Should we stop believing Malcolm Gladwell?
I have heard the genre (which includes Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, the Freakonomics guys and Jared Diamond) described as "insight porn".<p>The idea is to deliver small chunks of insight that is just counter-intuitive enough to be novel, but not so counter-intuitive that we can't take it at face value. It's a market that's developed in response to the fact that nerds are addicted to feeling like they're <i>just a little bit</i> smarter than everyone else.<p>I think the same rush we get from learning something counter-intuitive and novel is the same reason that many of us have read pg's essays - particularly the early ones.<p><i>Edit</i>: It occurs to me that this comment could be seen as an example of what it describes...