But those in the orchestra have already been chosen as the best out of the rest so it’s not like you take on an individual that starts at zero to contribute. You don’t improve an orchestra or football team by adding in amateurs to begin with. I hate these kind of ideas being presented here because it ignores the fact not everyone is a team player nor has the skills or discipline. A weak link can take down a whole thing
@@pinchebruha405 I didn't see that he said anything about adding in amateurs, he said that you get more out of your investment by investing in improving the worst performers on your team. I am darn certain that that is what he said, and was what he was saying.
Billionaires not only misunderstand the nature of the world we're living in [at present], but also overestimate the importance they themselves have actually played in creating what's truly good and worthwhile within it.
Studies show that; even when individuals suddenly rise to a higher class due to winning the lottery or inheriting money; they quickly adopt the mindset of the class they move into. This is due to being in a higher class insulating you from the pressures that exist in the lower class. In much the same way a study with the game Monopoly in which a participant is given more money than other players; and how such a player will attribute their success in the game to themselves being smarter, luckier, or other personal attribute rather than due to starting with more money. We see this in how many in higher classes ignore the disparities in society which are artificially created by the system and create the very inequalities in accessing a quality K-12 Education, obtaining quality and affordable healthcare, and in obtaining a higher education, inequality in upward mobility due to these disparities impacting the types of jobs one can obtain. Entry level jobs that require higher education and experience are just one way to exclude lower income people. Add racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, and the system being rigged by the ruling class for the ruling class, and it's easy to see why America has the greatest disparity between the highest wage earners and those at the bottom. Empowering the poor and homeless will increase their upward mobility, self determination, and freedoms. This would provide America the healthy and highly educated workforce with the skill sets needed for America to compete with other developed nations. America is primed to be among the few nations that will thrive in the economic boom that will follow our current economic downturn, this success will be limited by the degree we fail to empower our masses.
@@anahata2009 this is UA-cam not the halls of university. Comments are not to be taken as case study or cited sources. Do your own research with that comment's keywords.
It's terribly costly to keep these pet billionaires in the manner their accustomed to........ The following has been an economic fluency check point...those who have disagreed, please remit your admissions of idiocy in the comments below
My suspicion is that billionaires don't care about making education and the world as a whole better. Instead, they care about an entire school at Harvard, Yale or Oxford being named after them.
Your suspicions are correct Sir. All big funding at colleges ends up doing is making the college more expensive to attend and gives already wealthy processors even more money
@@JohnDavid-kc9kt Which again seems to equate to being a matter of branding. Improving one's personal brand by associating it with an established, popular brand that the people you are trying to sell yourself to are known to themselves be associated with or think highly of. All that plus the tax break.
I work at a mid-sized university. When confronted with inadequate budgets and limited resources, we console ourselves by saying "anyone can do research at Harvard."
Hmm ... yes. And Harvard is of course one of those universities which charges $100,00 tuition per semester ... and they STILL don't have enough cash. Is this because the professors get paid a half million each? And because the Lord at the top of the hill gets paid $10 million? American universities are, generally speaking, a goddamn waste of money. The only purpose they serves is indoctrination in Marxist style politics.
He’s not saying anything new however . . He’s also ignoring the essential nature of human beings . . Beautiful speaker, and yep I’m sure he’s expert in team sports . . However, human society is not a team sport, it’s a predatory experience . . Some eat, and some get eaten . . Its rules are innate, inbuilt and has a vested interest in keeping the weaker members weak and therefore available for use/consumption, by the stronger and more able predatory human beings . . Whilst his logic applies to sport, it does not apply to human life overall . . It can’t by definition I’m afraid
Meh. He can make all the points he wants. . that wont stop the many citizens of the world from ignoring them to continue the class war against each other in their attempt to be the next generation of billionaires. . 😂 self imposed destruction. . and we love it, onward to oblivion, yeah baby!!!
Brilliantly articulated. Although if we didn't already know this we wouldn't have sayings like "a rising tide lifts all boats" and "a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link". Virtually all human problems go back to the beginning in one way or another. Perhaps the wisest saying of all "same shit, different day".
Lol for some reason I feel like yer comment should have that poster on display, the one with the lil kitten dangling from a branch with the text " Hang In There"
I love the cut to the applauding crowd and all of their faces are sour because someone just told them they aren't actually Brilliant Captains of Industry.
Meh. You think big business cares. . lol they know the masses don't have means of production. . nor farmland. . lol most of the population are renters. . 😂😂😂😂 people can make vids like this till the cows come home. . but the reality is its the complaining citizens who themselves work for and follow the commands of their corporate lords. Humanity is a joke
And this is why Malcolm Gladwell gets the big bucks. He is always so interesting, picking out narratives and patterns that are otherwise never seen. We don't know what we don't know. Hearing him speak actually feels like the superficial world we all usually occupy runs on total stupidity most of the time.
@@briananderson5102 Actually I did not know that. Do you know from where specifically? Just talking with social scientists? Or from other published material? I thought he had some miraculous ability to come up with these invisible observations on his own. Thank you for that.
Malcolm Gladwell either he does not understand how a football club works or he is fooling people with this analogy. If you understand pro sports than you know that the top club of each franchise does not employ weak players at all. The weakest players of any franchise are playing in lower tier leagues. Now I don't know much about football however I do know a little about baseball which works on the same format. A team like the Toronto Blue Jays has a 25 man roster 9 players plays everyday. They also have a 40 man roaster of which 15 of those players are playing on minor teams in their affiliation. Each team inn baseball has about 160 players that only play in the minors of which only a handful will ever play in the majors. Like football the GM has to upgrade they lower 16 players of the team roster if they want any hope of winning. Of those 16 players none of them are considered weak in contrast of their entire sport. They are the lower class elite players that the GM is trying to upgrade. The other 150 players per team fall to the wayside and rite when they turn 30 after never playing for the top clubs. Don't waste good money on the weak who will never improve their standing. Pick out the potential elites and focus on them as the rest are nothing more than dead weight that will drag everyone does to their level..
@@joehobo8868 No, your wrong and billionaires are evil and hate the world and poor people!!!! I'm jealous that I don't have a billion, if I did I wouldn't complain like many.
Lol too bad his speeches aren't stopping whats happening. . and won't be changing the behaviors of the people committed to keeping it going. . but hey at least we have something to listen to
The most important lesson in this lesson is to strengthen the weak link. Unfortunately our habit of thought is to compete, so the strong links tend to kill the weak links by trying to dominate. So culture has to shift to a new paradigm, citizens must learn value of cooperation, in this way strong links help the weak links to improve and universities like Harvard will invest in other universities helping them to strengthen. All this need a humble attitude of learning.
@@westganton common point of agreement used to be welfare of family was for the betterment of members of the family. That idea expanded to tribe, city state and nationhood. Now because we are very closely interconnect, we need to expand that idea, to welfare of the international community or global village, and for this global cohesion and unity to take place, we need to reconsider most fundamental value, which is usefulness of competition, vs. cooperation. Imagine human advancement in all aspects of civilization, when we begin to realize, humanity is one and we are all citizens of one planet.
@@TheVafa95 Global synergy is definitely the goal, but I think we need to start small again and scale up in a more sustainable way to get there. Our cells have achieved prosperity in the form of homeostasis, so we can too, we just need to value the right things to help us get there
NBA basketball teams today have also shifted to having a higher quantity of versatile roleplayers, rather than having more than 1 or 2 stars. This is because it is so easy to get injured in today's game & a star's salary takes up a large proportion of the salary cap. So you have to build depth into your team to last out a full 84 game season and contend in the playoffs which could be another 16 to 28 games.
I do not think that players who are already well-paid are going for more pay. The exhilarating experience of playing moments are enduring. The synergy of 1-2 passes that culminates in a goal is the pull factor. And near misses of playing moves that were choreographed in the mind are so powerful to make repeated attempts. Look at those who lost their ball - the energy to get it back is so intense - where does that come from? The "thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat" both are energisers.
1:01 That is exactly, I think, one of the pillars of democracies: the idea that improving society means improving the situation of the people who experience the most hardships in it…
@@pauldi7268 I don't know if any democracy in history has ever achieved it. I suspect none has made it. But Democracy is a guiding bunch of ideas, while democracies are works in progress...
Fantastic. Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favourite authors as he has an uncanny ability to dissect and then explain/articulate using very pragmatic examples using analytics as well as real life examples. Thank you
He talks about sports quite a bit here and one thing that popped in my mind when he mentioned oligarchs choosing star players to play in the Premiere League was the movie Moneyball which focused on baseball and showed that statistics, not star players, were a better thing to focus on when trying to build a winning team.
When he talked about that I was thinking well they spend the big money on 1 or 2 guys not to try to win, but because it will give a greater profit having a big star rather than being a little better team.
@@justindooley2738 I think there are two hidden messages to Moneyball (by Micheal Lews, not Malcolm Gladwell): Firstly the genius statistical analyst(s) used tools that nobody else was using to gain a competitive first-mover advantage in the industry. Secondly that really good teamwork (including assigning people to roles in which they are better than average) can beat a individual talent.
