More than meets the eye

The central thesis of Outliers is about people having a mistaken conception of how success develops. Contrary to success stemming from innate ability and a consequence of individual effort, it is a result of hard work, circumstances and serendipity combined. And those who are successful stand outside the norm. They are the outliers.

I agree with Malcolm Gladwell that hard work tends to be downplayed or overlooked. He mentions the 10,000-hour rule that is mandatory to transform an apprentice to an expert. I have read somewhere that it takes about 6,000 practice kicks of a ball before anyone can even begin to claim to be good at maneuvering it by giving it the required spin, control and power. There is simply no substitute for actually kicking a ball around to be good at it eventually.

And Gladwell also mentions about the workings of culture.

I was amused to read that Singapore was ranked as one of the countries most tolerant of ambiguity. (Maybe we thrive on it.) It only reminded me of out-of-bound markers (OB markers) that are constantly shifting. And how we don't really mind that.

But Singapore is also mentioned as being ranked highly on math skills.

However, there are some issues that I cannot wrap my mind around. If Asian countries are supposedly so good at manufacturing math geeks, why aren't we as prosperous as America when it comes to producing winners? (Then again, I think I know the answer to this one.)

I think it's because even though culture might be good at making people embrace hard work, but a culture like what we have in Singapore is not very tolerant of failure (it is probably more pronounced in Japan). We might actually be claiming dubious credit for producing hard working dullards, not robust enough to try and fail, and survive the stigma of having failed.

Or we simply cannot afford too many chances to try and fail. And we can't stand looking like a twat.

Gladwell picks the genius physicist, Robert Oppenheimer, as being an outlier (smart with street smarts). Oppenheimer is described to be quite queer in character, but eventually worked on what was to be the most important project on the planet: He helped create the atomic bomb during World War II.

I shall gladly nominate another outlier who I think all of present humanity owes our existence to: Richard Feynman, the wicked genius of a physicist and colleague of Oppenheimer.

If Feynman's dad did not spark his son's intellectual curiosity, if Feynman was born a few years later then his actual birthdate and if Feynman was recruited by the Germans instead, I think there is a likelihood we could all be Nazis now, or alternatively, not even be around to wax lyrical about our circumstances.

Chilly.

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