Malcolm Gladwell Explains Why Human Potential Is Being Squandered 

The reason I decided to coach my son's baseball team is, in part, for the reasons Malcolm mentioned with regards to development. I realized nearly all coaches prioritize the better players (which are usually the older kids) & neglect the other players. No development whatsoever. They also prioritize "winning" over development. Yo would think these people (the coaches) will figure out they're losing all the time because kids are not being developed, but to no one's surprise, they actually blame the the children that don't play well & their parents for letting them join team. Dad to the rescue 💪🏼

I think this talk helped me explain a lot of things on why so much STEM talent could get wasted in the world and in America.

_Poverty, Stupidity, and Culture are what stunt capitalization (not ability)_ -Malcolm Gladwell

I listened to audio version of his book "Outliers: The Story of Success." I highly recommend it! amazing book!

What I like most about Malcolm Gladwell is how he uses facts to back up his point of view. He's got facts equipped like arrows on his back, shooting one after another; all falling into place to make a solid case.

Malcom you are my favorite social psychologist sir, keep on doing your thing and change the way people think.

The internets greatest contribution is as a social forum without boundaries. It lets an anti-social society socialize, and yes although 99% of people end up arguing over the cutest cat videos of the week, the comments on Malcolm Gladwell videos that inspire thought make it all worth it.

Oh wow, what a wonderful TED talk! I sure enjoyed and learned so much. I'ld like a part II outlining how to move beyond these figures.

I've worked for a few companies, none of them have ever checked my credit. A friend of mine works for a staffing agency, they don't check credit either. It is actually in a companies interest to hire indebted employees. They *need* this job.

Such a genius. Love this

I love all these teachings, thanks my dear God.

Beneficiary of the relative age effect here: My aunt was an educator that told my parents not to enroll me into school until they had to. I was a year more mature and experienced than I would have been if I had been enrolled at the "early" opportunity. I still encourage this.

Inspiring as always Malcolm

The cuts are sometimes a little sharp, but the benefit of the editing is huge. Thank you, whoever it is who started to barely function.

I can tell you that drive and passion are factors and you cannot achieve without them. I know a lot of people with tremendous drive and passion but don't get very far. Its about who you know more than anything. Passion helps you succeed once you get there. Knowing someone gets you the opportunity to prove yourself.

What an amazing speech!

Good talk, we need to do better at empowering children and adults of any background to achieve.

Thank you #MalcolmGladwell

Wonderful lecture. I agree with everything he says with one caveat: I roomed with a fellow midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy in the early 1970's by the name of Thomas Reilly. He was - by all accounts, including my own - a brilliant student. He majored in aeronautical engineering and received top grades in his chosen major. Also, most of us studied a hell of a lot more than he did just to tread water and get by. He did not and often took weekends off. So, there is a lot to be said about innate talent and how it propels one above the crowd. There was also another student at the Academy by the name of Rocky Raher who was even more brilliant than Reilly, who once took the final exam for differential equations (and aced it) after studying a total of 4 nights. So, does talent matter? Well, what do you think?

Makes sense! Awesome! If you just listen to his message its hard to argue with!

Poverty is the #1 thing that limits human potential. We need to make are biggest focus as a nation trying to get people out of poverty.

I've read interviews from professionals (college graduate that went into a high reward job with high risk) and read a quote saying "As good as people believe I am, there were people in my neighborhood better than I am at my job." Its crazy because imagine if those people had a chance or desired to work at a professional level? How far could we as a human race be? Gladwell is right about the "stupidity" part. Selfishness, cronism, pride, etc. all need to disappear for progress to happen.

Go Malcolm - Absolute Genius!

Neal Degrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist because he was given the means and he created his own potential that's a great example of capitalising on human potential.

Thanks

I agree with Malcolm, fits my experience. But I'd like to see some more evidence.

Gladwell seems to be moving in a very specific direction with his writing and the conclusions that he is getting to. I think most of the effort of our country is specifically to reduce human capitalization, we do it on purpose to promote status quo stability - I'd hypothesize anyway. I don't recall him writing much about this in Outliers though.

Judging from his audiobooks I didn't know he was Black. On the topic, his presentation was fantastic. I wish he would have elaborated on HOW we can do something about it!

