On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:30:41 -0800, wrote: >Gladwell's reply to Pinker's nasty review. Pinker's saying it isn't so, >doesn't make it not so.
I would not have characterized Pinker's review as nasty but that is neither here nor there: such a statement depends upon an interpretation consistent with certain values. If one thinks that Gladwell does do something that is valuable (or at the least enjoyable which is a state that one might consider to be valuable) then one might consider critical reviews of what that person does or say as unfair or "nasty". However, my idea of "nasty" is more in line with, say, how Glenn Beck characterizes his opponents. When I was younger and saw Noam Chomsky and some of his colleagues responding to others in person in public forums, I would have considered what they did as "nasty" (e.g., one of Chomsky's colleague was a discussant at a psychology of language held at IBM's Yorktown campus and one of the presenters was Walter Kintsch who spoke in accented but understandable English; the discussant said "I couldn't understand what Kintsch said because of his accent so I'm not going to discuss his presentation" -- now that's nasty). Pointing out that Gladwell makes a number of errors as well as questionable interpretations is not nasty though a person might not like that to happen to them (I know how that makes one feel). In any event, one can reach their own conclusions about the matter by reading Pinker's review: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html?_r=1&sq=steven%20pinker&st=cse&scp=3&pagewanted=all or http://tinyurl.com/yflgd5l >http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/pinker-on-what-the-dog-saw.html > I would like to provide some additional weblinks: (1) It seems like Gladwell apparently knew that a person was referring to eignenvalues instead of Igon values but it is not clear when he knew it. See: http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2009/11/letting-igons-be-igons.html As one of the commenters point out, the published article has "eigenvalue" (did a fact checker catch it?) while the article on Gladwell's website and the chapter in his book "What the Dog Saw" had "Igon value". So what did Gladwell know and when did he know it. By the way, I found the following comment hilarious: |No, it's pronounced "Fronkensteen". (2) The link above that Chris provide to Gladwell's response is only part of the story. Gladwell response and Pinker response to it will be published in the November NY Times book review but it available online right now; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/books/review/Letters-t-LETSGOTOTHET_LETTERS.html (3) The editors at the NY Times have a few things to say about the Pinker and Gladwell situation as well as providing some additional comments; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Upfront-t.html?scp=4&sq=steven%20pinker&st=cse (4) I haven't checked his website to see if Gladwell had responded to Stephen Colbert's "nasty" treatment of him on his show. One can watch the segment of his show at the Huffington Post website; the comments below the video may also be of interest: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/18/stephen-colbert-questions_n_361798.html It is also of interest that Colbert "busted" Gladwell for being a "brand", a charge that has been made of Pinker and others here on TiPS (I can't seem to remember who that was ;-). There's also a transcript of Colbert's show for that date but it's somewhat mangled and doesn't keep always identify who is speaking; see: http://www.livedash.com/transcript/the_colbert_report/4794/COMEDYP/Wednesday_November_18_2009/109113/ -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
