Hormonal wrote:
heres the deal yo wrote:hes clearly just unfamiliar with the sport.
Based on his recent New Yorker article on AlSal, Gladwell won his city-county championship in XC and knows quite a bit about the sport.
Did you read that article? He compares Salazar pushing himself to death at Falmouth in 1979 to really successful restaurants in DC. He even quotes Tyler Cowen (the economist) about how most DC restaurants become complacent after the first year or so and lose their ability to keep pushing out food, whereas Salazar never lost his ability to push himself to the fullest during his running career.
He then compares his experience with distance running, where he pushed himself really hard (and passed out at the end) and outperformed all expectations to the effort Salazar put in. Which is arguably even a stupider comparison.
Do you feel any dumber after reading those analogies? Footage of middle distance runners shows them jumping-up-and-down ebullient after winning Olympics or setting a world record, yet the guy in 5th is the one clutching his knees or falling to the ground--clearly effort can't be measured by who pushed themselves to dangerous fatigue.
After reading that I got why people who really know business or psychology or whatever Gladwell writes about hate Gladwell--he has no idea of the depth of his own ignorance about things, and he makes all these awful connections as if he does. I was a bit surprised he was so ignorant about distance running since he was fairly good at it, but there you have it.