Humanity has the potential to create almost heaven right here on earth. Team sports may be a tired old analogy, but my best example is from fifty years ago when I experienced what can happen when a team does their best together. When he says our university system is insane, that is one of a thousand examples you could use to show how we know a better way but fall short. If you dwell on our potential as compared to our reality, it can make you insane.
We did quite a bit of progress though... Most of our ancestors would be proud of our cities, technology, and the fact that we started Space Exploration. We are still on the path. Don't sell ourselves short.
Does anyone else notice a big disjunct between the apparent thread and directive reasoning of the strong- Vs weak- link society and the conclusions being inferred and talked about in the Q&A section, where three times it is stated that we need to redistribute wealth, power and education "to the middle", or to the middle class? Malcolm's point about curing malaria is bang-on, and is the correct inference, it seems to me, but where and how do the arguments lead to focussing on the middle of the bell curve rather than the bottom? I thought this was very clear. Ultimately what this room ends up doing is nodding along and pointing the finger at billionaires, all agreeing that more money should be given to them, the already relatively very wealthy middle class. The theory actually supports the need for a devolved democratic process that gives agency and power to the working class.
Yes, separated generations repeat mistakes instead of being guided by seniors into new mistakes. New mistakes lead to new learning while repeated ones are repeated by different people across generations. The school system in particular, putting younger teachers in charge going by their 'higher' degrees, separates the experiences of elderly teachers from the younger in charge. Then repeated mistakes keep repeating.
As a soccer player, loved that! And that was fascinating to learn about that foundational narrative and as a business person and consultant it's very present
@@BigDiscussions76 bunch of ad hominems, playing the race card on several occasions, all but accusing his opponents of being supremacists. other than that he wasn't really engaging in the actual debate but instead erecting strawmen and attacking those. He didn't even have the decency to address his interlocutors correctly: he called one of them Doug and his name is Douglas (like calling Chuck someone named Charles, not really appropriate unless explicitly granted the privilege) and he mispronounced the name of the other the entire evening. in the end the audience swing *away* from Gladwell's side was the biggest ever swing in the history of the debates. it's an interesting topic, you could give it a listen, it's time well spent regardless
billionaires are not giving money to large universities because they think their sigular importance outweighs group importance of higher education, it's because they A) want to make sure their kids get in, or b) that their name is positively floating around in the halls of power, or c) 'legacy'. It's a club thing, not a research thing. It's also because billionaires *can't* finance all universities, certainly not in a way that lets them exert any influence. Plus, that's remarkably similar to 'paying taxes'. Billionaires opt to spend money (donate) on things that allow them to have some control over their image, the project, their influence, vs things that don't (taxes). Since donations are deductible from taxes, it's obvious what they do. The most patriotic thing you can do, other than dying for your country, is PAY TAXES.
The interviewer for all his complaints about atomization and "echo chambers" in society really gives off the impression that his way of thinking is its own self sustaining "echo chamber"
I guess he never heard of Celtics--but that's ok, it was long ago. I love this guy. He can talk about so many things and keep you (or at least me) engrossed.
I was thinking about the Celtics too. In 1986, I saw the Celtics strategy of the whole vs the Lakers strategy of speed, and one man taking the ball down the court.
@@dreamervanroom I'm not a Celtics fan but the 86 Celtics team and the 96 bulls are the best ever. I would put the 73 win warriors in there but ... well they didn't win the title so 😀they are out
I swear there are so many lowkey gems like this on youtube. Ima just gatekeep everything take notes digest all this knowledge and use it to my advatage HAHAHA
As a big hoops fan I mostly agree with the analysis of basketball being a star driven sport, but those "random other guys" that filled out the rest of the 90s Bulls roster meaningfully contributed in big moments. John Paxton and Steve Kerr, not Michael Jordan, both hit last second buzzer beater shots to win the Bulls two separate championships. Steve Kerr went on to coach the 2nd greatest team of all time, the Warriors.
Just means people don't understand basketball actually :D "I would have been nothing without Pippen" ~Michael Jordan The true star was pippen,rodman,kerr , who enabled. Anyone can shoot hoops, if there's entire team who babysits and enables you. obviously his probably the best player of all time still. but claiming that basketball is 1-2 man show is absurd. that would only come out of someone who has not actually played been in basketball team and played competitively as a young person, highschool, Uni whatever... Jordan was just carry, other 4 were supports.. just like in todays kids videogames wich are super competitive eSports... like Dota and League of Legends are good examples of 5player esports.. where 1 player is always the Carry, and other 4 need to enable him to carry the team to victory.
@@Microphunktv-jb3kj I think he is missing the important element of teamwork by singling out 'strongest' and 'weakest' links. A team is much more than 5 times the skills of an individual.
ironically the Bulls only started winning after they moved away from the star driven system to involving the rest of the team more. Jordan’s best individual season was 1988. Jordan was always better at involving his team than Kobe.
Yes unfortunately this entire talk seems to be built on a foundation of just a few examples .. and super oversimplified. (Are all the organizations and institutions in the world "strong link" or weak? There's no variety??) But then on top of it, even the few supporting examples .. basketball .. well he doesn't understand it as well as he claims to. :/
Top performers attract top performers. If you are a weak link you will always get overlooked. Stop looking to others to bring you up. Get better. Become the strongest link and you will inspire others to do the same.
Concerning the strong/weak link discussion, it seems that the more complex the institution is, or even simply how many people are involved, is the key factor. The more parts, the weaker any one of them is by default.
And how painful consequences are. In Football (for the Americans: Soccer) Goals are much more valuable than points in Basketball, simply because of the amount you see per game.
This is so incredibly ILLUMINATING! Sometimes what we need the most is a discussion that clarifies and brings coherency to the complex subjects and ideas we find ourselves immersed in. Malcolm Gladwell has done this to an incredibly rich and effective degree here. We the listeners are hugely fortunate, and I hope we will spread these thoughts and this recording far and wide.
I started and I was reheating chicken soup that I've been thinking about all day. Made it yesterday from my Grandmother's recipe mixed together with ingredients we love. Anyway this fell upon me I'd not even clicked it up. So I was kinda listening..so I Love soccer for reasons I believe the ways its played is totally diplomatic plus it works..so that's what grabbed me. So I'm listening again
I was puzzled by the first 5-10 minutes - just couldn't relate to your description of football, then thought "ohhhh, he means THAT football!" hahahaha! Great and thought provoking presentation as always. Thank you! (a fan from the US)
We've doubled the workforce by bringing women in....yet people are working longer hours? Does that make sense? I'm a Gen X engineer. I make decent money. But most of the boomer engineers I know have second homes, recreational craft, paid their kid's college, travel constantly...and they've been doing all those things since the time when they were younger than I am now. What's the tell you? It tells you that there's truth to the statement that adding women, allowing unfettered immigration, and offshoring jobs has all had a great impact on pressuring wages lower in real terms. And it's not going to get better. I'm very concerned about my children. Will they be able to even own a primary residence? Will there be any jobs? More and more jobs are going to be automated in the coming decades. When more people compete for a dwindling number of jobs, wages go DOWN. Skills needed for those jobs go UP. Soon there will be no jobs for people with average IQs. What could go wrong?
I laughed when Malcom said I response to 'what should we do to force change?', 'start with the [political arena] and hope...' In other words, he ain't got no answers. He just crank the numbers.
Re: the Boeing 737 Max story, iirc it's not pronounced "mahks," it's "em-kas." And it was a retread of an established design with a slight tweak that warranted the mothballed MCAS project viable again (developed for a different purpose but retooled and adapted for the said 737). In short, a Frankenstein product. It was rushed to make the company competitive again and to please their stockholders, with tragic results. Arguably, the FAA is also to blame for their hesitance in grounding the plane.
Yeah, this speech is just preaching to the choir that want the world to change. It SHOULD change (of course) but nothing he's saying is actually a SIGN of anything changing. Literally the opposite.
Has Gladwell considered a "hockey society?" I thought a Canadian might think of hockey. Hockey is a sport with the physicality of rugby blended with the flow of football. In his book The Game, hockey goaltender Ken Dryden says the reason for such a contrast when Canadians would play Europeans in hockey is because Canadians play hockey like rugby while Europeans play hockey like football. Now that hockey is a world game, we have an adoption of both styles.
@@davidh4374 Haha oh thats great then I only saw these two talks of his so I thought you maybe hadn't seen the one I mentioned. Hockey is a great sport! :D
Malcolm Gladwell is always interesting and compelling. I walk away from each book with a new tool for thinking - tipping point, networks of influencers of different types, intuition vs deep thought. This talk also gives a nice metaphor for thinking about teamwork - is the strength of a team bottom-up or top-down. However, I found his justifications of structure of the new world frustratingly weak. Certainly a failure by the weakest link cause large effects in high-stakes games. But in his example what about the surgeon that saved the man's life? TopDown talent. What about the team leader who should have enforced checklist procedures (another Gladwell thought tool, I believe)? The example of income disparity for universities also frustrated me. The point of having elite universities which are over-funded is that a few over-funded centers of excellence with small clusters of sooper-geniuses are producing the rarified ideas that fuel the tech field. The discoveries and ideas that comes out of the single well-funded MIT labs will never come out of a cluster of a dozen moderately well-funded community colleges. Should we also stop paying the premium to attend an MGlad lecture and instead listen to dozens of free college profs? No! There is an important place for excellence.
