Social class bitterness in action

Everyone is talking about Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Outliers, where, among other things, he declares that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to actually get really good at something. It turns out that “talent” is mostly just the talent to keep practicing when other people get sick of it. He also declares that being born in the right place and time actually ARE really important. Most rags-to-riches stories never happen because they start with, well, rags. The ones that do happen, it turns out they started out with rags + a heck of a lot, though not necessarily money.

In a blog post at Signal vs. Noise talking about cool stuff Gladwell says/does, this was mentioned:

In the interview, Gladwell also mentioned he meets with Nathan Myhrvold once a month to discuss ideas. Myhrvold sounds like quite a character: formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, began college at age 14, worked under Stephen Hawking studying cosmology, is a prize-winning nature and wildlife photographer whose work has appeared in scientific journals like Science and Nature, is a master French chef who works at one of Seattle’s leading French restaurants, and he won the world championship of barbecue. Talk about a renaissance man!

To which a commentor snapped back:

Allow me to show what this really means about the person (in parenthesis):

“Myhrvold sounds like quite a character: formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft (above average intelligence and more-to-the-point immensely lucky to have stumbled into one of the greatest business monopolies of all time), began college at age 14 (a privileged kid with wealthy and well connected parents), worked under Stephen Hawking studying cosmology (a privileged kid with wealthy and well connected parents – who cares who studied what with whom? it’s what you create/discover/invent/make that counts), is a prize-winning nature and wildlife photographer whose work has appeared in scientific journals like Science and Nature (a wealthy man with money to fund his own obscenely expensive trips to Africa and buy better photographic equipment than top pro magazine staffs) , is a master French chef who works at one of Seattle’s leading French restaurants (he is too wealthy to work for money – this just means he’s an attention whore), and has finished first in he won the world championship of barbecue (again, wealthy enough to have the time to participate and not work, desperate enough to want the attention). Talk about a renaissance man!”

Here’s how I define meaningful work:

Any work that earns me means to provide for my family. Whether one is mopping a stairwell or programming or writing pseudo-intellectual pop culture junk science books like Gladwell, they are all equally meaningful.

Wow, a little bitter about not being born into a situation where you can dink away your days taking exotic trips with your camera and throwing thousand dollar steaks on the barbie? Hey man, I am too!

I remember being similarly annoyed at reading the biography of Shinzi Suzuki who, despite being an orphan and losing everything in WWII, still managed to have enough cash and connections to tool around Europe for eight years studying with great musicians and having coffee with Albert Einstien every other day. And now he comes back to dispense his divine pedogogical knowledge to us from on high. Actualy, lots of his method is really useful. But like I said, his biography is…annoying.

So hey, I’m bitter right? Well, maybe a little less than I used to be though. Waste of time. Good for these guys, but so what? You’ve got to win with the hand you’re dealt. I think I’ll go do that. It’s not too shabby after all.