Pretty compelling arguments, however he sticks here to the societal or external factors, which of course have a certain validity about them. There are however also internal factors one needs to consider, which he doesn't here, such as passion and drive. These are two commonly recognised precursors to success which can be beaten out kids, or encouraged in them...to put it bluntly so the point is made. There are things we and schools do that do not kindle the flames, but rather douse them!

"hard work" is long hours that lead to nothing. "Successful work" is organized long hours that lead to an aimed goal.

I like how he uses the fraze in a Given , Tells me He's into Statistics :) QC

I think he ignores the vested interests of members of the ruling class to perpetuate their own success through their offspring, meaning that being born to wealthy parents increases one's chances for success regardless of persistence of talents. As for his example of the rates of potential achieved among Chinese immigrants, the overriding factor is not that they are Chinese i.e cultural determinism, but that they are cohort that collectively emigrated as part of an effort towards achievement.

Wonderfully explained, as always! I highly recommend everyone to listen to Malcolm's excellent podcast " Revisionist History". It is truly addictive:-) Thanks a lot for the upload.

(Last page of rant, I promise) Compounding the issue further is the fact that most employers now run credit checks on all job candidates. So if you had a car accident, were hospitalized due to illness or injury, or incurred debt for any reason, your chances of getting a job fall to almost zero. Now tell me how a person is supposed to repair their credit, or their jobless situation, if no one will hire the indebted or the unemployed? The system is designed to put you down and keep you there.

Educational loan from government Bank or subsidiary is the cheapest. Almost 50% interest rates on other loans whether external or world Bank.

" I saw the best minds of my generation rot." - Alan Ginsberg

Poor diet, lack of exercise, addiction, no meditation practice

I think he is suggesting that the Canadian hockey league should change their method of selection so that kids who are born in the first half of the year compete in a separate pool from the kids who are born in the second half of the year. The resources spent will be about the same, and it will eliminate the unfair competitive advantage that older kids have. However, I don't think it will ever happen, unfortunately

Why is it that people don't know the difference between the word why and how. No matter what you say we still won't know why.

Does anybody know why there are so many cuts in this talk? It seems like they are cutting out all the five second gaps between sentences

All things being equal, I think a person with an IQ of 120 will do better than a person of 100. If the 120 person works as hard as the 100 person, he/she will do better.

Whoa! A peaceful argument, it can't be!

No wonder I didn’t make the NBA; I was born late November.

Factual, logical and analytical

Dude is awesome

Read the Outliers if you like this talk...

This is actually Malcolm Gladwell unlike what the thumbnail says.

The reason the clapping sounds the way it does has to do with how sensitive the decibels are picked up by the microphone being recorded with.

You just defined hard work.....

i wonder what he said on all the edited-out parts

You get out of life what you put into it,is life fair,no but there is such a thing as odds and anyone can improve theirs by hard work,most attempts to make life fair are born out of envy of success and bitterness over failure and fail miserably.

Oh, I agree, the internet seems to be nothing more than exchanges of insults and lame attempts to outwit everyone these days. You're most welcome. :) It's quite an interesting phenomena in regards to how people behave if there are no consequences/accountability.

Pretty awesome argument. We can do better.

People are the greatest resource. When you learn to capitalize on the talent you have an not look to outside source you solve your resource problem. When you learn to harvest the intellectual capital you have then your resource problem will be solved. Our resource problem is a byproduct of poor utilization of the talent we have.

Matt Keetley was born literally one day after me. lol.

So far I agree with, or am amazed by, everything Gladwell says. The only other person I'd put in that same company is Chomsky.

So, what is the solution to the under capitalization of talent? Do we just make our kids try harder to stick with and solve problems?

But that was exactly Gladwells argument? That the reason was _cultural_, not racial, cultural in the sense of effort towards achievement (not temples and shrines). Agree comletely with the vested interest to protect their success of the upper class. For the development of society lack of capitalisation is a significant waste.

Why is Gladwell not President?! OH! I get it- He has a brain, is logical, and bases his decisions on scientific fact and is all things that go against our current model. What a shame that we will never reach civility without leaders who won't think like this! Thank you Malcolm for your amazing contributions to the falling of the eye scales and upholding the amazing idea of common sense- YOU SIR! ARE A HERO!

I wish you would be interested in helping me express to the people what the comprehensive solution to the economic system is. I may have worked very hard to understand the whole thing myself alone, but getting up to explain it to others I find daunting. You have made an interesting point here, which is already has a resolve within my solution.