Faith in our common sense of Humanity. We ALL know what it is to feel Human. Faith in each other's humanity - is the counter to fear of the future. Empower the weakest links, to choose how to spend their TIME. How we choose to spend our time is everything. It's the 'why we are here'. We are not born equal - naturally. Our biological and environmental diversity and personal autonomy (self determination) is our resilience, and becomes our identity. We are what we think we are. Capable of what we believe we can do. Our personal unique contribution to the State of Humanity - our energy, intelligence and enterprise. I do not exist to serve a global business model. My unpaid time spent, in self determined work, is more valuable to Humanity than it is to the economy. I am a weaker link because my time is wasted looking for money to pay to exit, ( the cost of livibg) Selling hours in paid work, or investing hours in the pursuit of financial gain. Investing unpaid time in complying with government or industry requirements- recording and reporting about money. To live, I must spend unpaid time shopping. To raise the weakest links in all classes of society, the cost of living must not be a barrier to self determination. Our UNPAID work contribution to Economy AND Humanity must be acknowledged and guaranteed. Returning Faith in the Future. And freedom of self determination. Available time to spend creating and living in, a healthy, Humane Society.
Henry Ford analysed his cars in the scrapyard and found that one part never degraded or broke. A creative approach would be to make the rest of the car as strong as that part. The mechanists approach is to degrade that part so it wears out at the same time. What he is talking about here is automating human effort. Degrading human individual effort to meet a defined goal. A mechanistic approach. There is room for both football and basketball and you should identify peoples strengths and let them them work to their strengths. Top down approaches do not work. Bottom up is the future. Even in a bottom up approach there is a top, an apex.
Great video! Malcolm gladwell rock's grahere I think hes over simplifying a great deal. It depends on the company or what you are trying to do, rather than everything in the entire economy.
These are the winners (the strong links) each in their respective fields, listening to Malcolm telling them that when they come into their power, they should therefore get rid of the weakest link
A bit off, methinks. 1. Wealthy interests will do whatever it takes (even murder and destruction) to keep control of the resources (in fact, most countries wage war in the protection of its “interests”, like oil or access to raw materials or strategic locations). Gen Z will be marginalized, the trend has been relentless since the 80’s but with roots in the days of empire). 2. Gen Z will be mostly redundant, so the future will be how to keep them entertained, distracted, divided and impotent. They will probably receive UI and corporations/governments will fight for share of their income and their “digital labor”. Think The Matrix. 3. Lifespans will easily exceed 120 or even 150 years or more. The wealthy will have first access to the technology and to bionic enhancements and designer babies. Everyone else will be disadvantaged (a new form of racism) by being “normal”. Think Gattica. 4. There may be certain socialist regions where “off-grid” communities will thrive. But nothing will be strictly off grid. Nuclear power, high tech (chips, nanotechnology, AI, finance) needs Big Money that should come from governments, but will probably be funded by large multinational (and mostly unregulated) monopolies. Micro-financing and “digital nomads’ and the gig economy will possibly thrive too, but will be relatively insignificant… and only serve as “products” (labor) to the large corporate machines. 5. Smart farming (localized food production) may thrive and 3D printing will probably change the world into small, independent local communities, connected by social media and virtual reality. There will be very little need or incentive to travel. This could be utopian or dystopian. 6. Entertainment will be the primary industry (after the “infrastructure” industries like energy, AI, medicine, finance, hi-tech gadgetry/appliances, etc.). Mind-enhancement or mental-coping drugs will be ubiquitous (think Brave New World 2.0). Virtual sex may be a huge part of the industry, but AI sex/companion robots may make this largely irrelevant… perhaps a kind of multi-player style of sexual activity or drug cocktails may be a better substitute (intravenously managed by a sexual interface, AI and/or multi-player driven). 7. Sport will become huge. But when everyone is “enhanced”, the kinds of sports that would be popular might be competition between “normies”. Or gladiator-type events may become the most popular spectator sports (think The Running Man). And wealthy people (the Epsteins of the world) will traffic or employ attractive people for bizarre, De Sade type, games. Think The Brave. This already a big industry, barely below the surface but ubiquitous in all countries and political/religious systems. 8. There will be two main classes of people, much more divided than today (in fact, a more extreme version of the current trends in inequality). The wealthy, with longevity and access to the best technologies; and the consumer/workers. There may also be a massive group of outcasts (like Uyghurs, women and laborers in Pakistan, broken African countries, etc.). The rest of us will have lives not unlike the Chinese (who are only protesting because the CCP became obsessively extreme, but could easily have kept a tight social control indefinitely). A dystopian future (if you’re not amongst the privileged, but a slave-based utopia for today’s children of wealthy families).
I think you’ve summed it up perfectly. Success has always been dependant on the strengths and coordinated work of the underprivileged serfs…..the weakest links!
Sorry, but if you are not profoundly impressed by Malcolm Gladwell's intellect I think you do not understand what he is communicating - or you are only very superficially understanding it
Well Malcolm. Society has both systems in place in many forms. The trouble is that either side wants to dominate with one side pushing compliance and collectivism through the state and the other is based on individual freedom. The pendulum swings but power of enforcement is still a big factor. The world changes and fear rules. We are in perpetual emergency mode.
The reason billionaires give all their money to the richest schools is because their goal isn't to make the future better. It's to make themselves look better to other rich people. Greed is literally the only constant. How do you not understand this? I thought you were smart.
On this note, when do you let go/replace the lowest denominator vs. invest in them and try to improve them? For society to improve on the whole, I believe we shouldn't ditch our poor performers and should work to improve them. However, there are certain high stakes fields (like astronauts) where you really want all folks involved to get the job done successfully.
Gladwell despite his snarky tweeting still doesn't understand what motivates the PtB to do philanthropy. Hint: it's about the feeling good and reflected fame, not about the doing good
Individuals are to society what cells are to the human body. We even organize for the same reasons - resilience and synergy. These aren’t really groundbreaking ideas once you realize that we wouldn’t even exist without them in action
@@jakecostanza802 We’re more than our cells, there would be no point in them organizing otherwise. We just have a lot in common with them and I like making it obvious
Another great talk from Malcolm Gladwell. He always has such a unique, insightful viewpoint on things. However, I'm not sure the 737 max is a good example to use . As I understand, it was a failure of management. A decision was made not to recertify it as a new plane amid protests of the engineering team.
The main goal of professional football teams is not necessarily to win but to make money! Ronaldo jerseys sell a lot more than above average Joe jerseys....
Love the talk but the Boeing analogy isn't accurate if you know anything about aerospace. It had nothing to do with the two scenarios. Boeing tried to cut corners and put a big engine on a small plane so they could compete with Airbus. The plane's CG shifted. The software was an attempt to correct that and they skirted the FAA tests by claiming it was similar to what was there.
We are "strong linked" beings, of course we are still playing by "the old rules" (i.e. basketball). The world that awaits Gen Z is not a "football" model, but rather a fractured version of the "basketball" model. The "elite" will become all knowing AIs with access to entire swaths of human collective thought and the rest of us (i.e. "weak links of the team") are just nodes in the system. There is no incentive for the society to develop the "weak links".
Add this to the expanding "It's a feature, not a bug" file. Elites care very little about the System working better; it's already working fine for them. And he should know that. And this analysis remains true only until automation has seized most functions in that System -- in 15 years or less?
Entertaining. A good talk despite oversimplified analogies and allegories. The comments below are good as well: football is about money and teams make more money if star players are on the field and rich people donate to elite schools so their kids can get in and so they can have their egos stroked. His praise for Bill Gates' work on malaria is misplaced. I saw first hand the bed net fiasco in sub-Saharan Africa: the locals cut up the malaria bed nets and used them as fish nets and they caught everything - even the small fry which ironically eat mosquito larvae with the affect that mosquito numbers increased making malaria worse in addition to destroying biodiversity in many African aquatic systems. I do wish he had discussed strong vs weak links in the context of democracy.
I like at the end how he talked about the lunacy of the past where a large part of the population was explicitly excluded from being part of the decision making process..... Then realize that the last US Supreme Court Justice was explicitly selected from a tiny fraction of the population (ONLY black women considered, all others need not apply for the highest court in the land).
What I miss in companies presently is the lack of control. All labour and all labourers top and down, ought to be controlled, because we are people with natural faults. I learned that by reading about the egyptian cultures. Control is necessary, but not with the wipp (like in ancient times), not by yelling, not by working long hours. Indeed, by creating a team with a controlling teamleader. I learn this from own experiences and by the stories of my adult children.
Didn’t see him in the Munk debates I take it? Dude spent the entire time race baiting his opponents with straw man nonsense. He’s a smug and arrogant child
Paulson donated to Harvard PRECISELY because it preserves and protects and promotes the structure in which he personally prospered. It does not change the ability to concentrate wealth, power and influence. The big question isn’t to wonder why he would do this. The real question is to ask how a liberal democracy and the structure it provides can peacefully adjust. I hope it can although I have seen no evidence that it will. Quite the contrary in 2022.
