Outliers needs to be taken with some salt. A lot of his examples seem to either be restatements of well known bits of sociology or fall apart when anyone with a relevant interest/specialty looks at them.
My personal ‘favorite’ is his use of 7 airline crashes to claim that Koreans are “culturally” predisposed to crashing airliners. 2 of the crashes happened because of Soviet missiles, another happened because of a bomb on the plane, and crew culture was not a significant factor in any of the official accident reports for the rest. This was also his conclusion from 7 incidents.
It honestly sucks because “do more authoritarian cultures have more problems with crew culture” is actually an interesting question. You could contrast German flight crews and Australian flight crews maybe. Or contrast anyone really, instead of looking at 7 incidents and concluding it was because they’re Korean.
The culture of saving face and not causing disturbance compounds the problem. For example, some married couples prefer to not know if their partner is cheating so as to not disturb the peace of the family. Fortunately, this is becoming more rare, but it is still an issue.
Edit: Not agreeing with the previous comment. Just mentioning where the idea may have come from. I don’t believe Korean culture impacts plane crash rates. When the chain of command and responsibilities are clear, Koreans make stuff happen. It’s actually quite admirable. And cultural idiosyncrasies aside, people generally try to do what they believe to be the right thing, and not letting a plane crash is pretty right under normal circumstances
I’m aware that saving face is a thing in Korean culture. But when the cause of the plane crash is a North Korean bomb or a Soviet missile it seems disingenuous to lump that flight into your list about how Koreans save face as they crash their plane. Kind of like you can’t find many examples and have a publisher deadline looming. At least one Korean speaker takes issue with how Gladwell interprets relatively benign cockpit communication. It also doesn’t explain why other cultures that also have saving face as a ‘cultural thing’ don’t have similar problems. When you get down to it plenty of airliners flown by pilots of every nationality have crashed due to miscommunications and pilots being overworked. Its one of the few core reasons airliners crash anymore.
The ferry incident is terrible, but that’s also hardly unique to Korea. Many of the lifeboats on the Titanic launched less than half full because passengers were assured it was safe by crew and thought they’d be better remaining on the ship waiting for rescue.
Gladwell might get more benefit of the doubt if he doesn’t also have a bizarre chapter on how Asians are better at math because rice is hard to grow. He switches very quickly from talking about how rice farming is important to southern China, which he can’t get statistics for, to just that “Asians in general are good at math”. The only study he references (Trends in International Mathematics and Science) lists Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan having higher math scores, none of which are super dependent on rice farming. Thailand and Indonesia are massively dependent on rice farming and performed very poorly on the math study, but Gladwell doesn’t mention that. “Rich countries have better education systems” isn’t a very interesting chapter.
Ah, sorry. I realize I wasn’t clear at all. I wasn’t agreeing with the previous comment. Just mentioning how it was a problem. This author sounds like they don’t know much
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Outliers needs to be taken with some salt. A lot of his examples seem to either be restatements of well known bits of sociology or fall apart when anyone with a relevant interest/specialty looks at them.
My personal ‘favorite’ is his use of 7 airline crashes to claim that Koreans are “culturally” predisposed to crashing airliners. 2 of the crashes happened because of Soviet missiles, another happened because of a bomb on the plane, and crew culture was not a significant factor in any of the official accident reports for the rest. This was also his conclusion from 7 incidents.
It honestly sucks because “do more authoritarian cultures have more problems with crew culture” is actually an interesting question. You could contrast German flight crews and Australian flight crews maybe. Or contrast anyone really, instead of looking at 7 incidents and concluding it was because they’re Korean.
That’s interesting, thanks for bringing that up! Just goes to show that there are always multiple sides and layers to every issue.
Haven’t read outliers, but I live in Korea. Weak people in authority here is a serious problem. See the Sewol ferry incident: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol
The culture of saving face and not causing disturbance compounds the problem. For example, some married couples prefer to not know if their partner is cheating so as to not disturb the peace of the family. Fortunately, this is becoming more rare, but it is still an issue.
Edit: Not agreeing with the previous comment. Just mentioning where the idea may have come from. I don’t believe Korean culture impacts plane crash rates. When the chain of command and responsibilities are clear, Koreans make stuff happen. It’s actually quite admirable. And cultural idiosyncrasies aside, people generally try to do what they believe to be the right thing, and not letting a plane crash is pretty right under normal circumstances
I’m aware that saving face is a thing in Korean culture. But when the cause of the plane crash is a North Korean bomb or a Soviet missile it seems disingenuous to lump that flight into your list about how Koreans save face as they crash their plane. Kind of like you can’t find many examples and have a publisher deadline looming. At least one Korean speaker takes issue with how Gladwell interprets relatively benign cockpit communication. It also doesn’t explain why other cultures that also have saving face as a ‘cultural thing’ don’t have similar problems. When you get down to it plenty of airliners flown by pilots of every nationality have crashed due to miscommunications and pilots being overworked. Its one of the few core reasons airliners crash anymore.
The ferry incident is terrible, but that’s also hardly unique to Korea. Many of the lifeboats on the Titanic launched less than half full because passengers were assured it was safe by crew and thought they’d be better remaining on the ship waiting for rescue.
Gladwell might get more benefit of the doubt if he doesn’t also have a bizarre chapter on how Asians are better at math because rice is hard to grow. He switches very quickly from talking about how rice farming is important to southern China, which he can’t get statistics for, to just that “Asians in general are good at math”. The only study he references (Trends in International Mathematics and Science) lists Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan having higher math scores, none of which are super dependent on rice farming. Thailand and Indonesia are massively dependent on rice farming and performed very poorly on the math study, but Gladwell doesn’t mention that. “Rich countries have better education systems” isn’t a very interesting chapter.
Ah, sorry. I realize I wasn’t clear at all. I wasn’t agreeing with the previous comment. Just mentioning how it was a problem. This author sounds like they don’t know much