[fargo]

yeah that's a huge problem with all of Gladwell's work. Compelling but unsupported.

[bitexploder]

The best description of have scene of the pop psychology and pop business books is “knowledge porn”. Guns germs and steel is like that. Makes the reader feel the secret history of the world or some topic is being revealed even though it’s at least partially, or wholly, fantasy :)

[nefitty]

In my head, I consider these sorts of books more generalized models to run information through. For example, when I think about some historical occurrence I run it through evo bio, Marxism, geo determinism, critical race theory, symbolic culture, etc. Yeah, some of the origins of these models are dumbed-down, but my reasoning is that the more of these models I have, the closer I can get to that secret history :P