I remember when Alan Greenspan some years ago spoke about the increasing financial insecurity of the working class as if it was an achievement of his leadership in the economy, (remember he like many of our present and past rulers of the last few decades are Ayn Rand, neo liberal cult members) which of course it was for the oligarchs and the rest of the ruling class who need exhausted, desperate, uneducated, hopeless masses to do what they're told and not interfere with their objective, tyranny.. but with nicer words wrapped around it like free markets..code for monopoly, innovation...code for techno feudalism (see yanis varoufakis), convenience.. code for self interest at the cost of cruelty, progress...code for dont fuck with what the rich want to do, civility..code for comply. Ahh i feel a bit better after that rant xx
Oligarchs don't buy football teams because they want them to win football games, they buy them for the status. That is the primary game they are playing. And to gain status you don't want to improve the weakest of your team.
It's an analogy about how basketball works, by someone who doesn't play professional basketball. Besides, he used the wrong teams. 1960's Celtics, vs Wilt Chamberlain and his teams. Neither the Bulls nor the Warrior's 2nd level players behind the top ones, were fringe level players; as the Utah Jazz discovered, having even one weak player in the starting lineup can be the cause of losing. The rest of the team doesn't have to be great; they just can't be terrible.
Professional sports is not about winning. It’s focus is on selling out every game, selling food, and selling memorabilia. Big name people are hired by various team because they help sell out the game. This is how the owners make their money. It is all about the money. As a fan I focus on the victory but the owner has a different objective.
Malcolm Gladwell either he does not understand how a football club works or he is fooling people with this analogy. If you understand pro sports than you know that the top club of each franchise does not employ weak players at all. The weakest players of any franchise are playing in lower tier leagues. Now I don't know much about football however I do know a little about baseball which works on the same format. A team like the Toronto Blue Jays has a 25 man roster 9 players plays everyday. They also have a 40 man roaster of which 15 of those players are playing on minor teams in their affiliation. Each team inn baseball has about 160 players that only play in the minors of which only a handful will ever play in the majors. Like football the GM has to upgrade they lower 16 players of the team roster if they want any hope of winning. Of those 16 players none of them are considered weak in contrast of their entire sport. They are the lower class elite players that the GM is trying to upgrade. The other 150 players per team fall to the wayside and rite when they turn 30 after never playing for the top clubs. Don't waste good money on the weak who will never improve their standing. Pick out the potential elites and focus on them as the rest are nothing more than dead weight that will drag everyone does to their level..
True, just enjoy the game. This guy was comparing the complexity of life to a basketball game, I mean how dumb are the audience members to just eat it up.
Re: 46 mins in discussing, multimillion donations to rich universities - Along this same lines, recently, a multimillion dollar donation was made to Habitat for Humanity, and I saw NO mainstream media recognition of this, which is possibly one of the smartest acts of philanthropy in terms of ameliorating the problem of housing for poor families in the U. S.
The reason why I like Habitat for Humanity is because it all over the nation from urban to rural areas. Alot of charities only cater to urban areas and not rural areas where I believe the need is more.
The argument regarding "wokism" misses entirely what issues it is addressing. The idea of hopping across the pond to an entirely different continent, that does not face the same systemic problems that exist in the states, shows to me a disconnect to the reality that those "wokism" is supposed help face.
@@cirilloucazzu4457 haha nice got 'em. Just because you don't get it doesn't mean they are in a "random order" What do you think I was trying to say? Why engage with the comment at all?
Why should the western elite feel any sense of duty for the lower classes in an ethnically heterogenous, secular society? When the west was composed of natuon states; themselves composed, overwhelming, of one primary ethnic group (which is sovergin over the government), the elite felt a duty towards those below them in a deep, cultural, even biological way. This is the beauty of nationalism. It binds the various classes together. Nationalism is the agent which keeps each part of the machine connected. We've not only lost religion via secularism, but we've lost nationalism as well. There is no longer any glue to hold society together; other than "you should do it because it's nice."
The current lot of 'leaders' groomed from basketball contexts find it hard, though not impossible, to start learning a new game called football. Moving from 5 players to 11 players in a much bigger playing field is intimidating for those with little stamina. Learners will thrive and knowers will struggle to stay on. The bet is that new players of new generations would follow the learners and ditch the knowers.
The vast majority have no desire to learn anything. They instead prefer to complain about laziness while isolating themselves from the problems they created / contributed to
This is surely true, but that point sort of applies to any progress. As technology and society move forward, it seems like there's always an older generation resisting or complaining about change. But the change is going to happen, and that fact is the only constant. People who are set in their ways too rigidly will struggle and languish, even if those ways may have been the key to their success in the past. But this particular phenomenon does seem to have especially high risk of hugely impactful collateral damage if the wrong people fail to adapt to this change sooner rather than later, because of the outsized control those few people have over official policymaking. I believe the corporate world will adapt to it more quickly than many governments. The people who currently make the rules got there, typically, via a basketball mentality. And switching to a football approach as an elected lawmaker may literally cost them their power and jobs in toxic political environments like the US Congress.
@@ronlipsius I leaped from games to generalization of teams and linked to the concept of 'knowers' and 'learners'. My apologies for the leaps and confusion. 1. Basketball is a 5-player game like a small project. 2. Football is a 11-player games like a bigger project. 3. The basketball coach who firmly believes that team sports must have a star player is behaving like a 'knower'. Knowing basketball does not equate to knowing team sports in general. 4. Learners are people who can integrate new info by learning continuosly. A project manager who learns from project members is superior to the one who thinks he or she knows-it-all and tells members what to do. Thus, learners would thrive over knowers. Gladwell's stories of mavens and connectors are in the same thread.
I'm a musician that plays in an orchestra have always been aware of always strengthening and helping the weakest link.
But those in the orchestra have already been chosen as the best out of the rest so it’s not like you take on an individual that starts at zero to contribute. You don’t improve an orchestra or football team by adding in amateurs to begin with. I hate these kind of ideas being presented here because it ignores the fact not everyone is a team player nor has the skills or discipline. A weak link can take down a whole thing
strengthen or replace lol
Such a beautiful analogy. Why not expand our thought from orchestra to national and global harmony?
@@pinchebruha405 I didn't see that he said anything about adding in amateurs, he said that you get more out of your investment by investing in improving the worst performers on your team. I am darn certain that that is what he said, and was what he was saying.
Meaningless anecdote.
Billionaires not only misunderstand the nature of the world we're living in [at present], but also overestimate the importance they themselves have actually played in creating what's truly good and worthwhile within it.
Studies show that; even when individuals suddenly rise to a higher class due to winning the lottery or inheriting money; they quickly adopt the mindset of the class they move into. This is due to being in a higher class insulating you from the pressures that exist in the lower class. In much the same way a study with the game Monopoly in which a participant is given more money than other players; and how such a player will attribute their success in the game to themselves being smarter, luckier, or other personal attribute rather than due to starting with more money. We see this in how many in higher classes ignore the disparities in society which are artificially created by the system and create the very inequalities in accessing a quality K-12 Education, obtaining quality and affordable healthcare, and in obtaining a higher education, inequality in upward mobility due to these disparities impacting the types of jobs one can obtain. Entry level jobs that require higher education and experience are just one way to exclude lower income people. Add racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, and the system being rigged by the ruling class for the ruling class, and it's easy to see why America has the greatest disparity between the highest wage earners and those at the bottom.
Empowering the poor and homeless will increase their upward mobility, self determination, and freedoms. This would provide America the healthy and highly educated workforce with the skill sets needed for America to compete with other developed nations. America is primed to be among the few nations that will thrive in the economic boom that will follow our current economic downturn, this success will be limited by the degree we fail to empower our masses.
@@ernestmac13 Which studies? Authors? Publications? That helps.
@@anahata2009 this is UA-cam not the halls of university. Comments are not to be taken as case study or cited sources. Do your own research with that comment's keywords.
It's terribly costly to keep these pet billionaires in the manner their accustomed to........
The following has been an economic fluency check point...those who have disagreed, please remit your admissions of idiocy in the comments below
Well said. They’ve genuinely deluded themselves into thinking they actually create value it’s whack. Bunch of gas lighters.
My suspicion is that billionaires don't care about making education and the world as a whole better. Instead, they care about an entire school at Harvard, Yale or Oxford being named after them.
Your suspicions are correct Sir. All big funding at colleges ends up doing is making the college more expensive to attend and gives already wealthy processors even more money
That's because they are now luxury brands rich people want to be associated with. It's definitely a selfish act disgusted as charity.
You can have dozens of buildings in your name at other schools for the same money.
It'd also a great way to wash your bad reputation and get a tax break. "Launder your legacy."
@@JohnDavid-kc9kt Which again seems to equate to being a matter of branding. Improving one's personal brand by associating it with an established, popular brand that the people you are trying to sell yourself to are known to themselves be associated with or think highly of.
All that plus the tax break.
Everyone should do themselves a favour and take the time to listen to this entire talk. Thanks to Brain Bar Staff and Crew.
I work at a mid-sized university. When confronted with inadequate budgets and limited resources, we console ourselves by saying "anyone can do research at Harvard."
Hmm ... yes. And Harvard is of course one of those universities which charges $100,00 tuition per semester ... and they STILL don't have enough cash. Is this because the professors get paid a half million each? And because the Lord at the top of the hill gets paid $10 million?
