, the more are the chances that you will be discovered. Or you can hop on to the Alphainventions gravy train.

The Magic Number to Genius

Remember the Working Hard Working Smart post of a few days ago? I had maintained that Working Smart does not replace Working Hard. Rather these are complementary.

Now here's a confirmation of my thinking. This is an extract from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

       The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

       "The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert - in anything,' writes the neurologist Daniel Levintin. "In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn't address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that is needs to know to achieve true mastery."

This also confirms my assertion that hopping from job to job is actually bad for long term career growth. Engineers in my company are quite sick and tired of hearing this from me, but this is what I believe in: Do not leave a job unless you feel you have nothing more to learn from there. The smart thing to do is quickly determine what you enjoy doing most and then apply yourself to the job for at least 10,000 actual hours.

75 Richest Men in History

Outliers has a very interesting list. Malcolm Gladwell has compiled the list of 75 richest people in the history of mankind.

Some interesting names in the list are:

3. Czar of Russia, Nicholas II
7. Henry Ford
12. Pharaoh of Egypt, Amenophis III
21. Cleopatra
37. Bill Gates


There are a few Indians in the list too:

40. Mukesh Ambani
42. Lakshmi Mittal
48. Anil Ambani
68. K. P. Singh (of DLF)

Imagine these 4 Indians are among the richest in the history of mankind.

Wait! There is another Indian:

5. (yes 5, that is not a typo) Nizam of Hyderabad Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII.

Hmmm.. Something wrong with the list. Where is Akbar the Great?

By the way, at number 1 and 2 are John D. Rockfeller and Andrew Carnegie

The puzzles, conclusions and an advise

The two puzzles that I gave here and here are identical to each other. The answers are as follows:

Puzzle 1:

You need to check two cards. Card A to verify if the numeral on the reverse of that card is an even number; and Card 3, to check if the alphabet behind the card is not an even number. Cards D and 6 can have any combination and that does not violate the rule.

Puzzle 2:

You need to check if the person aged 16 is not drinking beer and that the person who is drinking beer is at least 21.

Most of you got it right. Which might surprise psychologist Leda Cosmides. I took the puzzles from the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Here's the extract (after jumping over the puzzle parts)

Vervets [a kind of monkey] have been known to waltz into a thicket, ignoring a fresh trail of python tracks and act stunned when they actually come across the snake itself. This doesn't mean that ververts are stupid: they are very sophisticated when it comes to questions that have to do with other vervets. ... A vervet, in other words, is very good at processing certain kinds of ververtish information, but not so good at processing other kinds of information.

The same is true of humans. ... [A]s psychologist Leda Cosmides (who dreamt up this example) points out, it [puzzle 2] is exactly the same puzzle as the A, D, 3 and 6 puzzle. The difference is that it is framed in a way that makes it about people, instead of about numbers, and as human beings we are a lot more sophisticated about each other that we are about the abstract world.

I am not so sure. If I have to go by answers given by you all, I would conclude that humans are equally good or equally bad at both abstract and the real world.

I would actually go further and advise all the psychologists in the world that perhaps it is not correct to conlcude or generalise based on laboratory experiments. The scientists who observe Vervets are doing the correct thing.They are observing the monkeys inthe natural habitat. Please do the same.Observe humans in their natural habitat and draw conclusions. Be sure to note the context too. A change in context may result in an altogether different conclusion.

Picture Courtesy: Steve Woods

Clever Children

The inquiring mind is one step removed from the inquisitive mind. Inquiry requires one to follow up. Apples must have fallen on many heads but Newton followed it up. (I know! I know! No apple fell on Newton's head. The story is probably apocryphal! But my point is made.)

I am sure you observe so many things every day and are intrigued with a few of them. But do you follow up?

You must have heard children speaking to themselves. Even if you do not have one yourself, you must have heard your niece or nephews talking to themselves. Have you tried to listen in? Sometimes? Did you figure out anything special? No? 

