Malcolm Gladwell is articulate and compelling public speaker. But I am concerned that he is making the same mistake in this Ted Talk as in the original Tipping Point: trying to draw broad conclusions where the data isn't sufficient. It becomes difficult in science to draw conclusions from an uncontrolled experiment when multiple variables are changing at the same time (there are statistical methods such as multivariant regression that can help). Crime levels in a city depend on much more than a stop and frisk policy. Economic conditions, demographics, family cohesion, education levels, and social programs all play a role. So it may be just as wrong to state that stop and frisk played no role in decreasing in crime in the early 2000s as that it did. This policy may have played a role in decreasing crime in the early 2000s, but by the mid 2010s, under evolving social conditions, it might no longer have played a role. Or maybe it did still play a role, and crime levels would have fallen even faster if the policy had been maintained. I think rather than saying "I was right" or "I was wrong", it might make more sense to say "I don't know" or "we can't draw that conclusion".
I will add: all of this mea culpa seems suspiciously in tune with the prevailing opinion in the academia, based on perceived minority victimization, so... If this is actually correlated with a flaw in the original reasoning, that's more like an extraordinary coincidence; that a re-thinking that seems to be based on cultural fads happened ALSO to be in line with the actual data. All kinds of theories can be justified through educated guesses, and they may seem compelling, but are they true? I could easily suggest that maybe the broken window effect is real, but stop and frisk isn't necessarily the answer; the two don't necessarily go together. One could also argue what matters is a widespread perception of order or of lawlessness; in a chaotic society, a police force that is erring on the side of policing everything is an enormous benefit for everyone, signaling a shift towards civility, an opportunity; but when order has been more or less re-established, maybe the same overpolicing may become a burden, especially if it's perceived to target only certain racial groups.
Andrew, I agree. I want to add that the even though the unconstitutional stops might have actually reduced crime, eliminating the unconstitutional stops might have reduced it even further, because those stops might have created more problems. I'm not trying to justify the stops. I'm just focusing on the critical thinking.
This is what I was thinking the entire time I watched. In a way he’s continuing the same guessing gam and this one of the reasons why academics don’t use his works as reference resources and encourage students that they will not be quoting reliable sources by pointing his way.
Malcolm is a very insightful, introspective, intelligent human being. He might not be wrong. Societies change and evolve. But he’s willing to consider his own prior analyses and revisit, review and revise. Good for him. Good for us. Sets an example for others.
I love that TED did this talk and I especially love that the woman doing the questions at the end asked him point blank if he was thinking about the effects on black people. This takes a lot of courage from all sides and I’m glad that we’re in a place as a country and a community to speak like this with each other. Thank you to Malcom Gladwell and to TED and everyone involved!
The RIGHT to LIBERTY should not be a given. ONE is only FREE to the extent that one is willing to take the INTERNAL STAND to be TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE for EVERYONE and EVERYTHING. When we have ALL RISEN to this level of CONSCIOUSNESS then there would be no NEED for LAWS and LAW ENFORCEMENT. This is what needs to be taught in our schools from a very early age and emphasized in our institutions throughout our life. Otherwise, we would all be acting like the wild bull in the proverbial china store. The constitution ought to be changed.... ....Life, liberty (with responsibility) and the pursuit of happiness...
I have always liked Gladwell, but this...this admission of a mistake so honest and open...this is the way. We need way more of this honest discourse in society.
Unfortunately, he's wrong in this video. He's conflating two ideas, and ends up wrong ...... again. His books are popular, but almost all of his material ends up wrong in the end.
Malcolm should really write a book called "What I got wrong". I've read almost all of his books. I find them engrossing. But I think he gets many things wrong. This TED talk increases my respect for him. He should do more like this.
@@healuv almost everyone does this. It's lauded as "the scientific method", have a hypothesis and try to prove it. Takes a lot of conviction to notice you might be wrong and state that. There's actually a major issue in scientific and medical research where null hypothesis isn't published, meaning research is completed, the hypothesis found to be wrong, but this data isn't published, partly because the thinking is who wants to read about a hunch that is wrong.
@@healuv That would be confirmation bias. What if he didn't blind himself to only the data supported his narrative, but having started with a narrative (hypothesis) and acquired the data, either confirmed or discarded his narrative?
More of this! Id love to see TED be a place for examples of admitting mistakes, apologizing in meaningful ways, reparations, tips to young people on how to think critically and see other perspectives.
His curiosity and love for examining the truth is superseding his need to be defensive about being right and I think that’s a wonderful example to set for us all. If you can’t admit you’ve ever been wrong then you’ve failed to grow on two fronts. Normalize this!
I love that someone who is respectful and intelligent as him is going out of his way to say he was wrong! I hope we can all have this level of humility and self understanding.
The irony is that admitting that you are wrong or as an extension of that, "admitting to fragility" of your argument only works if you have the social power and influence. You could be applauded as humble. Some random guy in the street admitting they are wrong will just labeled as wrong and ignored and any influencer or politician admitting to fragility will get no likes or votes. Malcolm G of 20 yrs ago that did that would have killed any chance of success.
"The pen is mightier than the sword." No one ever thinks police will reinforce a policy based on text from a book, or that parents of kids everywhere will start chronicling how long a child is doing a chosen vocation to make sure they hit their 10,000 hours. But this, this talk, is more than accountability... it's journalistic integrity. Which the world can use more of. Thank you Malcolm
Gladwell is embodying the integrity of scientific knowledge. Admitting error, partial error, or even near total error but for a few valuable ideas (or, most painfully but still honorably, a total absence of value at all!) is the essence of honest inquiry. May we all find an appreciative solace in Gladwell’s honesty. There is another less known factor in the diminishing crime rates of the mid-nineties: Roe V Wade There have been multiple studies done on why crime rates dropped in the mid nineties that confirm the (in)famous RvW decision directly impacted a drop in crime in the 90’s. It should be obvious: It dramatically curtailed the birth of unwanted children.
@@darbyl3872 You know. Abortion is legalized in ‘73, and twenty years later there’s a 50% drop in violent crimes in major metropolitan areas. Nationwide there’s a 43% drop in homicides. Multiple factors are of course involved, but most studies have shown that RvW was the major contributing factor. Follow it down if you want, but legal abortion saved millions of lives.
I must have read "The Tipping Point" quite a few times, enjoying every single time but also inevitably thinking that Gladwell was jumping to conclusions at certain "points". However, this talk is so impressive. The courage it must have taken to say these! I sense many sleepless nights. Thank you.
I came to say the same here. At the beginning he used Stop and frisk interchangeably with broken windows theory and made it sound like they are both one and the same, but they are not. Stop and Frisk does not work, the literal broken window theory does work.
He's conflating "stop and frisk" with "broken windows theory". S and F is a constitutional violation. Broken windows continued in use and proves successful over and over in many places.
I remember being puzzled by Malcolm’s conclusion that broken windows policy was a factor in the drop in crime. I can see that having a sense of civic pride is a good thing, but I think civic inclusion is more important. Is it better to have everyone in the tent pissing outside than someone outside pissing in the tent. Try to include everyone in the game, then you will see less people making trouble on the sidelines. How to do this is beyond my abilities give everyone a hope and a reason and a future then we will all be better off.
I commend him for admitting he was wrong about a major issue he was a part of. People learn. People change their minds. Circumstances change. And far too many people hold on to an old position without ever rethinking it. More people should do this.
This talk did two things for me. One, it reinforced the awe and respect I hold for this man and two, I will view most non fiction as the writer’s POV, no matter how confident they seem.
Muy bueno! Admitir los errores cometidos y no repetirlos me parece alentador Errar es humano, perseverar en el error es torpeza Esto último lo aprendí de una maestra de mí escuela primaria en 4to grado
Does 'broken windows' really equal 'stop and frisk'? Can't the police respond to crimes---subway fare evasion, shoplifting, drug use in public--without violating people's rights?
Yes, and that is why he is still wrong. Mr. Gladwell is an amazing writer and very engaging speaker but he isn’t a scientist. Yes, stop and frisk was stopped but all those other things continued - and I lived in NYC at the time, actually, not far from where he lived.
@@monster77777 Stop and frisk was the logical conclusion of the time to broken windows. Petty crime --> serious crime stop and frisk (racial profiling) --> less petty crime stop and frisk --> less serious crime
This is the *most* hopeful thing I have seen this week. This talk helps my faith that good can somehow prevail, as right now America is facing a future of unprecedented evil.
We are in huge trouble. I'm not sure our country will survive this. Last time we had resistance. This time, there's a vacuum and it is being filled with the dregs.