American universities are, generally speaking, a goddamn waste of money.
The only purpose they serves is indoctrination in Marxist style politics.
Malcom is so easy to listen to, he's great at making his point understandable. 👌
He’s not saying anything new however . . He’s also ignoring the essential nature of human beings . . Beautiful speaker, and yep I’m sure he’s expert in team sports . . However, human society is not a team sport, it’s a predatory experience . . Some eat, and some get eaten . . Its rules are innate, inbuilt and has a vested interest in keeping the weaker members weak and therefore available for use/consumption, by the stronger and more able predatory human beings . .
Whilst his logic applies to sport, it does not apply to human life overall . . It can’t by definition I’m afraid
He says nothing controversial at all to his liberal audience, while failing to acknowledge their solutions have been implimented and proven failures.
Very low-density-info talking.
Meh. He can make all the points he wants. . that wont stop the many citizens of the world from ignoring them to continue the class war against each other in their attempt to be the next generation of billionaires. . 😂 self imposed destruction. . and we love it, onward to oblivion, yeah baby!!!
Understandable? That means "in agreement". NOPE.
Brilliantly articulated. Although if we didn't already know this we wouldn't have sayings like "a rising tide lifts all boats" and "a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link". Virtually all human problems go back to the beginning in one way or another. Perhaps the wisest saying of all "same shit, different day".
really? he called lebron greatest player. said bulls only had 3 good players. nonsense.
Lol for some reason I feel like yer comment should have that poster on display, the one with the lil kitten dangling from a branch with the text " Hang In There"
@@pt8292 Ah yes, the important takeaway here was Malcolm Gladwell's opinions on basketball.
I'm loving the intellect of Malcolm Gladwell.
I love the cut to the applauding crowd and all of their faces are sour because someone just told them they aren't actually Brilliant Captains of Industry.
timestamp? lol
20:26
Why? Is it because they believe the manifesto Maxwell spews.
Meh. You think big business cares. . lol they know the masses don't have means of production. . nor farmland. . lol most of the population are renters. . 😂😂😂😂 people can make vids like this till the cows come home. . but the reality is its the complaining citizens who themselves work for and follow the commands of their corporate lords. Humanity is a joke
Nah, they're just European.
And this is why Malcolm Gladwell gets the big bucks. He is always so interesting, picking out narratives and patterns that are otherwise never seen. We don't know what we don't know. Hearing him speak actually feels like the superficial world we all usually occupy runs on total stupidity most of the time.
Who here thinks Gladwell is an INFJ on the MBTI? Just me?
@@briananderson5102 Actually I did not know that. Do you know from where specifically? Just talking with social scientists? Or from other published material? I thought he had some miraculous ability to come up with these invisible observations on his own. Thank you for that.
Yea yea, can you not point out the obvious and instead criticize something? People already know he is a smart guy which is why they are there.
Almost like a world of fools?
Such a strong-link comment
A great speech, spoken by a great man, who can actually speak for a publuc without humming or stottering. With a fine voice, good to listen to.
Malcolm Gladwell either he does not understand how a football club works or he is fooling people with this analogy. If you understand pro sports than you know that the top club of each franchise does not employ weak players at all. The weakest players of any franchise are playing in lower tier leagues. Now I don't know much about football however I do know a little about baseball which works on the same format. A team like the Toronto Blue Jays has a 25 man roster 9 players plays everyday. They also have a 40 man roaster of which 15 of those players are playing on minor teams in their affiliation. Each team inn baseball has about 160 players that only play in the minors of which only a handful will ever play in the majors. Like football the GM has to upgrade they lower 16 players of the team roster if they want any hope of winning. Of those 16 players none of them are considered weak in contrast of their entire sport. They are the lower class elite players that the GM is trying to upgrade. The other 150 players per team fall to the wayside and rite when they turn 30 after never playing for the top clubs.
Don't waste good money on the weak who will never improve their standing. Pick out the potential elites and focus on them as the rest are nothing more than dead weight that will drag everyone does to their level..
@@joehobo8868 No, your wrong and billionaires are evil and hate the world and poor people!!!! I'm jealous that I don't have a billion, if I did I wouldn't complain like many.
eh it was mediocre at best.
@@Ap_twsh you are excellent no doubt?!?
Lol too bad his speeches aren't stopping whats happening. . and won't be changing the behaviors of the people committed to keeping it going. . but hey at least we have something to listen to
The most important lesson in this lesson is to strengthen the weak link. Unfortunately our habit of thought is to compete, so the strong links tend to kill the weak links by trying to dominate. So culture has to shift to a new paradigm, citizens must learn value of cooperation, in this way strong links help the weak links to improve and universities like Harvard will invest in other universities helping them to strengthen. All this need a humble attitude of learning.
You have no idea what you’re talking about
@@ronlipsius please share your thoughts, so I expand my limited understanding.
Agreed. I think society we (society) would be well-served to agree on some common philosophy which is conducive to organization
@@westganton common point of agreement used to be welfare of family was for the betterment of members of the family. That idea expanded to tribe, city state and nationhood. Now because we are very closely interconnect, we need to expand that idea, to welfare of the international community or global village, and for this global cohesion and unity to take place, we need to reconsider most fundamental value, which is usefulness of competition, vs. cooperation. Imagine human advancement in all aspects of civilization, when we begin to realize, humanity is one and we are all citizens of one planet.
@@TheVafa95 Global synergy is definitely the goal, but I think we need to start small again and scale up in a more sustainable way to get there. Our cells have achieved prosperity in the form of homeostasis, so we can too, we just need to value the right things to help us get there
Brilliant presentation/lecture.. Malcolm Gladwell has a wonderful way of simplifying and clarifying complexed phenomenon.
L❤VE Malcolm's sneakers!!
NBA basketball teams today have also shifted to having a higher quantity of versatile roleplayers, rather than having more than 1 or 2 stars. This is because it is so easy to get injured in today's game & a star's salary takes up a large proportion of the salary cap. So you have to build depth into your team to last out a full 84 game season and contend in the playoffs which could be another 16 to 28 games.
focusing on what really matters :D i hear ya though
I do not think that players who are already well-paid are going for more pay. The exhilarating experience of playing moments are enduring. The synergy of 1-2 passes that culminates in a goal is the pull factor. And near misses of playing moves that were choreographed in the mind are so powerful to make repeated attempts. Look at those who lost their ball - the energy to get it back is so intense - where does that come from? The "thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat" both are energisers.
1:01
That is exactly, I think, one of the pillars of democracies: the idea that improving society means improving the situation of the people who experience the most hardships in it…
the why shouldn't dogs vote "democracy", not a pillar, but ancient warning of democracies inevitable decay.
Unfortunately that doesnt seem to be what " democracies " accomplish these days.
@@pauldi7268 I don't know if any democracy in history has ever achieved it. I suspect none has made it. But Democracy is a guiding bunch of ideas, while democracies are works in progress...
They should be called the janitor generation since their role will be to clean up all the shit from the previous ones.
Maybe people will “get it” through the sports analogy! Thanks for the usual Gladwell way of explaining things.
Fantastic.
Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favourite authors as he has an uncanny ability to dissect and then explain/articulate using very pragmatic examples using analytics as well as real life examples. Thank you
He talks about sports quite a bit here and one thing that popped in my mind when he mentioned oligarchs choosing star players to play in the Premiere League was the movie Moneyball which focused on baseball and showed that statistics, not star players, were a better thing to focus on when trying to build a winning team.
When he talked about that I was thinking well they spend the big money on 1 or 2 guys not to try to win, but because it will give a greater profit having a big star rather than being a little better team.
@@justindooley2738 I think there are two hidden messages to Moneyball (by Micheal Lews, not Malcolm Gladwell):
Firstly the genius statistical analyst(s) used tools that nobody else was using to gain a competitive first-mover advantage in the industry.
Secondly that really good teamwork (including assigning people to roles in which they are better than average) can beat a individual talent.
Humanity has the potential to create almost heaven right here on earth. Team sports may be a tired old analogy, but my best example is from fifty years ago when I experienced what can happen when a team does their best together.
When he says our university system is insane, that is one of a thousand examples you could use to show how we know a better way but fall short.
If you dwell on our potential as compared to our reality, it can make you insane.
We did quite a bit of progress though... Most of our ancestors would be proud of our cities, technology, and the fact that we started Space Exploration.
We are still on the path. Don't sell ourselves short.
Excellent talk with great analogies for concepts.
Does anyone else notice a big disjunct between the apparent thread and directive reasoning of the strong- Vs weak- link society and the conclusions being inferred and talked about in the Q&A section, where three times it is stated that we need to redistribute wealth, power and education "to the middle", or to the middle class? Malcolm's point about curing malaria is bang-on, and is the correct inference, it seems to me, but where and how do the arguments lead to focussing on the middle of the bell curve rather than the bottom? I thought this was very clear. Ultimately what this room ends up doing is nodding along and pointing the finger at billionaires, all agreeing that more money should be given to them, the already relatively very wealthy middle class. The theory actually supports the need for a devolved democratic process that gives agency and power to the working class.
so thankful for this man and youtube
generations that get separated from its elders have the worst conflicts.