Great talk but choppy editing. I wish they just posted the entire lecture.

Well, another thing to consider is the example of Ted Talks. EVERY TIME they have one about the wealth gap, class warfare, employment rates, corruption, etc, that talk gets banned. So in a discussion like this, it's actually better NOT to mention that, because most people who are willing to listen to such a discussion already factor that in without it being mentioned. It's the elephant in the room that no one will mention because if they do, they aren't allowed to speak.

I was born at the back end of the school year (late July) and knew of this effect years ago. I have a relatively decent IQ of roughly 135, but I have never been able to translate that into something I've been proud of. I also come from a low income background so I've been hit with many disadvantages. I've never had my EQ tested but I would guess it would be low. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I do understand fully how much life can be destroyed without the correct help.

I never mentioned him being a Black speaker, or one who focuses on the Black movement. I just commented on his ethnicity. Albeit, I do see the misunderstanding, and agree that beyond my surprise it is irrelevant. No worries, mate!

That's interesting. My mother is German and Polish, and although I am the same skin tone as Gladwell I haven't been referred as anything other than Black my entire life. Please don't take that negatively as it isn't the intention. I just find it fascinating that you're not accepted in society until you meet some sort of arbitrary requisites.

It is very hard not to mistake his examples for the topic. I think the core mistake is very simple. Our idea of education is to have little kids sit still and shut up for the duration of their entire childhood. Education is important but it isn't *that* important. An interest in a topic is all the potential we need. If one doesn't get to see any of the world before age 26 one cant be interested in it either. The scope is just to narrow to cover all bases.

I see the birthdates of the playes but they are not at all born in the first half of the year. You have players being born in January, April, June, August, September and December. How is that being born in the first half of the year ??? Can someone elucidate it to me ?

I don't think you need to go through the waste and bother of creating a parallel hockey season, you just have to have younger groups of hockey players segregated by size, in perhaps different leagues, maybe by some formula inputting weight and height.

The main reason for why Chinese kids do better in school. Since feudal society, the government has national tests that give different levels of positions in the government, that is a life changer the person and family. The long term effect of this has created a very strong need to educate kids, from family to school environment. On the other hand, US families don’t have that tradition, good test results don’t mean the same, kids in the US see more sucessuful athletes and artists.

Don't completely discount IQ. The relative intelligence of a person, while not being the only important factor, can easily be a large benefactor or deficit for learning. Also, not all smart students are the same. Just because you have a high IQ, and person B has an equally high IQ, this does not mean that you prepare the same (or even similarly for that matter). It also doesn't denote being proficient in the same fields either.

What exactly is the more complicated explanation for the under-capitalization of talent in America? And the thing about the idea of 10,000 hours of practice is that he didn't come up with it, so if you have a problem with the idea, blame the people who originally came up with it.

Oh, I remember why I said it now. Obviously, he doesn't think you have to go to high school to achieve something, to think otherwise you would have to be crazy. If people had to explain out everything they said completely as if nobody had common sense, nothing would get done.

He was providing an alternative explanation for why (so little) people succeed, the one he was providing was contesting scarcity of talent in America. So he didn't show any evidence for it.

alright. into half of the lecture, the only question in my mind is what is a cap rate?

there's hundreds.

wait you don't think that how much pressure we get from our parents and our communities stems from culture?

Yep. Any and all disparities between groups of people could be ameliorated if we all just adopted had a can do attitude. I have a dream that one day any 4'11 85 lbs Vietnamese man will have the same opportunity to play in the NBA as the son of Lebron James.

I agree with Gladwell that cap rates vary, but I don't agree when he dismisses the fact that different groups have different inherent abilities (on average). That means all groups of people have the same average inherent abilities in the same areas. If that were the case then there would be a lot more blacks with Nobel prizes in math or sciences or a lot more Asians playing in the NFL or NBA. Gladwell, like all successful writers/speakers, are constrained to stay within the boundaries of political correctness.

Great talk really interesting but i really didn't like the editing, it jumped from one frame to another in the worst possible way, i thought i was having a stroke :P

We need to stop thinking of things in terms of race, we are all mixed race so we should all stop identifing ourselves as black, white, brown, red, or yellow.