I would posit that “stop and frisk” is a misapplication of the broken window model. A broken window is an example of something wrong/illegal/broken that can be objectively observed. Thinking a young man walking down the street is highly objective/biased thinking. Fixing a broken window is doing the small things that make an area seem as though no one cares about it; if people observe that someone cares about an area, makes others respect it more.
I’m a criminologist and I agree that the focus of the broken windows perspective, and the community policing era that followed, went in the wrong direction. It focused on publicly visible - and easily targeted - examples of crime and disorder while ignoring the root causes like structural economic inequality. Unfortunately, as Gladwell says here, society seems to have not learned this lesson yet.
I agree completely! I have a degree in criminology and I have been putting the broken window theory into practice for years. However, I don’t violate anyone rights in doing so! I organize volunteers to clean and repair urban spaces, giving it the feel that someone cares for the place. In the book, he describes the efforts they took to clean the subway cars. That’s “broken window theory” not the racist profiling that happened with stop and frisk.
I lived in the West Village from ‘93 and read the Tipping Point when it came out. As a fellow Canadian I would recognise Gladwell in local cafes and was always caught between admiration and suspicion as I realised he was just another over confident observer. I remember thinking that his application of Broken Windows missed the point. Broken Windows was about community involvement in clean up and local pride. Getting rid of the subway graffiti, cleaning up abandoned lots, engaging local art, etc were all effective in reducing crime in NYC after the 80s. Stop & Frisk was only a minor aspect of the turnaround and it may have done as much bad as good.
"I thought that if you wanted to win over an audience, you had to communicate certainty. And now I realize that's actually backwards, that you're more capable of winning over an audience when you admit to the uncertainty and the fragility of your position. People want that. They like that, they appreciate that spirit far more. And people are much more likely, I think, to be suspicious of someone who seems falsely certain." - Malcolm Gladwell That was the last sentence he said. It was surprising to me that people feel this way, and it changes my approach to life, and takes a weight off my own shoulders.
INCREDIBLE 👏 I cried and re-watched, and this is a powerful moment in humanity: a talented human learning from their mistakes and trying to be better. I saw myself in both the woman and man in this talk. Thank you so much.
Before: “I thought that if you wanted to win over an audience, you had to communicate certainty.” Now:”… You’re more capable of winning over an audience when you admit to the uncertainty and fragility of your position. People want that. They like that.” I really enjoy reading his books and listening to Revisionist History. But I’d suggest reading this again not for what you want to hear - but for what is there.
There's a logical fallacy here. Malcolm is talking as if 'stop and frisk' was the only aspect of 'broken windows', and that crime is the only aspect of urban decay. The 'broken window' approach is very successful in urban regeneration and should not be dismissed like this.
I will humbly admit that Malcolm Gladwell was the catalyst to my adoption of reading as a pastime. Somewhere between high school and grad school, I’d come to see it as a chore and a pastime of the cultural elites. Thanks, Malcolm, for making it fun again.
Well done Malcolm! This was a great listen - Dave Chang (on his podcast) asked food critics to do something like this to review their reviews years later & reflect on their thought process. Any form of criticism benefits from this.
I never understood the connection between broken windows theory and stop-and-frisk. Broken windows theory was about fixing actual, albeit small, problems in a community, such as property damage and minor crimes, especially ones which were highly visible. It was inherently reactive, not proactive. It was not about punishment or zero-tolerance. Its preventative efficacy came from signalling that the community cared about even small issues and, by extension, that escalating problems were unacceptable. If anything, it should have encouraged investment in community policing and non-police, community-based strategies toward crime reduction and social investment. I've always been fairly confident that Bratton, Giuliani and the NYPD deliberately misrepresented the theory in order to justify racist policies that they wanted to implement no matter what.
I like your take on the broken window theory. Here is mine on stop and frisk. I cannot know what is was like to be a NYC cop back then. However, for at least the last 30 years you would be fired for repeatedly searching persons of interest if you could not articulate a valid reason why the person you were "frisking" probably had a weapon. Definitely read Terry v. Ohio for the start of the case law. Looking "suspicious" is not a legal reason and that's what courts have ruled over and over again on. You do not get to become a police officer unless you know this case law like the back of your hand. No police officer will legally be allowed to search you if he sees a bulge in your pocket that looks like a baggie for drugs. Stop and frisk is only about weapons. I love Gladwell, but not sure why he conflates the two. Can't say how NYPD was run back then but as lawsuit costs against departments grew larger-- you better believe every cop was retrained or fired quickly.
It is also possible that broken windows may have contributed to an improvement in New York as it was at that time but that the better New York which emerged (whether due to broken windows or not) had the conditions in which a move away from broken windows could cause a further improvement. I'm not saying I believe this - but I'm not sure the evidence makes it clearly wrong. I really liked the talk but there can't be variable control in matters like these so it's not cut and dry. The inital conditions are very different. It's great that the city has been able to move away from broken windows and happily all the evidence suggests it should not go back to those injustices. There can be two tipping points here, so I don't know that I MG was necessarily wrong on this. Very humble to address this though. Much love.
Levitt and Dubner studied the drop in crime in NY in the '90s and it was almost entirely attributed to the legalisation of abortion following Roe v. Wade in the '70s. This makes a lot of sense. Policing only explain between 10 and 20%.
Like anything in society it’s probably a combination of many factors. The Roe vs Wade impact on drop in delinquency should not be underestimated. It allowed women from poorer backgrounds to gain control over when they would have children, rather force them to bring up children up into further poverty.
I wonder if the fundamental theory of "broken windows" was sound and just woefully misapplied. What if improving neighborhoods, literally fixing windows, scooping up trash, and making things look nicer at your own expense reduced crime? I've noticed that bad neighborhoods always look bad. They're filled with trash and boarded up windows, and you feel unsafe. Maybe that plays a part; for instance the feeling of being unsafe causes you to lash out more easily. Has anyone tested cleaning up a bad neighborhood and making it look like a super fancy part of town and seeing what that does?
That is literally what broken windows theory actually is, not stop and frisk. It's exactly what you described. One broken window leads to more damage being done because it's the perception nobody cares in the area. You described it just as it was found to be in the original study that led to broken windows theory.
Yeah, it has been tested, it's called "gentrification." Realestate values rise, so governments increase property taxes, so the few landlords who weren't already raising rent are forced to join in... In the end the poor have to leave, thus eliminating from the area those without the resources to hide their faults. The only solution I can see is for the majority of individual lives to be governed by what the KJV calls "Charity." Then they would be safe to rely on, which would help engender a sense of hope. (& we'd stop charging people for putting in thier own resources to make life beautiful.)
Malcolm Gladwell reflects on his mistake in explaining New York's crime drop in 'The Tipping Point'. He admits he was wrong about broken windows policing, as crime continued to fall after stop-and-frisk ended. Gladwell emphasizes the importance of acknowledging uncertainty in journalism.
It's wonderful to see someone admit they got something wrong, but 'broken windows' didn't start with him 25 years ago. It started far earlier, in the 80's and early 90's. Also, enforcing simple laws like jaywalking, public urination, etc is still useful, just don't do stop and frisk of people who DIDN'T commit a crime. The lesson isn't 'don't enforce minor crimes' it's 'don't hassle people who have not committed a crime.' Put another way 'stop and frisk' is not equivalent to 'broken windows' or 'responsive community policing.' it's just one tactic NYC used
This discussion and question period can be applied to a number of disciplines. I applaud Malcolm Gladwell’s willingness to own up to his error or limited view at the time of writing The Tipping Point. If only other people in positions of leadership would be so honest. I am reminded of a podcast in Pitch Fork Economics with MIT economist Anna Stansbury who did a study of economic diversity in the economics profession. Sometimes our own position, where we find ourselves at a point in time and place or our background and life experience influences the questions we ask and therefore the answers we generate.
An honest reappraisal of an earlier position is what journalism and writing is all about. It takes courage and integrity to do so and Malcolm Gladwell has shown both. Qualities that unfortunately are in short supply these days. Thank you.
I believe it takes strong character and integrity to admit to having been wrong about our proclamations, especially for a highly-celebrated author such as Mr Gladwell. Having read many of his works, and after watching this talk, I have increased respect for him. I wish more public figures would follow his lead. Peace.
THIS is the foundation of growth and maturity: the ability to see the errors of your past, recognize their causes, repair their damage, and add skills/processes to avoid similar misters in future.