Yes, separated generations repeat mistakes instead of being guided by seniors into new mistakes. New mistakes lead to new learning while repeated ones are repeated by different people across generations. The school system in particular, putting younger teachers in charge going by their 'higher' degrees, separates the experiences of elderly teachers from the younger in charge. Then repeated mistakes keep repeating.
Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.
Vladimir Lenin
Conflicts arise out of the world the elders create.
no that's just a former youth that was separated from or didn't listen to their community elders
As a soccer player, loved that! And that was fascinating to learn about that foundational narrative and as a business person and consultant it's very present
Malcolm Gladwell is one of my heroes🔥
One of mine too. Is there a link to these geniuses of mixed heritage? Including Trevor Noah and beautiful minds of children of mixed marriages.
He was one of mine too until I heard him on Munk debates.
Well what did he say @@gavranarh ?
@@BigDiscussions76 bunch of ad hominems, playing the race card on several occasions, all but accusing his opponents of being supremacists. other than that he wasn't really engaging in the actual debate but instead erecting strawmen and attacking those. He didn't even have the decency to address his interlocutors correctly: he called one of them Doug and his name is Douglas (like calling Chuck someone named Charles, not really appropriate unless explicitly granted the privilege) and he mispronounced the name of the other the entire evening.
in the end the audience swing *away* from Gladwell's side was the biggest ever swing in the history of the debates. it's an interesting topic, you could give it a listen, it's time well spent regardless
Thank you @@gavranarh 🙏
billionaires are not giving money to large universities because they think their sigular importance outweighs group importance of higher education, it's because they A) want to make sure their kids get in, or b) that their name is positively floating around in the halls of power, or c) 'legacy'. It's a club thing, not a research thing.
It's also because billionaires *can't* finance all universities, certainly not in a way that lets them exert any influence. Plus, that's remarkably similar to 'paying taxes'. Billionaires opt to spend money (donate) on things that allow them to have some control over their image, the project, their influence, vs things that don't (taxes). Since donations are deductible from taxes, it's obvious what they do.
The most patriotic thing you can do, other than dying for your country, is PAY TAXES.
Well Stated !
Thanks
The interviewer for all his complaints about atomization and "echo chambers" in society really gives off the impression that his way of thinking is its own self sustaining "echo chamber"
I guess he never heard of Celtics--but that's ok, it was long ago. I love this guy. He can talk about so many things and keep you (or at least me) engrossed.
I was thinking about the Celtics too. In 1986, I saw the Celtics strategy of the whole vs the Lakers strategy of speed, and one man taking the ball down the court.
@@dreamervanroom I'm not a Celtics fan but the 86 Celtics team and the 96 bulls are the best ever. I would put the 73 win warriors in there but ... well they didn't win the title so 😀they are out
Thank you. Celtics and Lakers of the 80's!
THAT was basketball.
Probably talking about Celtics winning 10 championships between '57 and '69.
I swear there are so many lowkey gems like this on youtube. Ima just gatekeep everything take notes digest all this knowledge and use it to my advatage HAHAHA
As a big hoops fan I mostly agree with the analysis of basketball being a star driven sport, but those "random other guys" that filled out the rest of the 90s Bulls roster meaningfully contributed in big moments. John Paxton and Steve Kerr, not Michael Jordan, both hit last second buzzer beater shots to win the Bulls two separate championships. Steve Kerr went on to coach the 2nd greatest team of all time, the Warriors.
Just means people don't understand basketball actually :D
"I would have been nothing without Pippen" ~Michael Jordan
The true star was pippen,rodman,kerr , who enabled.
Anyone can shoot hoops, if there's entire team who babysits and enables you.
obviously his probably the best player of all time still. but claiming that basketball is 1-2 man show is absurd.
that would only come out of someone who has not actually played been in basketball team and played competitively as a young person, highschool, Uni whatever...
Jordan was just carry, other 4 were supports.. just like in todays kids videogames wich are super competitive eSports... like Dota and League of Legends are good examples of 5player esports.. where 1 player is always the Carry, and other 4 need to enable him to carry the team to victory.
@@Microphunktv-jb3kj I think he is missing the important element of teamwork by singling out 'strongest' and 'weakest' links. A team is much more than 5 times the skills of an individual.
ironically the Bulls only started winning after they moved away from the star driven system to involving the rest of the team more. Jordan’s best individual season was 1988. Jordan was always better at involving his team than Kobe.
I like Gladwell but often his analogies miss the mark.
Yes unfortunately this entire talk seems to be built on a foundation of just a few examples .. and super oversimplified. (Are all the organizations and institutions in the world "strong link" or weak? There's no variety??) But then on top of it, even the few supporting examples .. basketball .. well he doesn't understand it as well as he claims to. :/
Top performers attract top performers.
If you are a weak link you will always get overlooked.
Stop looking to others to bring you up.
Get better.
Become the strongest link and you will inspire others to do the same.
not the point of the video, did u even watch it
I could listen to Malcolm talk about anything. Does he have a new book coming out?
Concerning the strong/weak link discussion, it seems that the more complex the institution is, or even simply how many people are involved, is the key factor. The more parts, the weaker any one of them is by default.
And how painful consequences are. In Football (for the Americans: Soccer) Goals are much more valuable than points in Basketball, simply because of the amount you see per game.
This is so incredibly ILLUMINATING!
Sometimes what we need the most is a discussion that clarifies and brings coherency to the complex subjects and ideas we find ourselves immersed in.
Malcolm Gladwell has done this to an incredibly rich and effective degree here.
We the listeners are hugely fortunate, and I hope we will spread these thoughts and this recording far and wide.
The guy at 46:00 wearing "Ok Boomer" is an absolute gem.
I started and I was reheating chicken soup that I've been thinking about all day. Made it yesterday from my Grandmother's recipe mixed together with ingredients we love. Anyway this fell upon me I'd not even clicked it up. So I was kinda listening..so I Love soccer for reasons I believe the ways its played is totally diplomatic plus it works..so that's what grabbed me. So I'm listening again
What a fantastic interview, Malcom has such incredible insight...and as a teacher, THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I was puzzled by the first 5-10 minutes - just couldn't relate to your description of football, then thought "ohhhh, he means THAT football!" hahahaha! Great and thought provoking presentation as always. Thank you! (a fan from the US)
The talk takes place in Europe as the description states.
Yep, the "football" players actually use their feet to kick the ball :)
Yet perhaps this would apply to "American" football just as well?
Yea. the football that´s played 100% with the feet.
@@sloaiza81 sometimes with every other body part except the hands, to be pedantic
We've doubled the workforce by bringing women in....yet people are working longer hours? Does that make sense? I'm a Gen X engineer. I make decent money. But most of the boomer engineers I know have second homes, recreational craft, paid their kid's college, travel constantly...and they've been doing all those things since the time when they were younger than I am now. What's the tell you? It tells you that there's truth to the statement that adding women, allowing unfettered immigration, and offshoring jobs has all had a great impact on pressuring wages lower in real terms. And it's not going to get better. I'm very concerned about my children. Will they be able to even own a primary residence? Will there be any jobs? More and more jobs are going to be automated in the coming decades. When more people compete for a dwindling number of jobs, wages go DOWN. Skills needed for those jobs go UP. Soon there will be no jobs for people with average IQs. What could go wrong?
I laughed when Malcom said I response to 'what should we do to force change?', 'start with the [political arena] and hope...' In other words, he ain't got no answers. He just crank the numbers.
Exactly why Germany was so successfull for a long time: Good education for the masses, starting with Bismarck.
NOT for the masses - but for the select.
Re: the Boeing 737 Max story, iirc it's not pronounced "mahks," it's "em-kas." And it was a retread of an established design with a slight tweak that warranted the mothballed MCAS project viable again (developed for a different purpose but retooled and adapted for the said 737). In short, a Frankenstein product. It was rushed to make the company competitive again and to please their stockholders, with tragic results. Arguably, the FAA is also to blame for their hesitance in grounding the plane.
You got it right, unlike our Malcolm.
He implied it was a "football" mistake, but that sounds very much like "basketball" to me.
Not surprising that Malc doesn't know what he's taking about. He's become a master of spreading nonsense.
Yeah, this speech is just preaching to the choir that want the world to change. It SHOULD change (of course) but nothing he's saying is actually a SIGN of anything changing. Literally the opposite.
Has Gladwell considered a "hockey society?" I thought a Canadian might think of hockey.
Hockey is a sport with the physicality of rugby blended with the flow of football.
In his book The Game, hockey goaltender Ken Dryden says the reason for such a contrast when Canadians would play Europeans in hockey is because Canadians play hockey like rugby while Europeans play hockey like football.
Now that hockey is a world game, we have an adoption of both styles.
Gladwell has a policy of never talking about ice hockey.
He is actually British born. So no wonder football would be his first choice.
@@davidh4374 He does in his microsoft talk
@@DomskiPlays 👍 it's also his leading & repetitive illustation that he uses in his book Outliers.
I was being sarcastic 😁
@@davidh4374 Haha oh thats great then I only saw these two talks of his so I thought you maybe hadn't seen the one I mentioned.
