恶人谷

一个英国记者/评论员 Ian Leslie 写了一篇文章夸 Malcolm Gladwell，我觉得很有理，转一下：

https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/bacac83a1381

Malcolm Gladwell Is Underrated
There, I said it

I know - it’s like proposing The Beatles are underrated. Malcolm Gladwell is the king of non-fiction writing and publishing. His new book is a million-seller lock. His writing is referenced hundreds of times a day in newspapers, magazine articles, talk shows, boardrooms and bars. He could pay off the national debt of a small Latin American country with the proceeds of his annual speaking tour.

But sometimes, popularity can obscure achievement, and such is the case with Gladwell (by the way, The Beatles are underrated, but that’s for another day).

...

Non-fiction, ideas-based narratives are everywhere these days, but the space was opened up by the stunning success of The Tipping Point and Blink. Note that I said “cultural” rather than “publishing” genre, because the genre he spawned is cross-platform and multi-dimensional, and it has seeped into the very grain of our lives. Without Gladwell, no Daniel Pink, no Steven Johnson, no Kahneman-as-best-selling-author-rather-than-respected-but-obscure-academic; no Freakonomics, no Brainpicker, no TED. I exaggerate, but only slightly. Gladwell has done more than anyone else to turn ideas into one of the most valuable currencies of the internet age.

He did this by unearthing material lying dormant in the rarefied realms of academic psychology, sociology and anthropology and shooting bolts of narrative electricity through it. This was never, as is sometimes implied, a mere matter of translation — of making arcane texts user-friendly. It was also about legwork.

...

Here’s another thing that distinguishes him: he can write. He can write really, really well. Gladwell’s writing doesn’t draw attention to itself, because he wants his reader to be glued to his narrative rather than admiring his prose (he once described his style as “please please please don’t leave me”). But don’t be under any illusions: writing like Malcolm Gladwell is extremely hard.I know: I’ve tried, and failed; so have many others.

...

I suspect the fundamental reason, though, is that we retain a lingering Protestantism when it comes to the realm of ideas. Gladwell’s writing, as well as being intelligent, penetrating and deeply researched, is intensely pleasurable. That counts against him.

It’s an interesting question: why are we suspicious of the association of pleasure with intellect? I know a writer I’d like to read on that.

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Malcolm Gladwell 的书，我基本上全是听有声版，有声版全部是他自己念的。他读书和说话的腔调跟他写文章的腔调是一样的，非常 smooth, laid back, inviting。乃至后来读几篇他的散装文章，脑子里可以听见他独特的嗓音和口吻。Scientific merit aside, 我最佩服也最嫉妒 Gladwell 的地方就是他的写法，看似直白简单，其实引人入胜，能把枯燥繁琐的概念讲得处处悬念，让读者欲罢不能。自从他走红了之后，很多人都模仿他的笔法，从科普到华尔街，但没人得其精髓。我对 nonfiction 看得不多，说起讲故事吸引人的能力，跟 Gladwell 媲美的我只见过 Michael Lewis。你以为把概念和数据讲得有趣很容易么？难得很！兄弟我也写科普，对行内各种偷懒的tricks心知肚明，偷懒省事儿我是专家。正因为自己下手过才知道写得通俗有多难，读起来越通俗，写起来越难！看着越晦涩，其实写起来越省力。作者偷懒不花力气心思，读者就得加倍陪进去力气心思。他的文章的精髓在于组织和结构，在恰当的地方掉个包袱，又掉个包袱，subtle 而有效的技术。我恨不得能一把偷过来，用在写畅销惊险小说上。