I don't think I ever thought that stop-and-frisk was the same as broken windows theory. For example, you could implement broken windows theory by being really aggressive about cleaning up graffiti. (It's not fun if it's gone the next day)
That was my takeaway years ago. Kind of like keeping my house uncluttered. When Malcolm mentioned the stop and frisk in this talk, it was like hearing it for the first time...times and thinking have changed and/or huge blind spot? Thanks for your comment.
An inconvenient truth is that the vast most of public policy is largely built on aspirational values, misconceptions, and bias rather than data, science, or an ability to admit fault.
I just listened to this 3 days after the 2024 presidential election. Only with a caveat do I agree with Gladwell’s conclusion that “people” want thoughtful expressions/explanations of opinions rather than certainty, rather than emphatic declarations that an opinion is right. My caveat is that people differ widely from each other on that preference and any one person can differ on their preference depending on the subject. Know your audience. Warm up an audience to open-mindedness if you realize their starting point calls for it. And if your read of the audience is that only certainty speaks to them, work with THAT audience. If the audience is reading your message rather than listening, of course explanations have a better chance of getting through.
Maybe Police stop-and-frisk'ing innocent people was not a prevention of a "broken window" but a "broken window" itself. Thus removing this practice would actually decrease crime. ;-)
Thanks for revisiting this. However, there are some ongoing flaws with this analysis as well. One mechanism well researched for behavior change is interruption and redirection. That may be part of the explanation for the decline. In addition without some sort of experimental reversal, these anecdotes tell an incomplete story at best, and don’t provide enough control over the variables to make a firm conclusion. Finally, something can dually be effective, like stop and frisk or policing minor crimes, and unethical at the same time. It’s important moving forward to do deeper dives to better understand the mechanisms around the ebb and flow of crime, so that we can better plan and minimize it.
Another thought that occurred to me is as to whether the factors leading to the tipping point are dependent on the social context. That would however mean that most tipping points could not be reproduced for the same population in the future.
Great delivery. I live by the fundamentals of “don’t believe everything you read. Even if you wrote it”. The trouble of education and open mindedness is we have to be wrong a lot to learn such powerful lessons and even then , it doesn’t stop. We will get to be wrong again and learn from it. Chalk it up to both the best and worst parts of the human experience
I applaud you Malcolm. We need more journalists like you. We also need to evaluate how we view the people around us. I do believe that the media keeps us in turmoil most of the time.
16:04 "You’re more capable of winning over an audience when you admit to the uncertainty and fragility of your position. People want that, they like that. They appreciate that spirit far more. And people are much more likely to be suspicious of someone who seems falsely certain." This aged badly pretty quickly!
I Like Gladwell’s books, and enjoy his podcast, and am comfortable saying that even while admitting he was wrong, his ego shines through claiming credit for why everyone believes something.
Stop and frisk was one component of the broken windows judicial system, but there were other components that were as important, or more important, than stop and frisk. The end result is that a societal intolerance of minor crimes results in a reduction of major crimes, and if perpetrators of all crimes, both misdemeanors and felonies alike, fear the repercussions of committing that crime, we all live in a safer place.
It takes great courage, humility, conviction to truth and the purpose of one's craft to make a public apology as this. Well done Malcolm Gladwell and hope it, in some small way, soothes many who have been wronged by this opinion in any way. Relevant and essential in America's current political context.
@@elegantcourtier All the more reason for why it took courage and, more importantly, humility to do this.. because there were consequences. I doubt he played a big part in it because it was already going on.. he just ended up strengthening it in the public opinion a bit more. Most people would just keep quiet and get on with selling their next bestselling book and let the success muffle and silence his past mistakes. He stood on a stage and admitted his mistake when almost no one even asked about it.
His claim so that it just went away by itself. Just like diseases spike and fall, so too the crime. It mentioned the "natural intelligence of people" being a cause. I'm not sure if this is a claim about education, or saying that NYC jumped 30 IQ points in 10 years. But I agree, the why is totally obfuscated.
I am concerned that we are overlooking a key point here. While like everyone I respect his brilliance, he is also a biracial Canadian (Jamaican Mother and English Father) who came here and adopted the lens racism and white supremacy that insidiously hypnotizes migrants and immigrants alike into points of view that DISREGARD the humanity of African Americans in this country without batting an eye. Admission of flawed point of view does not repair broken hearts or sympathetic nervous systems shattered by stop and frisk. And reflecting that he was speaking to the moment does not indemnify him from the irreparable damage, anxiety and suffering endured by so many at the hands of a policy that while he did not create it, his work still amplified making him complicit in its outcomes. Much Respect to him and this talk but I will wait for a sequel that considers a bigger point of view than just a moment in time, but one that lets the humanity of the disenfranchised be his guide.
The primary cause of the crime drop was roe v. Wade, as researched by Steven Levitt et al. It's an uncomfortable explanation, but it is also the correct one. I would have hoped Malcolm would've gotten around to telling everyone the actual primary cause.
I don’t remember the “stop and frisk” being a huge part of the story - granted I read that book over 15 years ago. Enforcing penalties for literally broken windows and jumping turnstiles and peeing on the sidewalk still seems like a reasonable approach. Did they still e force those crimes after the Floyd case? Also we were in economic rise trends in both 1993-2000 and 2013-2019. Could that have played a more significant role in crime dropping? Usually crime and economic prosperity are anti-correlated.
The Freakonomics podcast actually has an episode saying that crime and the well-being of the economy are not correlated. This idea is also perpetuated by journalists and politicians.
Malcolm is one of my favourite authors! Read most of his books, started with the Tipping Point. I saw the world in a whole new way after that! Even if everything has not proven to be totally accurate, it is still an excellent book imo! The fact that he now admits it is kudos for him! Change your thinking when new info. comes your way has always been a useful tool and how we move forward!
Malcolm you argue that the Floyd case removing stop and frisk caused the drop in crime. But you also implied that the beginning of stop and frisk (broken windows) reduced crime. These temporal events are classic 'fooled by randomness' causality traps. Crime might have continued to drop regardless of the Floyd cases outcome. Changing demographics, economic changes, changes to a concentrated number of repeat offenders (your tipping point arguments) all would have some causality and there could be many more. RARELY is life about 1 variable, I learned this by living 70 years on earth.
What a great talk. However, he’s conflating Broken Windows and stop, question and frisk. Related but two different ideas. He also failed to understand , or at least to mention, that the NYPD was unique in the way it used SQF. He makes claims science can’t confirm. But, that being said, his “beliefs” about crime in NYC are interesting and compelling - just not backed by science. But I still love his books!
My own feeling is that Malcolm's brand was charismatic overstatement, and his fame largely derives from that. I became aware of Gladwell from his first TED talk, and I have always had reservations and neatly he ties his bows. Microsoft became a trillion dollar corporation on the back of illegal business practices in the 1990s, and they got to keep their ill-gotten gains, so I can hardly hold it against Malcolm, who has now at least accepted responsibility.
Better than TED talks and UA-cam snippets, read Gladwell’s books. He is a very stimulating writer. He presents unique reflections and ideas. Judge him on his writing, not his pedantry.
10,000 hours. Broken Windows. I've never been a Malcolm Gladwell fan and have always bristled when friends espouse his thoughts as gospel. Notice how he subtly throws journalists under the bus and much of the crowd applauds. I'm happy to see him standing here and giving a mea culpa, but there is still a lot of hubris in his delivery, even in his emphatic profession that you can "win over people" when you admit the uncertainty of the your position. Writers know writing is about knowing your audience, and I think Malcolm was very lucky to have accidentally found an audience ripe for seeing the world through his lens. Good on Malcolm. Good on TED. Still a bit self-righteous. And as @gfxpimp says below, he should do more of this, and love @gfxpimp's idea of him writing a book "what I got wrong."
We use the term "theory" in a confusing way. For many people, it's really "hypothesis" that they mean when they say theory. Hypothesis is what one believes is an explanation for a given phenomenon. It becomes a theory when it is supported by a lot of evidence which are still falsifiable. All theories are open to the attempt to falsify them, and they should be. That's how we move knowledge forward. Nothing should be FORCED to be static.
So Malcom is claiming Stop-and-Frisk is unrelated to crime rate, or Stop-and-Frisk caused the crime rate to go up? It seems he is implying the later, with stats of crime rate falling after the policy was stopped. If so, what is the explanation? This Ted Talk just begs more questions.
