Book #17: Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

Seventeenth book I read since May 2008:

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell. It's the first non-fiction entry on the blog, and it is a fascinating book. A true must read for anyone who buys the idea that our society is anything close to a meritocracy.

Gladwell clearly and sometimes painfully illuminates the role of luck, societal bias, class, culture, and well... luck, in the lives of hyper-successful people. In our world, the year you were born, the month of your birthday, the genes you got, the random opportunities that present themselves, and the family/culture/region in which you were brought up -- those factors have much more to do with your success or failure than your own hard work, determination, and your ability to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

The author is not a nay-sayer to the American Dream; he contends that hard work is essential to any success story. And in fact, he argues that to improve the lives of people and the overall functions of society we should we provided better, more equally distributed opportunities to all. Then talent and hard work would be rewarded more often and those successful people would make our world a better place by having their talents and hard work rewarded and recognized.

Gladwell does prove that the "self-made man" is a cultural illusion -- a fairy tale we tell ourselves -- that has virtually no examples in real life. Success in our world depends on being born into the right situations, having time to discover and nurture your talents, and getting the opportunities to apply those talents.

I would recommend this book highly to anyone who questions our society or culture and anyone who goes through life without questioning them. It's an intriguing study of how cultures self-select who will become successful, why some cultures have more success in some areas and tend to fail in others, and is far from the downer that this blog entry might make it sound like.

It's a celebration of success, and a hopeful dream that we can make small changes that can result in big success for even more people. And by the way, it's a quick read. I finished all 300 pages in less than a week on the train :)

- Scott

H.P. Lovecraft

I remember the first time I read Emerson. It was in an American Lit. class and I'd read about ten words of his first essay of his when I realized he was the best writer I was going to read that semester.

Well, I just had a similar experience with H. P. Lovecraft. I'd never read anything by him before picking up a book of short fiction (edited by Joyce Carol Oates) at the library. "The Call of Cthulhu" begins thusly:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

In a paragraph he crystalized the dichotomy of our desire to discover new truths and our unwillingness to discard ideas destroyed by those truths. Lovecraft intuits that scientific exploration will always be anchored in and by the myths and fears and past science that built our culture and our society. Amazing to think that in 1926 he presaged the current state of affairs, where 9/11 somehow makes people want *more* religion and the intelligent design crowd desperately tries to beat science into a shape that keeps their gods in the center of the universe.

I'm only a few stories in, but already I think Lovecraft might be the best author I read this year.

- Scott

Is *This* Why Women Live Longer?

Science just can't figure out why women live longer than men. As long as detailed records have been kept, across cultures and geography, through disasters natural and man-made, women have outlived men by a significant number of years. Currently, U.S. life expectancy is 80 years for a woman and 75 years for men, and scientists continue to argue over why. They've come up with a boatload of theories, and through the years, they were all shot down.

Early on, they assumed that men who died in wars brought down the average and that was the difference. But the gap didn't vaporize as women entered the armed services. Then scientists posited that the dangers of leaving home to go to work, or the dangerous working conditions themselves, caused it. But once again, women in the workforce didn't close the gap. Then it was women being more open to medical help. Then smoking. Then stress. Then genetics. And finally, more recently, it's supposedly the risky things men do to catch the eye of a potential mate ("Hey baby, watch *this* -- Arrrrrggggghhhhhh...")

A recent study that made the case in favor of the risky behavior idea actually revealed a significant a flaw in the argument. It stated that our declining overall mortality rate would tend to put more emphasis on risky behavior as a factor in the longevity gap. However, if that were true, the gap would be *growing* as risky behavior took out more and more men before their time. But the gap is actually shrinking, not growing, so behavioral differences are not the cause.

No doubt there are lots of stupid human tricks that put guys at risk. (I might have done one or two myself. Maybe even three or four... hundred.) But I think science is on the wrong track on this question. The answer has been sitting right under their noses for decades, and frankly, I'm surprised they missed it.

The answer is in the food. Or more specifically, in how *much* food is eaten by men and women.

Doctors have known for decades that semi-starvation diets can extend one's life. Might not be as much fun to live that way, but for at least 70 years, it has been a well-chronicled and analyzed fact. Some studies have shown that mice can live 40% longer on strict, starvation-level diets. And studies of humans showed many health benefits of eating a lot less (as little as 1,000 calories a day). And in fact, they are very close to understanding of how starvation unlocks longevity (link).

So how, you may ask, does this add up to longer lives for women than men? The answer is simple: many more women diet than men, and women diet more often than men during their lifetimes. A recent British study revealed that the average U.K. woman spends 31 years of her life on one diet or another, while the average British man diets only 28 years. The lifespan gap is 80 to 75, just as in the U.S., so there very well could be a connection.

And when you delve deeper into the situation, consider that women who diet multiple times in their lives would increase their lifespan by more each time they went on a new diet. Because as their bodies got used to fewer calories on one diet, they would have to lower their caloric intake even further to lose weight the next time. And that cycle only gets better (or worse, depending on your perspective) the more dieting they do. And 31 years is a heck of a lot of dieting.

(Note: I am not advocating starving yourself or going on and then off diets just to live longer. I'm simply stating my opinion that a longer life could be one of the effects of doing so. Always consult someone much smarter than me before undertaking a diet -- your doctor.)

I think my theory of the starvation effect explains the longevity gap a lot better than anything I've read. Maybe scientists just didn't think about the whole person when considering the difference. Maybe they just missed it in their rush to explain what they didn't understand. But whatever the reason, they missed it. And now that I pointed it out, they can study it and find out if it's close to the truth or just the latest theory to be disproven.

Oh, and what to do if you're a man who wants to close the longevity gap? Try closing your mouth for one meal a day. Might not be the way you want to go through life, but it could give you a few extra years.

- Scott