另一个我喜欢 Gladwell 的地方是他专门跟陈腔滥调/conventional wisdom 作对，以颠覆陈腔滥调为宗旨。他讨论的一些话题，如 Iowa gambling task，choking versus panicking, 在试验心理学里其实不算新闻，别人也报道过，但他不光讲这些试验结果，而是横向联想到很多东西，读者不知不觉地就被激发了自己的横向联想的思路 --- 当然，对于天然不喜欢横向联想的读者大概没什么效果。而且他讨论过的不少东西，后来我从别处找到旁证说明是正确的。例如，他在 Outliers 里讨论的理论之一是，天赋可能只给人一点点的好处，但是就这一点点的 edge 会在后天带来更多的辅助，便被几何级放大成为人和人之间巨大的差别，所谓 those who have will be given more。这个说法给我印象很深，最近有直接的试验表明，一定程度的贫穷能人为地降低智商（平均十几分），所以穷人比较笨是真的，不是幻觉，但也不是天生的命。试验结果发表在近期《科学》杂志上：
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976

对 Gladwell 的批评常常集中在他的说法不严谨之上。正确。我也常常觉得他给出的旁证不严谨，不够支持他的理论，很多时候我也是不怎么相信。但是，我从来没觉得自己被骗了。这是一个很微妙的界限，Jonah Lehrer 就让我觉得被骗了。为什么呢？Gladwell 在 present his case 的时候，从选择个例故事到行文的语气到整个态度，我能感受到足够的警告，告诉我他不是直接实在地报道具体数据和试验方法，而是提出问题和挑战固思，多过证明新理论的正确性。

在心理与行为学方面，甚至医学上，其实大家心里都清楚得很，所谓被验证了的理论，跟科学（物理化学）上的验证，本质上就不是一回事。例如上面说的，穷让人笨，任何人都可以随手拿出反例来，很多人穷但是一点也不笨啊，所以你这个人穷导致人笨的理论不成立啊。同样的见医学理论，例如抽烟导致肺癌，但也有不少大烟枪活到一百岁，所以抽烟导致肺癌不成立 ... 吗？但是我经常能碰见不明白二者差别的人，经常将天体物理和社会科学混为一谈。

Gladwell 的书太过 popular，乃至某些概念被广为流传，但并不等于这些概念是科学真理。例如苦练一万小时即可成名家的说法。人人都可做到？当然不是。天赋是假的，唯有苦练？当然不是。本来的理论是，一点点的 advantage，如天赋，可以改造环境而放大优势，成为巨浪般的过人之处，但将巨浪般的过人之处全部归结于好命是误解。而已。

我倒是见过很多反例，科学家或者科普作者一挥舞研究数字，一掏出哈佛的名头，便将 hypothesis 当成科学真理来宣传，群众不明就里信以为真，开始狂吞维他命或怀孕时拼命放莫扎特音乐。殊不知数字只是看上去神，其实也没那么可靠，反而容易误导。

说到底，最让我嫉妒的地方，是 Gladwell 对于，for lack of a better word，人性的好奇心和描写。所以他的文章里我最喜欢的一篇是 "What the Dog Saw"。狗的阅人能力其实早有阐述，他描写的观察并不算新闻，但是他在这篇文章里洞察到的、温和地揭露的某些人的行为和倾向，却有震撼人心的力量。从他那里得到的知识和新闻，实在不算什么，他的妙处在于改变我看世界看人看事的眼光，激发我自己换位思考的兴趣，即使我自己思考完了可能结论与他截然相反。The point is not to hand down truths and knowledge and remedies, but rather to provoke thoughts and disturb popular beliefs. 副作用是 make me care about other people. 这才是 Gladwell 的价值，很少作者能做到。Oliver Burkeman 也可以激发我的思考，但他写的没那么引人入胜。

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回到上面的博。作者 Ian Leslie，我顺手查了一下，写过一本书叫 Born Liars: Why We Can't Live Without Deceit，讲的是为什么撒谎是永恒普遍的，但大家又恨又怕。正是我想过很多次的话题，一直奇怪怎么没人写本书讲讲。可惜这本书只有在英国发行，在美国买不到 --- 大概因为美国人受不了这么坦白的讨论吧哈哈。他的网站上有段视频是关于这本书的，我觉得很有趣，值得看看 ---
http://ian-leslie.com/2012/01/born-liars/

The distinction seems to be: He is a liar. I tell white lies.