Gladwell seems to be as confident now that his previous conclusion was wrong as he was previously confident that he was right. This caused me to be skeptical of Gladwell's logic for the first time. Every time I have heard him talk before, I guess I have accepted his logic and reasoning without my typical skepticism partly because his ideas are often so fresh and appealing. But for the first time, I notice he seems to draw specific conclusions about things when it now suddenly seems there actually may be many uncontrolled variables and potential alternative explanations that might be mundane or simply not considered by him. Hmmm . . .
I understand accepting partial guilt if your words are accepted as the absolute truth. But Gladwell's work is by definition 'opinion pieces' - very insightful, but not based on self-collected research data, which in itself should be prefaced with: 'this is true now.'
Not buying it. Maybe broken windows was the impetus for setting a social norm. For example, would smoking in restaurants return if it couldn't be enforced. I don't think so. Social norms are powerful.
Huh? So you think crime dropped because of stop & frisk, and then once stopped, somehow social norms to not commit crimes is the reason? What data besides your gut suggests this?
The past is a foreign country - this trope keeps coming true. The second part of the original saying is something like we can't go there, we can only imagine. Don't be too hard on yourself, Malcolm Gladwell, nobody's perfect. And a lot of high school principals and politicians need to hear your mea culpa.
I couldn't help noticing that he just gave another simple (simplistic?) explanation to crime decline as if he "knew what the answer to the story was", instead of saying that that is what he believes happened, as he claims he should have done in the first place.
Well, good on you, Malcolm Gladwell. "I was wrong" is not a popular thing to say, although many, many people should be saying it. I hope that this video is an early sign of a tipping point toward humility. Make admitting being wrong a competitive meme on TikTok and X: it could the new virtue that everybody wants to signal. But why apologize for being over-confident as a youth? Something he had no control over, being by definition young, and unaware? Admitting being wrong is not the same as apologizing. The one doesn't necessarily require the other. Youth is for making mistakes; middle age is for acknowledging them and trying not to repeat them. Can't learn if you don't make mistakes.
Every human being is allowed to hypothesize about why something is. Our responsibility for being able to "posit" a theory about a situation in our attempt to establish cause/effect is to TEST that hypothesis, not cherry pick single data points that support our story, but to see if analogous data/situations could be analyzed to support our assertion or to directly test our theory and allow for peer review of our methodology and the results - allowing for repeatability of the results to establish its robustness. This is the scientific method, and its also how we learn. Let's celebrate Malcolm's admission that he was wrong, but more importantly let us celebrate those who do good science, whether that be social science or harder sciences (physics, etc.) who let the data tell them the story, or at least how to correct their hypothesis and retest. Life and learning is hard work. Let's get to it.
I'm not in the habit of insulting people, but with all due respect, this individual is acting as if there is no such thing as 'science' or 'intellectual rigor' or 'experimental design' or the 'scientific method' or 'evidence'. There is nothing keeping this individual from BEING an actual scientist and DOING actual science. Instead, he accepts BELIEF as if it were a function of science, when he could actively and honestly pursue the integrity of the scientific method. Instead of science, he embraces his own ignorance and incompetence and habit and inertia. We all have a choice...this is his choice. Peace.
Thank you for continuing to gather data and adjusting your conclusions. It's evidence of your evolution as a truly trustworthy journalist. All the best.
I was expecting he will say why it dropped after the stop of stop and frisk? What if the drop is because of fake cases stopped? What if the actual crime has gone up? Will it help to compare records of convicted crimes
It's really crazy cuz the drops were much smaller than the initial drop. And crime rates have risen again since 2018. The real problem with NYC is that they have neglected all infrastructure in order to pursue social policy.
The age old problem of correlation not being causation. Crime in New York could have gone down for any one of a hundred or more different factors but more likely some combination of several of them. The age demographic of the population could have effected crime. Affluence among the population, Poverty levels etc. Linking crime numbers to anything based on correlation is always suspicious. It could be just as easy to link the crime drop to video games or the rise in pirate costumes. Obviously some factors are more likely than others but it isn't exactly a lab experiment where you can control for variables. It's the real world and it's a very complex system. This was a very brave talk. Thank you for doing it.
Would it sound unkind to suggest journalists are trained story tellers. So when it comes to engineering, criminology and even the weather they are not experts to be an expert take years of specialised training. So how can the average person get a reasonable understanding if all they get is the story tellers version of events.
Has anyone considered that "broken windows" was around just long enough to change the culture around NY and removing it from practice revealed that benefit? Without having applied "broken windows" that second or first drop in crime might not have happened. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
Malcom is wrong about being wrong. Broken window theory is just about signalling that nothing is being done about aberrant behaviour, such as crime. It signals that no one cares. 'Stop and frisk' might have been one solution the police force introduced in New York city to signal they cared and were serious about stopping crime. Perhaps this worked at the time but things change and adapt. Perhaps now there are other mechanisms in place to help this 'broken window theory' signalling problem. That doesn't mean 'Broken window theory' is incorrect; just might mean there are other ways its being addressed now. Think its important to note that Broken Window Theory is a very important concept that has been well tested and can be valuable to numerous cities and countries today which suffer from such a problem - small, negative signs add up!
I’m reminded of his podcast when I watch this… ‘revisionist history’. He may genuinely believe his analysis was wrong then; I’m inclined to believe it’s wrong now. He should read his book again.
He apologizes, notices something few folks noticed and is trying to make up for it. Then this pompous woman comes out and plays a T-ball version of tough journalist. Not called for. Not clever. Kind of embarrassing.
Malcolm Gladwell is articulate and compelling public speaker. But I am concerned that he is making the same mistake in this Ted Talk as in the original Tipping Point: trying to draw broad conclusions where the data isn't sufficient. It becomes difficult in science to draw conclusions from an uncontrolled experiment when multiple variables are changing at the same time (there are statistical methods such as multivariant regression that can help). Crime levels in a city depend on much more than a stop and frisk policy. Economic conditions, demographics, family cohesion, education levels, and social programs all play a role. So it may be just as wrong to state that stop and frisk played no role in decreasing in crime in the early 2000s as that it did. This policy may have played a role in decreasing crime in the early 2000s, but by the mid 2010s, under evolving social conditions, it might no longer have played a role. Or maybe it did still play a role, and crime levels would have fallen even faster if the policy had been maintained.
I think rather than saying "I was right" or "I was wrong", it might make more sense to say "I don't know" or "we can't draw that conclusion".
this is the smart comment I was looking for and wanted to write something similar myself! Good job!!
I will add: all of this mea culpa seems suspiciously in tune with the prevailing opinion in the academia, based on perceived minority victimization, so... If this is actually correlated with a flaw in the original reasoning, that's more like an extraordinary coincidence; that a re-thinking that seems to be based on cultural fads happened ALSO to be in line with the actual data.
All kinds of theories can be justified through educated guesses, and they may seem compelling, but are they true?
I could easily suggest that maybe the broken window effect is real, but stop and frisk isn't necessarily the answer; the two don't necessarily go together.
One could also argue what matters is a widespread perception of order or of lawlessness; in a chaotic society, a police force that is erring on the side of policing everything is an enormous benefit for everyone, signaling a shift towards civility, an opportunity; but when order has been more or less re-established, maybe the same overpolicing may become a burden, especially if it's perceived to target only certain racial groups.
Andrew, I agree.
I want to add that the even though the unconstitutional stops might have actually reduced crime, eliminating the unconstitutional stops might have reduced it even further, because those stops might have created more problems.
I'm not trying to justify the stops. I'm just focusing on the critical thinking.
I agree. Maybe the drop in crime is attributed to gentrification.
This is what I was thinking the entire time I watched. In a way he’s continuing the same guessing gam and this one of the reasons why academics don’t use his works as reference resources and encourage students that they will not be quoting reliable sources by pointing his way.
Malcolm is a very insightful, introspective, intelligent human being. He might not be wrong. Societies change and evolve. But he’s willing to consider his own prior analyses and revisit, review and revise. Good for him. Good for us. Sets an example for others.
I love that TED did this talk and I especially love that the woman doing the questions at the end asked him point blank if he was thinking about the effects on black people. This takes a lot of courage from all sides and I’m glad that we’re in a place as a country and a community to speak like this with each other. Thank you to Malcom Gladwell and to TED and everyone involved!
When he was haunted by the ghost of white guilt? 😂 I think everyone involved is taking themselves quite a bit too seriously
@@PhoebeFayRuthLouise your assumptions are wrong, as are most. Broken glass theory is true, stop and frisk was just the wrong solution.
Malcolms mom is from Jamacia.
The RIGHT to LIBERTY should not be a given.
ONE is only FREE to the extent that one is willing to take the INTERNAL STAND to be TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE for EVERYONE and EVERYTHING.
