Did you just hear a little voice saying ‘but I knew that already?’
You may hear such voices frequently while reading What the Dog Saw, a collection of what Gladwell says are his favourite New Yorker pieces. Curiosity about other people’s work, he says in the preface, ‘is one of the most fundamental of human impulses’. Here is another little voice moment: is that true? As fundamental as sex, hunger, fight or flee? And now another: ‘How should we think about homelessness, or financial scandals, or the crash of the Challenger?’ How about sympathy, rage, and horror? Astoundingly, Gladwell says, ‘Alone, I don’t know what to think about the Challenger crash. It’s gibberish to me.’ But I knew years ago when it was shown, as Gladwell reminds us here, that a faulty rubber seal brought down the Challenger. True, he shows (also well known) that this was a serious flaw in quality control but insists that accidents will always happen, no matter what. He traduces us by observing:
Our stated commitment to safety, our faithful enactment of the rituals of disaster, has always masked a certain hypocrisy … We don’t really want the safest of all possible worlds.
Why not? Surely, the important word here is ‘possible’. We want safety. It is normal to check for it as carefully as possible at that moment. If the experts skimp, and there is a disaster, we say they haven’t done what was possible.
There are other not so surprising assertions. That the secret of really good school results depends on good teachers more than on money and class sizes. Indeed. That often very good American college football backs do not succeed in the professional game because the pro game is too different. Indeed again. Gladwell asserts that identifying such teachers and football players is difficult. Why should that be? Put them in a classroom, or on a football field (against other pros) and watch them.
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