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Comment by mjhay | Hacker News Reader

Malcolm Gladwell is an perpetually contrarian charlatan, which of course means he is beloved by people at the NYT and WaPo.

As an example of his nonsense, he was famously a shill for Big Tobacco in the 90's: https://beyondchron.org/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-int...

He's also the guy that found out becoming a savant at something takes 10,000 hours.

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Glad to see I'm not the only one who feels this way. He's also a shill for return to office despite not actually working in an office.

Oh you are by far not alone. You'll enjoy: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/malcolm-gladwells-outl...

Thank you! I'm only 2 minutes into it and it's great

The rest of the episodes are great too, this is legit my favorite podcast.

> “Prevention of disease is obviously something we should strive for. But it’s not going to be cheap. We will have to pay for those who survive,”

That was the message they really went with, huh. Tobacco companies were culling old people to save money for pensions.

Gladwell is a master at making a slick and seductive case. When he writes a book about an idea, he approaches it like he is a lawyer representing the idea in court, except in his case he knows that most readers of his books won't hear from opposing counsel.

I was in a book club during COVID and we read Outliers. I knew the name but that was it. The club was epically correct and hung on its every word. I left.

He gives an air of objectivity while being completely subjective. Ugh, just ugh. I think the only other popular writer I detested having read was Robert Kaplan who has left the stage. I actually put his book in the compost.

I think he talked about being a libertarian in his early years (who wasn't?), and moving to progressivism in one of his revisionist history episodes.

https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/in-tripl...

Not sure why you are downvoted. His ideas are held so loosely he was a Big Tobacco shill. What are his loose ideas currently shilling?

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