When we have ALL RISEN to this level of CONSCIOUSNESS then there would be no NEED for LAWS and LAW ENFORCEMENT.
This is what needs to be taught in our schools from a very early age and emphasized in our institutions throughout our life.
Otherwise, we would all be acting like the wild bull in the proverbial china store.
The constitution ought to be changed....
....Life, liberty (with responsibility) and the pursuit of happiness...
The courage to accept that you got wrong..I love his books.
I have always liked Gladwell, but this...this admission of a mistake so honest and open...this is the way. We need way more of this honest discourse in society.
Wisdom is the ability to see when you are wrong, empathy is the drive to tell people about it.
And maybe he should pay some of the money he made back.
Unfortunately, he's wrong in this video. He's conflating two ideas, and ends up wrong ...... again.
His books are popular, but almost all of his material ends up wrong in the end.
Malcolm should really write a book called "What I got wrong". I've read almost all of his books. I find them engrossing. But I think he gets many things wrong. This TED talk increases my respect for him. He should do more like this.
He did a podcast after his disastrous debate with Douglas Murray. But he was wrong about what he said he got wrong in the podcast
I feel he starts with a narrative first and finds data that supports his narrative.
@@healuv almost everyone does this. It's lauded as "the scientific method", have a hypothesis and try to prove it. Takes a lot of conviction to notice you might be wrong and state that. There's actually a major issue in scientific and medical research where null hypothesis isn't published, meaning research is completed, the hypothesis found to be wrong, but this data isn't published, partly because the thinking is who wants to read about a hunch that is wrong.
scientific method is falsification paradigm of karl popper rather than finding data which is supportive
@@healuv That would be confirmation bias. What if he didn't blind himself to only the data supported his narrative, but having started with a narrative (hypothesis) and acquired the data, either confirmed or discarded his narrative?
More of this! Id love to see TED be a place for examples of admitting mistakes, apologizing in meaningful ways, reparations, tips to young people on how to think critically and see other perspectives.
I am so amazed that the entire video is devoted to explaining him being wrong. It's definitely good to have more of this.
Agreed. Less certainty, more curiosity.
It's called "faux humility" or "humble bragging."
I appreciate the courage it takes to admit you were wrong and that your mistake had real negative impacts on people. Well done!
Ok now pay is back some of the money we paid for your books. You know, because you were wrong.
I’m not sure it took any great courage for him to say he was wrong. He’s simply playing to a different gallery.
@@andybaldmanthis is some backwards logic. You paid for the book, and now he gets to laugh all the way to the bank 😂
@@HM-xe8ml It's almost like you get my point.
His curiosity and love for examining the truth is superseding his need to be defensive about being right and I think that’s a wonderful example to set for us all. If you can’t admit you’ve ever been wrong then you’ve failed to grow on two fronts. Normalize this!
Inspo.
I love that someone who is respectful and intelligent as him is going out of his way to say he was wrong! I hope we can all have this level of humility and self understanding.
I admire people who can admit they were wrong, and question the situation again.
This is a big problem in society today. Nowadays people seem to act like admitting you were wrong about anything is a sign of weakness.
Let's see Dan Ariely attempt that.
The irony is that admitting that you are wrong or as an extension of that, "admitting to fragility" of your argument only works if you have the social power and influence. You could be applauded as humble. Some random guy in the street admitting they are wrong will just labeled as wrong and ignored and any influencer or politician admitting to fragility will get no likes or votes. Malcolm G of 20 yrs ago that did that would have killed any chance of success.
"The pen is mightier than the sword." No one ever thinks police will reinforce a policy based on text from a book, or that parents of kids everywhere will start chronicling how long a child is doing a chosen vocation to make sure they hit their 10,000 hours. But this, this talk, is more than accountability... it's journalistic integrity. Which the world can use more of. Thank you Malcolm
Gladwell is embodying the integrity of scientific knowledge.
Admitting error, partial error, or even near total error but for a few valuable ideas (or, most painfully but still honorably, a total absence of value at all!) is the essence of honest inquiry.
May we all find an appreciative solace in Gladwell’s honesty.
There is another less known factor in the diminishing crime rates of the mid-nineties:
Roe V Wade
There have been multiple studies done on why crime rates dropped in the mid nineties that confirm the (in)famous RvW decision directly impacted a drop in crime in the 90’s.
It should be obvious: It dramatically curtailed the birth of unwanted children.
That case was in what year???
@@darbyl3872 You know. Abortion is legalized in ‘73, and twenty years later there’s a 50% drop in violent crimes in major metropolitan areas.
Nationwide there’s a 43% drop in homicides.
Multiple factors are of course involved, but most studies have shown that RvW was the major contributing factor.
Follow it down if you want, but legal abortion saved millions of lives.
I must have read "The Tipping Point" quite a few times, enjoying every single time but also inevitably thinking that Gladwell was jumping to conclusions at certain "points". However, this talk is so impressive. The courage it must have taken to say these! I sense many sleepless nights. Thank you.
The broken windows bit of broken windows actually still works. Keeping public spaces in a good state of repair does make people treat them better.
And I don't think he's refuting that part.
I came to say the same here. At the beginning he used Stop and frisk interchangeably with broken windows theory and made it sound like they are both one and the same, but they are not. Stop and Frisk does not work, the literal broken window theory does work.
He's conflating "stop and frisk" with "broken windows theory". S and F is a constitutional violation. Broken windows continued in use and proves successful over and over in many places.
I remember being puzzled by Malcolm’s conclusion that broken windows policy was a factor in the drop in crime. I can see that having a sense of civic pride is a good thing, but I think civic inclusion is more important. Is it better to have everyone in the tent pissing outside than someone outside pissing in the tent. Try to include everyone in the game, then you will see less people making trouble on the sidelines. How to do this is beyond my abilities give everyone a hope and a reason and a future then we will all be better off.
@kevincurrie2052 broken windows theory addresses physical order/disorder, social inclusion has to do with social order/disorder. Separate issues.
I commend him for admitting he was wrong about a major issue he was a part of. People learn. People change their minds. Circumstances change. And far too many people hold on to an old position without ever rethinking it. More people should do this.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Great talk Malcolm. I appreciate your reflecting thoughts on the Tipping Point.
This talk did two things for me. One, it reinforced the awe and respect I hold for this man and two, I will view most non fiction as the writer’s POV, no matter how confident they seem.
Muy bueno! Admitir los errores cometidos y no repetirlos me parece alentador Errar es humano, perseverar en el error es torpeza Esto último lo aprendí de una maestra de mí escuela primaria en 4to grado
Muchas gracias!!❤
Does 'broken windows' really equal 'stop and frisk'? Can't the police respond to crimes---subway fare evasion, shoplifting, drug use in public--without violating people's rights?
Yes, and that is why he is still wrong. Mr. Gladwell is an amazing writer and very engaging speaker but he isn’t a scientist. Yes, stop and frisk was stopped but all those other things continued - and I lived in NYC at the time, actually, not far from where he lived.
What is he talking about??? Stop and Frisk is not the same thing as Broken windows.
Democrats don't want crime to stop. They see crime as a form of reparations.
@@monster77777 Stop and frisk was the logical conclusion of the time to broken windows.
Petty crime --> serious crime
stop and frisk (racial profiling) --> less petty crime
stop and frisk --> less serious crime
Do police have to respond to everything? Why? Couldn't other agencies deal with this?
Being able to see we had it wrong and being able to admit accountability... these are tools we all need for society to grow. Thank you.
This is the *most* hopeful thing I have seen this week. This talk helps my faith that good can somehow prevail, as right now America is facing a future of unprecedented evil.
We are in huge trouble. I'm not sure our country will survive this. Last time we had resistance. This time, there's a vacuum and it is being filled with the dregs.
I would posit that “stop and frisk” is a misapplication of the broken window model. A broken window is an example of something wrong/illegal/broken that can be objectively observed. Thinking a young man walking down the street is highly objective/biased thinking. Fixing a broken window is doing the small things that make an area seem as though no one cares about it; if people observe that someone cares about an area, makes others respect it more.
I’m a criminologist and I agree that the focus of the broken windows perspective, and the community policing era that followed, went in the wrong direction. It focused on publicly visible - and easily targeted - examples of crime and disorder while ignoring the root causes like structural economic inequality. Unfortunately, as Gladwell says here, society seems to have not learned this lesson yet.
