Malcolm Gladwell Answers Research Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

The library is one of the few places we go to in the modern day where we aren't expected to spend money. It's also an incredible resource for so many people and for so many reasons.

"Boredom is an intermediate stage. It's a kind of plateau you get on when you scratch the surface." Beautiful quote. I will take that wisdom with me.

Why do I always come thinking "oh, this is gonna be boring" and end up loving every episode?? One of my favorite channels out there.

A library is the foundation of a society in which the core element of that society's education and wisdom is soley embedded.

I really like how Gladwell prefaces every answer by explaining the question to establish context and get his audience to a more level playing field. Clearly a great storyteller and teacher at heart. Also serendipitous search is why I love going to small second hand bookstores.

Mr Gladwell throwing shade at any opportunity he had, what a legend.

That statement about boredom was really insightful. I'm going to lock that in my brain forever

The best part is…even though there are some totally random questions like “why fries taste better as a child” or “is country music sad”, Malcolm just straight up has a serious explanation to answer every single one of those questions.

10,000 WITH CONSTANT FEEDBACK! The feedback is EXTREMELY important for this rule. If you spent 10,000 hours drawing a circle until it was the best possible circle you've ever seen, if you have no feedback, no one was there to tell you you were drawing a triangle the whole time.

The way he answered the ghost question without being condescending was very impressive, being someone who doesnt believe in ghosts i myself found in my head it would be hard for me to do something like that, so i found that impressive.

As someone who adores libraries and is frequently frustrated by a lack of archival evidence/special collections online, this made me deeply happy.

"Who's going to a library?" Is the most privileged thing I've ever heard. If that person got off Twitter and actually went to a library, they would find a haven for parents who need something fun to do with toddlers in the winter, the underprivileged attending employment workshops and students who don't have a safe space to study.

1:00 One thing I was taught when I took a term of technical writing (don't ever do that to yourself) was to use the sources linked to Wikipedia as citations. So Wikipedia gives you the broad overview, but any Wikipedia article that can support its own weight will have plenty of linked pages to use as primary sources.

The prefix in research gives it the meaning "to search again", so if you do it just once you're doing it wrong.

"Everything is interesting if you dig deep enough" aka effort really. Good stuff!

Part of the problem with Google, that I wish he mentioned more explicitly, is that it's algorithm gives you results that it thinks you want. Which means, for instance,if you are in a certain political party, it will give you results that agree with your views.

"The biggest determination of success is having rich parents." Couldn't be more true. I have personally seen both sides. Smart and not so smart with rich or poor parents. Often, having access to more resources is always more beneficial no matter how you are intellectually. Regardless of your skills, attitude and situation in life, better financial stability is always the deciding factor to reaching your aspirations a.k.a. being successful. This just means, hopefully your ancestors have been gradually improving their financial stability and you got a better deal in life now compared to others.

"Being skeptical is...exhausting" - Agreed

Yes, experts spend 10,000 hours doing something. BUT it is wrong to assume that if YOU do 10,000 hours you will become an expert.

I like that he didn't crap on the ghost story question. Things aren't false just because the evidence is weak and they aren't investigated in effective ways. They're just not known to be true. An important middle ground.