"blank": harshing on malcolm gladwell

Morgan Meis at 3quarksdaily harshes on Malcolm Gladwell like a house on fire:

I have been harboring a nagging suspicion about Malcolm Gladwell for some time now. There is a word that keeps knocking at the back of my mind. That word is 'fraud' ...

The stories aren't the problem. The sliminess and outright incoherence comes out when Gladwell starts telling us about what these stories are supposed to mean. He is not shy about his claims. These are not just amusing stories about the complicated and sometimes contradictory ways that human beings make decisions. Gladwell positions himself as more than an observer and as something closer to a life coach or a guru. He is going to teach people how to harness and make use of the power, the magic, of unconscious thinking. He is going to make things that were difficult and well nigh unfathomable a lot easier ...

An interesting take - one that's expanded on at some length.  I tried to read Blink myself and had an enormous struggle with it.   I read enough to resonate with the "life coach" angle, though. Hmm. 

Yet the truth is I never got that far, because I found the basic premise of the book to be of almost a koan-like emptiness.  Here's what it seemed to be saying:

You probably thought that informed decision-making works, except when it doesn't - and that acting on intuition alone doesn't work, except when it does.

Actually, it's the other way around!

Some will argue that it's unfair of me to make snap judgments about a book that, by my own admission, I never finished reading.

But isn't that supposed to be the point?

Comments

[lally]

you made me laugh out loud with this one brother.