I agree completely! I have a degree in criminology and I have been putting the broken window theory into practice for years. However, I don’t violate anyone rights in doing so! I organize volunteers to clean and repair urban spaces, giving it the feel that someone cares for the place. In the book, he describes the efforts they took to clean the subway cars. That’s “broken window theory” not the racist profiling that happened with stop and frisk.
He was right about the broken window theory, but racist people took it the wrong way and too far
He also conveniently forgets that “stop-and-frisk” was not advocated for in the “Goetz” chapter of his book.
I lived in the West Village from ‘93 and read the Tipping Point when it came out. As a fellow Canadian I would recognise Gladwell in local cafes and was always caught between admiration and suspicion as I realised he was just another over confident observer. I remember thinking that his application of Broken Windows missed the point. Broken Windows was about community involvement in clean up and local pride. Getting rid of the subway graffiti, cleaning up abandoned lots, engaging local art, etc were all effective in reducing crime in NYC after the 80s. Stop & Frisk was only a minor aspect of the turnaround and it may have done as much bad as good.
"I thought that if you wanted to win over an audience, you had to communicate certainty. And now I realize that's actually backwards, that you're more capable of winning over an audience when you admit to the uncertainty and the fragility of your position. People want that. They like that, they appreciate that spirit far more. And people are much more likely, I think, to be suspicious of someone who seems falsely certain."
- Malcolm Gladwell
That was the last sentence he said. It was surprising to me that people feel this way, and it changes my approach to life, and takes a weight off my own shoulders.
"This is what I believe happened now."
Learning is journey, not a destination.
INCREDIBLE 👏 I cried and re-watched, and this is a powerful moment in humanity:
a talented human learning from their mistakes and trying to be better.
I saw myself in both the woman and man in this talk. Thank you so much.
Before: “I thought that if you wanted to win over an audience, you had to communicate certainty.” Now:”… You’re more capable of winning over an audience when you admit to the uncertainty and fragility of your position. People want that. They like that.” I really enjoy reading his books and listening to Revisionist History. But I’d suggest reading this again not for what you want to hear - but for what is there.
Decency is very much appreciated in these dark days. That was very brave to do.
This kind of honesty is very rare. This may be the last of its kind. Thank you dear Malcolm.
DEF not the last.
You are also welcome to be a great example.
There's a logical fallacy here. Malcolm is talking as if 'stop and frisk' was the only aspect of 'broken windows', and that crime is the only aspect of urban decay. The 'broken window' approach is very successful in urban regeneration and should not be dismissed like this.
That's the mistake this talk is all about. Watch it again.
Admitting your mistakes on a stage like this ... that's rare.
“I believe what happened now,” well said. Broken windows was one of many things happening, not the only thing. There a very few absolutes. Good talk
I will humbly admit that Malcolm Gladwell was the catalyst to my adoption of reading as a pastime. Somewhere between high school and grad school, I’d come to see it as a chore and a pastime of the cultural elites. Thanks, Malcolm, for making it fun again.
Knowledge = power 👊🏽 Glad you found your way back into reading!!
Malcolm Gladwell is Canadian. We apologize all the time. One might say we're known for it. I'm sorry if that's too in your face....
I am French Canadian living in the US... I do this, apologise a lot, I wonder why that is...
Lol. You got that from the British
As a Canadian, saying “ *sorry* “ has a range of meanings beyond an apology.
Well done Malcolm! This was a great listen - Dave Chang (on his podcast) asked food critics to do something like this to review their reviews years later & reflect on their thought process. Any form of criticism benefits from this.
I never understood the connection between broken windows theory and stop-and-frisk. Broken windows theory was about fixing actual, albeit small, problems in a community, such as property damage and minor crimes, especially ones which were highly visible. It was inherently reactive, not proactive. It was not about punishment or zero-tolerance. Its preventative efficacy came from signalling that the community cared about even small issues and, by extension, that escalating problems were unacceptable. If anything, it should have encouraged investment in community policing and non-police, community-based strategies toward crime reduction and social investment. I've always been fairly confident that Bratton, Giuliani and the NYPD deliberately misrepresented the theory in order to justify racist policies that they wanted to implement no matter what.
I like your take on the broken window theory. Here is mine on stop and frisk. I cannot know what is was like to be a NYC cop back then. However, for at least the last 30 years you would be fired for repeatedly searching persons of interest if you could not articulate a valid reason why the person you were "frisking" probably had a weapon. Definitely read Terry v. Ohio for the start of the case law. Looking "suspicious" is not a legal reason and that's what courts have ruled over and over again on. You do not get to become a police officer unless you know this case law like the back of your hand. No police officer will legally be allowed to search you if he sees a bulge in your pocket that looks like a baggie for drugs. Stop and frisk is only about weapons. I love Gladwell, but not sure why he conflates the two. Can't say how NYPD was run back then but as lawsuit costs against departments grew larger-- you better believe every cop was retrained or fired quickly.
It is also possible that broken windows may have contributed to an improvement in New York as it was at that time but that the better New York which emerged (whether due to broken windows or not) had the conditions in which a move away from broken windows could cause a further improvement. I'm not saying I believe this - but I'm not sure the evidence makes it clearly wrong. I really liked the talk but there can't be variable control in matters like these so it's not cut and dry. The inital conditions are very different. It's great that the city has been able to move away from broken windows and happily all the evidence suggests it should not go back to those injustices. There can be two tipping points here, so I don't know that I MG was necessarily wrong on this. Very humble to address this though. Much love.
Levitt and Dubner studied the drop in crime in NY in the '90s and it was almost entirely attributed to the legalisation of abortion following Roe v. Wade in the '70s. This makes a lot of sense. Policing only explain between 10 and 20%.
And other researchers have looked at that claim with different interpretations.
Like anything in society it’s probably a combination of many factors. The Roe vs Wade impact on drop in delinquency should not be underestimated. It allowed women from poorer backgrounds to gain control over when they would have children, rather force them to bring up children up into further poverty.
@@malamalinka Exactly !
The counter to this are places like SF and LA that have decriminalized petty crime and the crime in those places sky rocketed.
I have so missed intelligent people conversing in meaningful ways
YES...we are in a drought in that it isn't as accessible. You have to search and just read books.
Well, we just renewed our subscription for loony-tunes for another four years.
@@jimmiller5600That is a very sad but true statement. How is it that a law and order party can use him as an example of lawfulness. Bazaaro world.
@@guym6093 And now we have Trump.
@@jimmiller5600 I thought that's what you meant by the four subscription to the looneytoons...
Respect to Mr. Gladwell for the apology and the courage to make it.
"It's not what a person doesn't know that gets them into trouble, it's what they know for sure that just ain't so.”
I wonder if the fundamental theory of "broken windows" was sound and just woefully misapplied. What if improving neighborhoods, literally fixing windows, scooping up trash, and making things look nicer at your own expense reduced crime? I've noticed that bad neighborhoods always look bad. They're filled with trash and boarded up windows, and you feel unsafe. Maybe that plays a part; for instance the feeling of being unsafe causes you to lash out more easily.
Has anyone tested cleaning up a bad neighborhood and making it look like a super fancy part of town and seeing what that does?
That is literally what broken windows theory actually is, not stop and frisk. It's exactly what you described. One broken window leads to more damage being done because it's the perception nobody cares in the area. You described it just as it was found to be in the original study that led to broken windows theory.
Yeah, it has been tested, it's called "gentrification." Realestate values rise, so governments increase property taxes, so the few landlords who weren't already raising rent are forced to join in... In the end the poor have to leave, thus eliminating from the area those without the resources to hide their faults. The only solution I can see is for the majority of individual lives to be governed by what the KJV calls "Charity." Then they would be safe to rely on, which would help engender a sense of hope. (& we'd stop charging people for putting in thier own resources to make life beautiful.)
Malcolm Gladwell reflects on his mistake in explaining New York's crime drop in 'The Tipping Point'. He admits he was wrong about broken windows policing, as crime continued to fall after stop-and-frisk ended. Gladwell emphasizes the importance of acknowledging uncertainty in journalism.
It's wonderful to see someone admit they got something wrong, but 'broken windows' didn't start with him 25 years ago. It started far earlier, in the 80's and early 90's.
Also, enforcing simple laws like jaywalking, public urination, etc is still useful, just don't do stop and frisk of people who DIDN'T commit a crime.
The lesson isn't 'don't enforce minor crimes' it's 'don't hassle people who have not committed a crime.'