Hockey is a great sport! :D
What an insightful perspective and set of metaphors - excellent
That is what the data says
Malcolm Gladwell is always interesting and compelling. I walk away from each book with a new tool for thinking - tipping point, networks of influencers of different types, intuition vs deep thought. This talk also gives a nice metaphor for thinking about teamwork - is the strength of a team bottom-up or top-down.
However, I found his justifications of structure of the new world frustratingly weak. Certainly a failure by the weakest link cause large effects in high-stakes games. But in his example what about the surgeon that saved the man's life? TopDown talent. What about the team leader who should have enforced checklist procedures (another Gladwell thought tool, I believe)?
The example of income disparity for universities also frustrated me. The point of having elite universities which are over-funded is that a few over-funded centers of excellence with small clusters of sooper-geniuses are producing the rarified ideas that fuel the tech field. The discoveries and ideas that comes out of the single well-funded MIT labs will never come out of a cluster of a dozen moderately well-funded community colleges.
Should we also stop paying the premium to attend an MGlad lecture and instead listen to dozens of free college profs? No!
There is an important place for excellence.
Faith in our common sense of Humanity. We ALL know what it is to feel Human.
Faith in each other's humanity - is the counter to fear of the future.
Empower the weakest links, to choose how to spend their TIME.
How we choose to spend our time is everything. It's the 'why we are here'.
We are not born equal - naturally. Our biological and environmental diversity and personal autonomy (self determination) is our resilience, and becomes our identity.
We are what we think we are. Capable of what we believe we can do.
Our personal unique contribution to the State of Humanity - our energy, intelligence and enterprise.
I do not exist to serve a global business model. My unpaid time spent, in self determined work, is more valuable to Humanity than it is to the economy.
I am a weaker link because my time is wasted looking for money to pay to exit, ( the cost of livibg)
Selling hours in paid work, or investing hours in the pursuit of financial gain. Investing unpaid time in complying with government or industry requirements- recording and reporting about money.
To live, I must spend unpaid time shopping.
To raise the weakest links in all classes of society, the cost of living must not be a barrier to self determination.
Our UNPAID work contribution to Economy AND Humanity must be acknowledged and guaranteed. Returning Faith in the Future. And freedom of self determination.
Available time to spend creating and living in, a healthy, Humane Society.
Henry Ford analysed his cars in the scrapyard and found that one part never degraded or broke. A creative approach would be to make the rest of the car as strong as that part. The mechanists approach is to degrade that part so it wears out at the same time. What he is talking about here is automating human effort. Degrading human individual effort to meet a defined goal. A mechanistic approach. There is room for both football and basketball and you should identify peoples strengths and let them them work to their strengths. Top down approaches do not work. Bottom up is the future. Even in a bottom up approach there is a top, an apex.
Great video! Malcolm gladwell rock's grahere I think hes over simplifying a great deal. It depends on the company or what you are trying to do, rather than everything in the entire economy.
These are the winners (the strong links) each in their respective fields, listening to Malcolm telling them that when they come into their power, they should therefore get rid of the weakest link
thank you for calling the real football football
Pay for the plane ticket and ride to the venue we’ll call it whatever you want 😜
a strong argument for Free National College Education
A bit off, methinks.
1. Wealthy interests will do whatever it takes (even murder and destruction) to keep control of the resources (in fact, most countries wage war in the protection of its “interests”, like oil or access to raw materials or strategic locations). Gen Z will be marginalized, the trend has been relentless since the 80’s but with roots in the days of empire).
2. Gen Z will be mostly redundant, so the future will be how to keep them entertained, distracted, divided and impotent. They will probably receive UI and corporations/governments will fight for share of their income and their “digital labor”. Think The Matrix.
3. Lifespans will easily exceed 120 or even 150 years or more. The wealthy will have first access to the technology and to bionic enhancements and designer babies. Everyone else will be disadvantaged (a new form of racism) by being “normal”. Think Gattica.
4. There may be certain socialist regions where “off-grid” communities will thrive. But nothing will be strictly off grid. Nuclear power, high tech (chips, nanotechnology, AI, finance) needs Big Money that should come from governments, but will probably be funded by large multinational (and mostly unregulated) monopolies. Micro-financing and “digital nomads’ and the gig economy will possibly thrive too, but will be relatively insignificant… and only serve as “products” (labor) to the large corporate machines.
5. Smart farming (localized food production) may thrive and 3D printing will probably change the world into small, independent local communities, connected by social media and virtual reality. There will be very little need or incentive to travel. This could be utopian or dystopian.
6. Entertainment will be the primary industry (after the “infrastructure” industries like energy, AI, medicine, finance, hi-tech gadgetry/appliances, etc.). Mind-enhancement or mental-coping drugs will be ubiquitous (think Brave New World 2.0). Virtual sex may be a huge part of the industry, but AI sex/companion robots may make this largely irrelevant… perhaps a kind of multi-player style of sexual activity or drug cocktails may be a better substitute (intravenously managed by a sexual interface, AI and/or multi-player driven).
7. Sport will become huge. But when everyone is “enhanced”, the kinds of sports that would be popular might be competition between “normies”. Or gladiator-type events may become the most popular spectator sports (think The Running Man). And wealthy people (the Epsteins of the world) will traffic or employ attractive people for bizarre, De Sade type, games. Think The Brave. This already a big industry, barely below the surface but ubiquitous in all countries and political/religious systems.
8. There will be two main classes of people, much more divided than today (in fact, a more extreme version of the current trends in inequality). The wealthy, with longevity and access to the best technologies; and the consumer/workers. There may also be a massive group of outcasts (like Uyghurs, women and laborers in Pakistan, broken African countries, etc.). The rest of us will have lives not unlike the Chinese (who are only protesting because the CCP became obsessively extreme, but could easily have kept a tight social control indefinitely).
A dystopian future (if you’re not amongst the privileged, but a slave-based utopia for today’s children of wealthy families).
I think you’ve summed it up perfectly. Success has always been dependant on the strengths and coordinated work of the underprivileged serfs…..the weakest links!
Life expectancy will take a nosedive with who’s taking over the globe
speculative fiction
Gen Z is already marginalized and your predictions are ridiculous. The only lifespans that might increase are those of the wealthiest
Wow I can't believe how many people get excited about this man, to each his own I guess
Sorry, but if you are not profoundly impressed by Malcolm Gladwell's intellect I think you do not understand what he is communicating - or you are only very superficially understanding it
Well Malcolm. Society has both systems in place in many forms. The trouble is that either side wants to dominate with one side pushing compliance and collectivism through the state and the other is based on individual freedom. The pendulum swings but power of enforcement is still a big factor. The world changes and fear rules. We are in perpetual emergency mode.
Time to build the parallel world. Economic and social.
I'm impressed! An American saying 'football' and actually meaning 'football', not 'saaaker'. This man has his eye on the ball. ⚽⚽⚽
He’s Canadian
@@jaxongoble9987 Ahh! That explains it.
The reason billionaires give all their money to the richest schools is because their goal isn't to make the future better. It's to make themselves look better to other rich people. Greed is literally the only constant. How do you not understand this? I thought you were smart.
On this note, when do you let go/replace the lowest denominator vs. invest in them and try to improve them? For society to improve on the whole, I believe we shouldn't ditch our poor performers and should work to improve them. However, there are certain high stakes fields (like astronauts) where you really want all folks involved to get the job done successfully.
Andrew Bogut catchin strays out here. My man did him dirty. He was a fantastic rim defender and enforcer.
WEF 2016: "You will own nothing and you'll be happy!"
Gladwell despite his snarky tweeting still doesn't understand what motivates the PtB to do philanthropy. Hint: it's about the feeling good and reflected fame, not about the doing good
Individuals are to society what cells are to the human body. We even organize for the same reasons - resilience and synergy. These aren’t really groundbreaking ideas once you realize that we wouldn’t even exist without them in action
Ok, cell-man.
@@jakecostanza802 As are you
@@westganton gee, thanx, I was going through an identity crisis and almost felt like a real human, but you clarified my mind.
@@jakecostanza802 We’re more than our cells, there would be no point in them organizing otherwise. We just have a lot in common with them and I like making it obvious
@@westganton we have a lot in common with oh so many things.
Another great talk from Malcolm Gladwell. He always has such a unique, insightful viewpoint on things.
However, I'm not sure the 737 max is a good example to use . As I understand, it was a failure of management. A decision was made not to recertify it as a new plane amid protests of the engineering team.
The main goal of professional football teams is not necessarily to win but to make money! Ronaldo jerseys sell a lot more than above average Joe jerseys....
There wouldn’t be a Ronaldo to sell jerseys if he didn’t have great teammates to give him goal scoring opportunities.
@@karagi101 Exactly right!
Love the talk but the Boeing analogy isn't accurate if you know anything about aerospace. It had nothing to do with the two scenarios. Boeing tried to cut corners and put a big engine on a small plane so they could compete with Airbus. The plane's CG shifted. The software was an attempt to correct that and they skirted the FAA tests by claiming it was similar to what was there.
We are "strong linked" beings, of course we are still playing by "the old rules" (i.e. basketball). The world that awaits Gen Z is not a "football" model, but rather a fractured version of the "basketball" model. The "elite" will become all knowing AIs with access to entire swaths of human collective thought and the rest of us (i.e. "weak links of the team") are just nodes in the system. There is no incentive for the society to develop the "weak links".