最近 Gladwell 到处活动宣传自己的新书 "David and Goliath"。Oliver Burkeman 在卫报上写了一篇人物专访：

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/s ... -interview

Burkeman 基本上把我想说的都说完了，我抄抄即可。逗我开心的是他们的幽默感，a wink, a nudge, not taking themselves too seriously。作为一个平时容易太认真的人，我真的很羡慕他们。

Why, he wants to know, is it OK to be born with an abnormality that gives you surplus red blood cells, like the Finnish Olympic skiing star Eero Mäntyranta, but not OK to reinfuse your own blood prior to competing, as Armstrong apparently did? Why are baseball players allowed performance-enhancing eye surgery, but not performance-enhancing drugs? "Imagine," Gladwell says, "if all the schools in England had a rule that you can't do homework, because homework is a way in which less able kids can close the gap that Nature said ought to exist. Basically, Armstrong did his homework and lied about it! Underneath the covers, with his flashlight on, he did his calculus! And I'm supposed to get upset about that?"

This argument enraged various sports pundits when Gladwell made it in The New Yorker, where he's been a fixture since 1996. But it will presumably only enrage them more to learn that he doesn't fully believe it himself. "When you write about sports, you're allowed to engage in mischief," he says. "Nothing is at stake. It's a bicycle race!" As a serious amateur runner himself (just the other day, he finished the Fifth Avenue Mile race, in Manhattan, in five minutes and three seconds) he's "totally anti-doping … But what I'm trying to say is, look, we have to come up with better reasons. Our reasons suck! And when the majority has taken a position that's ill thought-through, it's appropriate to make trouble." His expression settles into a characteristic half-smile that makes clear he'd relish it if you disagreed.

The point isn't necessarily to accept his conclusions, but to be jolted – even if via the improbable medium of ketchup – into seeing the whole world afresh. This galls some critics, who'd prefer it if Gladwell made smaller, more cautious, less dazzling claims.

“With each book that passes, I think my personal ideology becomes more explicit … and this one is a very Canadian sort of book," says Gladwell, who was born in Fareham, in Hampshire, but grew up in Ontario. "It's Canadian in its suspicion of bigness and wealth and power. Someone told me – did you know that there's never been a luxury brand to come from Canada? That's never happened. That's such a great fact to have about your home country."

We are now sufficiently far into the Gladwell era that the Gladwell backlash is well under way. He is routinely accused of oversimplifying his material, or attacking straw men: does anyone really believe that success is solely a matter of individual talent, the position that Outliers sets out to unseat? Or that the strong always vanquish the weak? "You're of necessity simplifying," says Gladwell. "If you're in the business of translating ideas in the academic realm to a general audience, you have to simplify … If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them: you're not the audience!"

A subtler criticism holds that there is something more fundamentally wrong with the Gladwellian project, and indeed with the many Gladwellesque tomes it's inspired. To some critics, usually those schooled in the methods of the natural sciences, it's flatly unacceptable to proceed by concocting hypotheses then amassing anecdotes to illustrate them. "In his pages, the underdogs win … of course they do," the author Tina Rosenberg wrote, in an early review of David and Goliath. "That's why Gladwell includes their stories. Yet you'll look in vain for reasons to believe that these exceptions prove any real-world rules about underdogs." The problem with this objection is not that it's wrong, exactly, but that it applies equally to almost all journalism, and vast swaths of respected work in the humanities and social sciences, too. You make your case, you illustrate it with statistics and storytelling, and you refrain from claiming that it's the absolute, objective truth. Gladwell calls his articles and books "conversation starters", and that's not false modesty; ultimately, perhaps that's all that even the best nonfiction writing can ever honestly aspire to be.

上面这一段跟我提过的，自然科学研究方法与社会科学根本两样，是一致的。很多人，包括很多大学究，都完全不明白这么简单的道理。我又要说了，教育有什么用？智商高有什么用？威风八面的大学究们只有专识没有常识，哼。

我终于因为上班开车没事干听了outliers. 同意Jun说的，他真能写，写得真好。不过对于他的理论，我觉得不是废话一堆，就是漏洞百出。