Put another way 'stop and frisk' is not equivalent to 'broken windows' or 'responsive community policing.' it's just one tactic NYC used
exactly right
This discussion and question period can be applied to a number of disciplines. I applaud Malcolm Gladwell’s willingness to own up to his error or limited view at the time of writing The Tipping Point. If only other people in positions of leadership would be so honest. I am reminded of a podcast in Pitch Fork Economics with MIT economist Anna Stansbury who did a study of economic diversity in the economics profession. Sometimes our own position, where we find ourselves at a point in time and place or our background and life experience influences the questions we ask and therefore the answers we generate.
Money overshadows empathy in those who view money equal to their own self-worth.
Love the way this brother thinks and his accountability.
Great example of human evolution, learning and humbleness.
well said
An honest reappraisal of an earlier position is what journalism and writing is all about. It takes courage and integrity to do so and Malcolm Gladwell has shown both. Qualities that unfortunately are in short supply these days. Thank you.
I believe it takes strong character and integrity to admit to having been wrong about our proclamations, especially for a highly-celebrated author such as Mr Gladwell. Having read many of his works, and after watching this talk, I have increased respect for him. I wish more public figures would follow his lead. Peace.
Well done! Thank you for your honesty and courage, Mr Gladwell 🎉 Bravo.🙌
THIS is the foundation of growth and maturity: the ability to see the errors of your past, recognize their causes, repair their damage, and add skills/processes to avoid similar misters in future.
I don't think I ever thought that stop-and-frisk was the same as broken windows theory. For example, you could implement broken windows theory by being really aggressive about cleaning up graffiti. (It's not fun if it's gone the next day)
That was my takeaway years ago. Kind of like keeping my house uncluttered. When Malcolm mentioned the stop and frisk in this talk, it was like hearing it for the first time...times and thinking have changed and/or huge blind spot? Thanks for your comment.
Exactly.
An inconvenient truth is that the vast most of public policy is largely built on aspirational values, misconceptions, and bias rather than data, science, or an ability to admit fault.
...or, worse, covert appeasement of lobby groups!
I just listened to this 3 days after the 2024 presidential election.
Only with a caveat do I agree with Gladwell’s conclusion that “people” want thoughtful expressions/explanations of opinions rather than certainty, rather than emphatic declarations that an opinion is right. My caveat is that people differ widely from each other on that preference and any one person can differ on their preference depending on the subject.
Know your audience.
Warm up an audience to open-mindedness if you realize their starting point calls for it. And if your read of the audience is that only certainty speaks to them, work with THAT audience.
If the audience is reading your message rather than listening, of course explanations have a better chance of getting through.
Maybe Police stop-and-frisk'ing innocent people was not a prevention of a "broken window" but a "broken window" itself. Thus removing this practice would actually decrease crime. ;-)
It takes a real man to admit he is/was wrong. Too bad some of our political "leaders" can't seem to do it.
Thanks for revisiting this. However, there are some ongoing flaws with this analysis as well. One mechanism well researched for behavior change is interruption and redirection. That may be part of the explanation for the decline. In addition without some sort of experimental reversal, these anecdotes tell an incomplete story at best, and don’t provide enough control over the variables to make a firm conclusion. Finally, something can dually be effective, like stop and frisk or policing minor crimes, and unethical at the same time. It’s important moving forward to do deeper dives to better understand the mechanisms around the ebb and flow of crime, so that we can better plan and minimize it.
Another thought that occurred to me is as to whether the factors leading to the tipping point are dependent on the social context. That would however mean that most tipping points could not be reproduced for the same population in the future.
It looked to me that he was arguing against making "firm conclusions."
Great delivery. I live by the fundamentals of “don’t believe everything you read. Even if you wrote it”.
The trouble of education and open mindedness is we have to be wrong a lot to learn such powerful lessons and even then , it doesn’t stop. We will get to be wrong again and learn from it. Chalk it up to both the best and worst parts of the human experience
I applaud you Malcolm. We need more journalists like you. We also need to evaluate how we view the people around us. I do believe that the media keeps us in turmoil most of the time.
16:04 "You’re more capable of winning over an audience when you admit to the uncertainty and fragility of your position. People want that, they like that. They appreciate that spirit far more. And people are much more likely to be suspicious of someone who seems falsely certain." This aged badly pretty quickly!
Ah just a one word correction: “_Intelligent_ people want that. They like that. They appreciate that spirit far more.” As opposed to the mob.
I Like Gladwell’s books, and enjoy his podcast, and am comfortable saying that even while admitting he was wrong, his ego shines through claiming credit for why everyone believes something.
It can be pride in his work without being unhealthy ego to claim some level of credit for the awareness.
I do have great respect that he has come out to address his mistake. It's so rare. This man is guided by a real set of principles.
I love his writing. He’s a great story teller and his points are highly anecdotal vs data driven so not surprising. Kudos for admitting it.
Stop and frisk was one component of the broken windows judicial system, but there were other components that were as important, or more important, than stop and frisk. The end result is that a societal intolerance of minor crimes results in a reduction of major crimes, and if perpetrators of all crimes, both misdemeanors and felonies alike, fear the repercussions of committing that crime, we all live in a safer place.
It takes great courage, humility, conviction to truth and the purpose of one's craft to make a public apology as this. Well done Malcolm Gladwell and hope it, in some small way, soothes many who have been wronged by this opinion in any way.
Relevant and essential in America's current political context.
Courage --?? Irreparable harm has been done to black and brown communities.
@@elegantcourtier All the more reason for why it took courage and, more importantly, humility to do this.. because there were consequences. I doubt he played a big part in it because it was already going on.. he just ended up strengthening it in the public opinion a bit more. Most people would just keep quiet and get on with selling their next bestselling book and let the success muffle and silence his past mistakes.
He stood on a stage and admitted his mistake when almost no one even asked about it.
he did a terrible job of explaining what reform actually brought down crime
What would you add to explain what you felt was missing?
@ the why part
@@ThizzMarleycan you elaborate please?
I agree, I was left thinking “okay why did crime drop to the same level of Paris post 2013 then?” No explanation was given
His claim so that it just went away by itself. Just like diseases spike and fall, so too the crime. It mentioned the "natural intelligence of people" being a cause. I'm not sure if this is a claim about education, or saying that NYC jumped 30 IQ points in 10 years.
But I agree, the why is totally obfuscated.
I am concerned that we are overlooking a key point here. While like everyone I respect his brilliance, he is also a biracial Canadian (Jamaican Mother and English Father) who came here and adopted the lens racism and white supremacy that insidiously hypnotizes migrants and immigrants alike into points of view that DISREGARD the humanity of African Americans in this country without batting an eye. Admission of flawed point of view does not repair broken hearts or sympathetic nervous systems shattered by stop and frisk. And reflecting that he was speaking to the moment does not indemnify him from the irreparable damage, anxiety and suffering endured by so many at the hands of a policy that while he did not create it, his work still amplified making him complicit in its outcomes. Much Respect to him and this talk but I will wait for a sequel that considers a bigger point of view than just a moment in time, but one that lets the humanity of the disenfranchised be his guide.
The primary cause of the crime drop was roe v. Wade, as researched by Steven Levitt et al. It's an uncomfortable explanation, but it is also the correct one. I would have hoped Malcolm would've gotten around to telling everyone the actual primary cause.
That was a pretty remarkable and potentially important finding. I've wondered if it's held up to scrutiny.
You don't have to watch too many Soft White Underbelly videos to be convinced that it might be true...
I don’t remember the “stop and frisk” being a huge part of the story - granted I read that book over 15 years ago. Enforcing penalties for literally broken windows and jumping turnstiles and peeing on the sidewalk still seems like a reasonable approach. Did they still e force those crimes after the Floyd case? Also we were in economic rise trends in both 1993-2000 and 2013-2019. Could that have played a more significant role in crime dropping? Usually crime and economic prosperity are anti-correlated.
The Freakonomics podcast actually has an episode saying that crime and the well-being of the economy are not correlated. This idea is also perpetuated by journalists and politicians.
Malcolm is one of my favourite authors! Read most of his books, started with the Tipping Point. I saw the world in a whole new way after that! Even if everything has not proven to be totally accurate, it is still an excellent book imo! The fact that he now admits it is kudos for him! Change your thinking when new info. comes your way has always been a useful tool and how we move forward!
I must thank youtube for the recommending my hero, Gladwell's Ted talk🙏
I've always admired Malcolm Gladwell. Love this! Thank you for accountability
Malcolm you argue that the Floyd case removing stop and frisk caused the drop in crime. But you also implied that the beginning of stop and frisk (broken windows) reduced crime. These temporal events are classic 'fooled by randomness' causality traps. Crime might have continued to drop regardless of the Floyd cases outcome. Changing demographics, economic changes, changes to a concentrated number of repeat offenders (your tipping point arguments) all would have some causality and there could be many more. RARELY is life about 1 variable, I learned this by living 70 years on earth.