Sample this.

"Narratives from the crib" ... was critical in changing the views of many child experts. The project centered on a two-year old girl from New Haven called Emily, whose parents - both university professors - began to notice that before their daughter went to sleep at night she talked to herself. Curious, they put a small microcassette recorder in her crib and, several nights a week, for the next fifteen months, recorded both the conversations they had with Emily as they put her to bed and the conversations she had with herself before she fell asleep. The transcripts - 122 in all - were then analyzed by a group of linguists and psychologists led by Katherine Nelson of Harvard University. What they found was that Emily's conversations with herself were more advanced than her conversations with her parents. In fact, they were significantly advanced.

The above is an extract from The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.


Hmmm... I think I can draw a conclusion here.
I think children of that age take their parents to be dolts. Hence they simplify their speech so that we can understand them. 

Picture courtesy: Cynthia Turek

Infecting You With Happiness

A great way of making anything - anything - interesting is to see it from a different angle. The interpretation may not be correct; one may not agree with it; but you will not be able to ignore the view.

Consider this extract from The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell ...

In their brilliant 1994 book Emotional Contagion, the psychologists Elaine Hatfield and John Cacioppo and the historian Richard Rapson [argue that mimicry] is one of the means of by which we infect each other with emotions. In other words, if I smile and you see me and smile in response - even a microsmile that takes no more than several milliseconds - it's not just you imitating me or empathizing with me. It may also be a way that I can pass on my happiness to you. Emotion is contagious. In a way, this is perfectly intuitive. All of us have had our spirits picked up by being around somebody in a good mood. If you think about it closely, though, it's quite a radical notion. We normally think of the expressions on our face as the reflection of an inner state. I feel happy, so I smile. I feel sad, so I frown. Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in this sense, goes outside-in.

There you go. You do not have to think original. All you need is to twist and turn existing ideas around and give it a heavy-sounding name, such as emotional contagion.

I know I am being a bit unfair here. I haven't read Emotional Contagion yet. Perhaps it really is a brilliant book.

PS: I just had a big guilt lifted off me. Many - actually most - of my posts quote the book I am reading at that point of time. Though I always refer the source there was a twinge of guilt somewhere. I just realized that most of the non-fiction authors do the same. They quote other authors to bolster their core ideas. I think it works somewhat like name-dropping.

Picture courtesy: Sigurd Decroos

Black Swan Tipping Over

It is fascinating to see how ideas germinate, take shape and blossom. But what is even more fascinating is how authors use each others ideas as stepping stones to push their own.

What follows is entirely speculation. I am not insinuating plagiarism here.

Malcolm Gladwell brought out his international best seller The Tipping Point in the year 2000. The book is about how trends reach a critical mass and tip over to become an avalanche. Simple example from the book, some young kids start wearing Hush Puppies and suddenly the near-dead brand is a rage.

Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT) is published in 2001. He follows it up with The Black Swan in 2007. The idea of black swan is introduced in Fooled By Randomness and formalised in The Black Swan. NNT rejects Normal Curve as the basis for describing all random activities. He claims and proves that Normal Curve can be used for describing events that are associated with tossing of coins and other similar random phenomena, such as, weight of randomly picked sample of human beings. Power law rules the social and financial world. Thus, events that tip over are basically black swans. NNT also makes the statistical concept, outlier, popular ... but only among those who have read the book.

In 2008, Malcolm Gladwell publishes a book called, guess what, Outliers.

It is as if the two authors draw energy from each other to expand their thesis. Unless they are the same author writing under pseudonyms, in one avatar the author establishes a formal basis of an idea and in another avatar he comes up with a popular version of the idea. (Yes! I have seen their photographs, they look different :-))

If I remember it correctly, NNT makes a one line mention of The Tipping Point in The Black Swan.

The approach and styles vary widely but they both talk of the same thing.

Picture courtesy: Nicole Shackelford