It's exactly equal -- 25% from each quarter? And the differences between players born in the 1980s and those born in the 1900s has no influence on their hockey training and subsequent abilities that? If not, I think this rather proves his point than refutes it -- there is nothing intrinsic about one's birth month that dictates hockey ability. Speaking of leaping to unfounded conclusions... p.s. "moot"

Missed the point of the talk this is a myopic view. He used hockey to illustrate a point. Talent is being squandered in America. I agree 100%. There is so much that stifles possibility of achievement and he named a few of those things. Nepotism is another. It real is sad. Then we wonder why we do so poorly on national and global achievement levels.

Does his shirt not fit?

i hate capitalization.

The ability to delay gratification, to concentrate on a problem, to benefit from practice - these are all partly genetic and partly cultural, just as intelligence itself is.

That's a good point, but it just balances Gladwell's really, because you misstate Gladwells opinion as not wanting to develop more people, and that is the key to the future, when we have more people and exponential benefit from all those people when they are better connected to each other and the information. The government has become fearful about this progress because it governs for an elite, and that is the problem.

After I read your comment I thought I had misinterpreted his presentation. I watched again, ending with the same conclusion. I think your comment is exactly the point he was trying to make. He just didn't have the time to fully explore it. Saying that poverty is a cap, is the same as saying what you said about the wealthy, it's just another factor of the same argument, same with the Chinese. He didn't say the exact words, but in an extended presentation, your comment would fit his premise.

I was the youngest in my year at school until the age of 14. I more than held my own in what subjects I was interested in. Go forth and find a local Maker or Hackspace. Realise your potential by creating what you thing the world needs for yourself. And if there isn't one, start one!

Except that Malcolm Gladwell isn't African-American. He's Jamaican Marroon-British-Canadian, although he's been living in the US for the past 30 years now.

Capable kids in USA don't go to college, because the tuition fees are extremely high. Not because they are just poor.

That applause at the end is creepy as hell

I would rebuttal about the age theory effect conclusion is not placing enough emphasis on the importance of "size" in athletics. Especially physical sports like hockey. There is a reason they choose the biggest, and it has to do with the advantages size plays in the sport of hockey and in male sports in general when it comes to strength and speed. Where in some sports, size can be a hinderance like gymnastics. Then I would further go on to say that the players in the "second half" hockey league would be the "big players" of the next year's all star list. So its a rolling talent of "big kids." The "second half" kids are kids that would be the "biggest" if they would eventually have become big, in the next year's child hockey draft. Love Gladwell, but the hockey study is poo. Also - to note, if there were infinite hockey trainers than the most efficient way to develop talent would be every day tryouts with new rotations of trainers. Also if child labor laws were not in effect, working children harder could also benefit "grooming" a more productive talent pool. But that is not sustainable nor probable, or humanely empathetic, nor economically efficient due to the law of diminishing returns. So you need to find a good equilibrium - where is that? Not sure. But I would beg to question that 2 major tryout sessions a year for hockey in children under 12 is excessive. Final Edit: American culture is taught to question authority. Chinese culture is not. American culture is to forge your own path and innovate. Chinese is to be a good COG in a brilliant and powerful system. American children dont stop because they dont work hard, they have been taught to ask "why" which probably creates a set of . Where as Chinese culture is efficiency, completion, and status dictate success. This sounds like being an American "homer" but I am just making the contrast of the starkness in the "hero" of culture differences.

"... we have a scarcity of achievement because we are squandering our talent." And so, "Scarcity is not something we have to live with, it's something we can do something about."

Mahlcolm Gladwell: what are your thoughts on the Nuremberg Laws of 1935????

Interesting the Malcolm chooses the Medicine Hat Tigers as his choice as an example of his theory. If you want to waste an hour of time, as I did, go to the Hockey News top 100 hockey players of all time. You will find that the birthdays of these 100 athletes is equally spread throughout the year. NHL hockey players are so good at younger years that they are playing an age group above themselves making their month of birth mute.

To think that the scarcity of achievement in the U.S. or Canada can be adjusted with a simple stroke of the pen that doubles capitalization rates. I suppose this same talent- squandering issue in countries and corporations happens at a micro level within families, too-such as the reality of favoritism?

why was this recommended? is youtube trying to tell me i'm stupid or something?

capitalization rates are low... get it?

8 people have capitalized on the dislike button.

Thinking on a deeper level, US needs to do this more as a collective whole. Let’s all strive to get better!