What a great talk. However, he’s conflating Broken Windows and stop, question and frisk. Related but two different ideas. He also failed to understand , or at least to mention, that the NYPD was unique in the way it used SQF. He makes claims science can’t confirm. But, that being said, his “beliefs” about crime in NYC are interesting and compelling - just not backed by science. But I still love his books!
My own feeling is that Malcolm's brand was charismatic overstatement, and his fame largely derives from that. I became aware of Gladwell from his first TED talk, and I have always had reservations and neatly he ties his bows.
Microsoft became a trillion dollar corporation on the back of illegal business practices in the 1990s, and they got to keep their ill-gotten gains, so I can hardly hold it against Malcolm, who has now at least accepted responsibility.
Better than TED talks and UA-cam snippets, read Gladwell’s books. He is a very stimulating writer. He presents unique reflections and ideas. Judge him on his writing, not his pedantry.
10,000 hours. Broken Windows. I've never been a Malcolm Gladwell fan and have always bristled when friends espouse his thoughts as gospel. Notice how he subtly throws journalists under the bus and much of the crowd applauds. I'm happy to see him standing here and giving a mea culpa, but there is still a lot of hubris in his delivery, even in his emphatic profession that you can "win over people" when you admit the uncertainty of the your position. Writers know writing is about knowing your audience, and I think Malcolm was very lucky to have accidentally found an audience ripe for seeing the world through his lens. Good on Malcolm. Good on TED. Still a bit self-righteous. And as @gfxpimp says below, he should do more of this, and love @gfxpimp's idea of him writing a book "what I got wrong."
We use the term "theory" in a confusing way. For many people, it's really "hypothesis" that they mean when they say theory. Hypothesis is what one believes is an explanation for a given phenomenon. It becomes a theory when it is supported by a lot of evidence which are still falsifiable. All theories are open to the attempt to falsify them, and they should be. That's how we move knowledge forward. Nothing should be FORCED to be static.
So Malcom is claiming Stop-and-Frisk is unrelated to crime rate, or Stop-and-Frisk caused the crime rate to go up? It seems he is implying the later, with stats of crime rate falling after the policy was stopped. If so, what is the explanation? This Ted Talk just begs more questions.
Gladwell seems to be as confident now that his previous conclusion was wrong as he was previously confident that he was right. This caused me to be skeptical of Gladwell's logic for the first time. Every time I have heard him talk before, I guess I have accepted his logic and reasoning without my typical skepticism partly because his ideas are often so fresh and appealing. But for the first time, I notice he seems to draw specific conclusions about things when it now suddenly seems there actually may be many uncontrolled variables and potential alternative explanations that might be mundane or simply not considered by him. Hmmm . . .
It takes courage to admit mistakes. Malcolm has shown us once again how to be an inquisitive human being.
This is a Masterclass on Growth and Humility as a Cultural Leader.
Kudos to him… we can only hope other leaders will find it in them to do the same.
I understand accepting partial guilt if your words are accepted as the absolute truth. But Gladwell's work is by definition 'opinion pieces' - very insightful, but not based on self-collected research data, which in itself should be prefaced with: 'this is true now.'
Not buying it.
Maybe broken windows was the impetus for setting a social norm.
For example, would smoking in restaurants return if it couldn't be enforced.
I don't think so.
Social norms are powerful.
Huh? So you think crime dropped because of stop & frisk, and then once stopped, somehow social norms to not commit crimes is the reason? What data besides your gut suggests this?
The past is a foreign country - this trope keeps coming true. The second part of the original saying is something like we can't go there, we can only imagine. Don't be too hard on yourself, Malcolm Gladwell, nobody's perfect. And a lot of high school principals and politicians need to hear your mea culpa.
Wasn't broken windows mainly about being aggressive with arresting people who were doing petty crimes?
What a breath of fresh air listening to Malcolm Gladwell. ✌️ ❤️
I couldn't help noticing that he just gave another simple (simplistic?) explanation to crime decline as if he "knew what the answer to the story was", instead of saying that that is what he believes happened, as he claims he should have done in the first place.
Well, good on you, Malcolm Gladwell. "I was wrong" is not a popular thing to say, although many, many people should be saying it. I hope that this video is an early sign of a tipping point toward humility. Make admitting being wrong a competitive meme on TikTok and X: it could the new virtue that everybody wants to signal. But why apologize for being over-confident as a youth? Something he had no control over, being by definition young, and unaware? Admitting being wrong is not the same as apologizing. The one doesn't necessarily require the other. Youth is for making mistakes; middle age is for acknowledging them and trying not to repeat them. Can't learn if you don't make mistakes.
Every human being is allowed to hypothesize about why something is. Our responsibility for being able to "posit" a theory about a situation in our attempt to establish cause/effect is to TEST that hypothesis, not cherry pick single data points that support our story, but to see if analogous data/situations could be analyzed to support our assertion or to directly test our theory and allow for peer review of our methodology and the results - allowing for repeatability of the results to establish its robustness. This is the scientific method, and its also how we learn. Let's celebrate Malcolm's admission that he was wrong, but more importantly let us celebrate those who do good science, whether that be social science or harder sciences (physics, etc.) who let the data tell them the story, or at least how to correct their hypothesis and retest. Life and learning is hard work. Let's get to it.
I'm not in the habit of insulting people, but with all due respect, this individual is acting as if there is no such thing as 'science' or 'intellectual rigor' or 'experimental design' or the 'scientific method' or 'evidence'. There is nothing keeping this individual from BEING an actual scientist and DOING actual science. Instead, he accepts BELIEF as if it were a function of science, when he could actively and honestly pursue the integrity of the scientific method. Instead of science, he embraces his own ignorance and incompetence and habit and inertia. We all have a choice...this is his choice. Peace.
And this is what integrity looks like! Fascinating!
Thank you for continuing to gather data and adjusting your conclusions. It's evidence of your evolution as a truly trustworthy journalist. All the best.
Great to see you Malcolm
I was expecting he will say why it dropped after the stop of stop and frisk?
What if the drop is because of fake cases stopped? What if the actual crime has gone up?
Will it help to compare records of convicted crimes
It's really crazy cuz the drops were much smaller than the initial drop. And crime rates have risen again since 2018.
The real problem with NYC is that they have neglected all infrastructure in order to pursue social policy.
The age old problem of correlation not being causation. Crime in New York could have gone down for any one of a hundred or more different factors but more likely some combination of several of them. The age demographic of the population could have effected crime. Affluence among the population, Poverty levels etc. Linking crime numbers to anything based on correlation is always suspicious. It could be just as easy to link the crime drop to video games or the rise in pirate costumes. Obviously some factors are more likely than others but it isn't exactly a lab experiment where you can control for variables. It's the real world and it's a very complex system. This was a very brave talk. Thank you for doing it.
Would it sound unkind to suggest journalists are trained story tellers.
So when it comes to engineering, criminology and even the weather they are not experts to be an expert take years of specialised training.
So how can the average person get a reasonable understanding if all they get is the story tellers version of events.
That's why journalists do research and consult experts
Has anyone considered that "broken windows" was around just long enough to change the culture around NY and removing it from practice revealed that benefit? Without having applied "broken windows" that second or first drop in crime might not have happened. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
Malcom is wrong about being wrong. Broken window theory is just about signalling that nothing is being done about aberrant behaviour, such as crime. It signals that no one cares. 'Stop and frisk' might have been one solution the police force introduced in New York city to signal they cared and were serious about stopping crime. Perhaps this worked at the time but things change and adapt. Perhaps now there are other mechanisms in place to help this 'broken window theory' signalling problem. That doesn't mean 'Broken window theory' is incorrect; just might mean there are other ways its being addressed now. Think its important to note that Broken Window Theory is a very important concept that has been well tested and can be valuable to numerous cities and countries today which suffer from such a problem - small, negative signs add up!
Really commendable to see Malcolm do that. It also helps to regain some credibility that he might've lost with his debate with Jimmy Carr.
I’m reminded of his podcast when I watch this… ‘revisionist history’. He may genuinely believe his analysis was wrong then; I’m inclined to believe it’s wrong now. He should read his book again.
He apologizes, notices something few folks noticed and is trying to make up for it. Then this pompous woman comes out and plays a T-ball version of tough journalist. Not called for. Not clever. Kind of embarrassing.