You should be the presenter here. More sense.
They falsely assume being successful and achieving leads to happiness and fulfillment.
God bless this man.
Add this to the expanding "It's a feature, not a bug" file. Elites care very little about the System working better; it's already working fine for them. And he should know that. And this analysis remains true only until automation has seized most functions in that System -- in 15 years or less?
👏🏻👍🏼
You are an elite, you just want to play the role of the oppressed.
Entertaining. A good talk despite oversimplified analogies and allegories. The comments below are good as well: football is about money and teams make more money if star players are on the field and rich people donate to elite schools so their kids can get in and so they can have their egos stroked. His praise for Bill Gates' work on malaria is misplaced. I saw first hand the bed net fiasco in sub-Saharan Africa: the locals cut up the malaria bed nets and used them as fish nets and they caught everything - even the small fry which ironically eat mosquito larvae with the affect that mosquito numbers increased making malaria worse in addition to destroying biodiversity in many African aquatic systems. I do wish he had discussed strong vs weak links in the context of democracy.
I like at the end how he talked about the lunacy of the past where a large part of the population was explicitly excluded from being part of the decision making process..... Then realize that the last US Supreme Court Justice was explicitly selected from a tiny fraction of the population (ONLY black women considered, all others need not apply for the highest court in the land).
The vast majority is still excluded. From what I observe.
What I miss in companies presently is the lack of control. All labour and all labourers top and down, ought to be controlled, because we are people with natural faults.
I learned that by reading about the egyptian cultures. Control is necessary, but not with the wipp (like in ancient times), not by yelling, not by working long hours. Indeed, by creating a team with a controlling teamleader. I learn this from own experiences and by the stories of my adult children.
It is great to listen to him talk. Malcolm is fantastic 😊
Didn’t see him in the Munk debates I take it?
Dude spent the entire time race baiting his opponents with straw man nonsense. He’s a smug and arrogant child
Paulson donated to Harvard PRECISELY because it preserves and protects and promotes the structure in which he personally prospered. It does not change the ability to concentrate wealth, power and influence. The big question isn’t to wonder why he would do this. The real question is to ask how a liberal democracy and the structure it provides can peacefully adjust. I hope it can although I have seen no evidence that it will. Quite the contrary in 2022.
Well said.
It's not a misunderstanding rather a lack of morals and ethics..
What is the meaning of that statue? That winking eye is freaking me out.
I always led my staff educating and encouraging the lowest on the rung.
Great talk Malc!
I love the shade thrown at KD by not mentioning him on the warriors lol
they had their best season the year before he joined
@@zber9043 best regular season record < two ships
Excellent as usual!
59:52 "I think the next 20 years is going to be a lot better than the last 20 years". Hoo boy, I think that one's going to come back to haunt him.
I have been saying this for years!
Awesome talk and Q&A
I remember when Alan Greenspan some years ago spoke about the increasing financial insecurity of the working class as if it was an achievement of his leadership in the economy, (remember he like many of our present and past rulers of the last few decades are Ayn Rand, neo liberal cult members) which of course it was for the oligarchs and the rest of the ruling class who need exhausted, desperate, uneducated, hopeless masses to do what they're told and not interfere with their objective, tyranny.. but with nicer words wrapped around it like free markets..code for monopoly, innovation...code for techno feudalism (see yanis varoufakis), convenience.. code for self interest at the cost of cruelty, progress...code for dont fuck with what the rich want to do, civility..code for comply. Ahh i feel a bit better after that rant xx
Blueberries, Malcolm great thinker!
Such a great talk
Oligarchs don't buy football teams because they want them to win football games, they buy them for the status. That is the primary game they are playing. And to gain status you don't want to improve the weakest of your team.
"The two other players on that team (the 90s Bulls)...they weren't that great."
Steve Kerr has entered the chat...
It's an analogy about how basketball works, by someone who doesn't play professional basketball. Besides, he used the wrong teams. 1960's Celtics, vs Wilt Chamberlain and his teams. Neither the Bulls nor the Warrior's 2nd level players behind the top ones, were fringe level players; as the Utah Jazz discovered, having even one weak player in the starting lineup can be the cause of losing.
The rest of the team doesn't have to be great; they just can't be terrible.
Very interesting, happy I found this.
Professional sports is not about winning. It’s focus is on selling out every game, selling food, and selling memorabilia. Big name people are hired by various team because they help sell out the game. This is how the owners make their money. It is all about the money. As a fan I focus on the victory but the owner has a different objective.
Malcolm Gladwell either he does not understand how a football club works or he is fooling people with this analogy. If you understand pro sports than you know that the top club of each franchise does not employ weak players at all. The weakest players of any franchise are playing in lower tier leagues. Now I don't know much about football however I do know a little about baseball which works on the same format. A team like the Toronto Blue Jays has a 25 man roster 9 players plays everyday. They also have a 40 man roaster of which 15 of those players are playing on minor teams in their affiliation. Each team inn baseball has about 160 players that only play in the minors of which only a handful will ever play in the majors. Like football the GM has to upgrade they lower 16 players of the team roster if they want any hope of winning. Of those 16 players none of them are considered weak in contrast of their entire sport. They are the lower class elite players that the GM is trying to upgrade. The other 150 players per team fall to the wayside and rite when they turn 30 after never playing for the top clubs.
Don't waste good money on the weak who will never improve their standing. Pick out the potential elites and focus on them as the rest are nothing more than dead weight that will drag everyone does to their level..
True, just enjoy the game. This guy was comparing the complexity of life to a basketball game, I mean how dumb are the audience members to just eat it up.
Re: 46 mins in discussing, multimillion donations to rich universities - Along this same lines, recently, a multimillion dollar donation was made to Habitat for Humanity, and I saw NO mainstream media recognition of this, which is possibly one of the smartest acts of philanthropy in terms of ameliorating the problem of housing for poor families in the U. S.
The reason why I like Habitat for Humanity is because it all over the nation from urban to rural areas. Alot of charities only cater to urban areas and not rural areas where I believe the need is more.
The argument regarding "wokism" misses entirely what issues it is addressing. The idea of hopping across the pond to an entirely different continent, that does not face the same systemic problems that exist in the states, shows to me a disconnect to the reality that those "wokism" is supposed help face.
@@cirilloucazzu4457 haha nice got 'em. Just because you don't get it doesn't mean they are in a "random order" What do you think I was trying to say? Why engage with the comment at all?
The faith portion of the discussion killed it for me. I mistook this for an intellectual conversation. Faith is for indoctrinated twits.
Why should the western elite feel any sense of duty for the lower classes in an ethnically heterogenous, secular society?
When the west was composed of natuon states; themselves composed, overwhelming, of one primary ethnic group (which is sovergin over the government), the elite felt a duty towards those below them in a deep, cultural, even biological way.
This is the beauty of nationalism. It binds the various classes together. Nationalism is the agent which keeps each part of the machine connected.
We've not only lost religion via secularism, but we've lost nationalism as well. There is no longer any glue to hold society together; other than "you should do it because it's nice."
Seems like a new book in progress. Have been seeing this idea in a few of his recent talks.
Like Demming gave up on consulting US auto manufacturers and went to Japan. Ergo Japan became dominant in auto mfg with TQM
The interviewer talking about finding his wife at the workplace is also self reporting on sexual harrasment in the workplace.
The current lot of 'leaders' groomed from basketball contexts find it hard, though not impossible, to start learning a new game called football. Moving from 5 players to 11 players in a much bigger playing field is intimidating for those with little stamina. Learners will thrive and knowers will struggle to stay on. The bet is that new players of new generations would follow the learners and ditch the knowers.
What on earth are you talking about?
The vast majority have no desire to learn anything. They instead prefer to complain about laziness while isolating themselves from the problems they created / contributed to
This is surely true, but that point sort of applies to any progress. As technology and society move forward, it seems like there's always an older generation resisting or complaining about change. But the change is going to happen, and that fact is the only constant. People who are set in their ways too rigidly will struggle and languish, even if those ways may have been the key to their success in the past.
But this particular phenomenon does seem to have especially high risk of hugely impactful collateral damage if the wrong people fail to adapt to this change sooner rather than later, because of the outsized control those few people have over official policymaking. I believe the corporate world will adapt to it more quickly than many governments. The people who currently make the rules got there, typically, via a basketball mentality. And switching to a football approach as an elected lawmaker may literally cost them their power and jobs in toxic political environments like the US Congress.
@@ronlipsius I leaped from games to generalization of teams and linked to the concept of 'knowers' and 'learners'. My apologies for the leaps and confusion.
1. Basketball is a 5-player game like a small project.
2. Football is a 11-player games like a bigger project.
3. The basketball coach who firmly believes that team sports must have a star player is behaving like a 'knower'.
Knowing basketball does not equate to knowing team sports in general.
4. Learners are people who can integrate new info by learning continuosly. A project manager who learns from project members is superior to the one who thinks he or she knows-it-all and tells members what to do.
Thus, learners would thrive over knowers. Gladwell's stories of mavens and connectors are in the same thread.
Thank you Jake, for the clarification.
I love his shirt!
I think Malcom just wants to be in a world that looks just like him.