Gladwell on Outliers on Charlie Rose

The interview was better than I had expected, but then my expectations were not high. At least Gladwell stops short of completely embracing the "there is no talent, it's all effort" line.

However, at about 13 minutes in we get a huge dose of politically correct pseudoscience and poor logic: Asians are good at math because -- get this -- rice farming was labor intensive. Tolerance for hard work was transmitted culturally and had no impact on genes -- "we know this" says Gladwell :-) I don't suppose Gladwell has looked at any transnational adoption studies, which remove the cultural component...

At 23 and a half minutes we get the "IQ above 120 doesn't matter" claim -- see here for some pretty strong evidence against that.

See here for earlier comments on Outliers, and here for a discussion of success and talent (the meaning of correlation).