cagoule
Padawan Learner
I went to see Malcolm Gladwell speak tonight in Newcastle. I know Blink is well liked on the forum so I thought I'd post a little review in the hope that someone might get something out of it. I apologise as my memory is rubbish and I can't really remember many of the facts and figures but I came out feeling really up beat and if I can give my new found sense of adventure to at least one person out there then this post is worth it.
First of all I have to say that Gladwell is an excellent speaker and I was really engaged with his talk. I felt he was poignant although it was slightly depressing. He started off well by telling us how his current tour is getting bad reviews! He had found a blog where one guy said that after listening to him speak he is now pro euthanasia... Here is the review titled Don't EVER go to see Malcolm Gladwell. I suppose maybe it is hard to keep coming up with brand new "wow" ideas and theories but as I hadn't heard him speak before I enjoyed it. Plus at least my mind was stimulated, it was certainly better than sitting at home and watching TV!
Basically in a nutshell the theme was Serendipity and he stated that there are 3 levels of serendipity: Columbian, Archimedian and Galilean.
1) Columbian depends on luck and chance like when Columbus discovered the Western Indies in his search for a route to Asia. He stated how Columbus had messed up by using a map in Arabian miles that he thought was in Italian miles. So he thought he had travelled 12,000 miles when really he travelled 1,200 or something like that (my memory is sketchy). Thus this is the lowest form of serendipity as it is just down to pure luck.
2) Archimedes on the other hand was searching for an answer to a problem (he had to find out the weight of a golden crown to see whether it was solid gold). His answer came to him when he was in the bath as when the water rose he had a eureka moment. This kinda represents a more deliberate good luck when he is taken by surprise by something profound in an ordinary activity. This is the second level of serendipity.
3) Galilean serendipity is claimed to be the highest form. Galileo manufactured a telescope with the aim of peering into the heavens but he had no notion of what he might discover. In the end his hunger for discovery led him to learn a lot about cosmology and Jupiter's moons etc.
So basically the tale here is to set your sights high, go out into the unknown but ultimately be well prepared and who knows what you might find.
His main story was about a guy called Safi Bahcall who worked for a small pharmaceutical company in America (Gladwell would also go off at little tangents with anecdotes about the guys character etc. so it was entertaining as well as interesting). So basically Safi worked for a company that used variations of chemical compounds in tests against cancer until it found something successful. Safi however had the idea that there must be millions of chemical compounds throughout the world so why just concentrate on what they had discovered. He told his theory to a venture capitalist who was overwhelmed by the his enthusiasm and wrote him a cheque for $10m. This led Safi on a quest and he thought the best place to find rare compounds would be Russia...
So he set off to Russia with a suitcase full of money and eventually he found some chemicals in Russia that seemed to work. As it was the height of the cold war he was also worried that whilst these drugs might kill cancerous cells they might also kill healthy cells (Russia at the time were not building chemical compounds to beat cancer). So he narrowed down all the different compounds until he found one that seemed to kill cancerous cells but not affect healthy cells. The drug was called Elesclomol. So basically they did a load of tests on various different cancers and nothing happened but they did a small test on melanoma and it seemed to work. This was a massive breakthrough as Melanoma is said to be the worst of all cancers. Whilst other cancers over the years have seen success rates increase by 30% to even 80% through drug treatment, melanoma actually got worse over the years and people were 30% more likely to die than in previous years. As melanoma is deemed to be a bit of a lost cause they only did a small test (it costs millions of dollars to do these tests) so once the small test worked they did the bigger test and ultimately this test failed and Elesclomol was deemed to be ineffective against melanoma. This is very brief, there was a lot about the anticipation, the joy in finding something through adventure etc. etc. however I'm sorry that I am not as entertaining as Gladwell :(.
So that's kinda how it ended. It was much more in depth with lots of facts, figures and anecdotes and you really thought there was going to be this great happy ending about a guy stumbling upon something great through pure Galilean serendipity but no... serendipity does not always give a happy ending, you can go on a roller coaster and be teased with discoveries but you're not always going to find the golden egg and sometimes your heart will be broken as is the case with Safi. It is sad but true :( although in my eyes I believe that you're much richer having experienced heartbreak than having done nothing at all.
This struck a chord with me as in a way we are all on our own little quests and has serendipity brought us to this forum? Laura and co are certainly explorers and I thank them for sharing their findings. The C's and EE are certainly a brilliant breakthrough in Galilean serendipity, and it is up to us to keep practicing, networking and ultimately keep the flame burning in our quest for true existence.
First of all I have to say that Gladwell is an excellent speaker and I was really engaged with his talk. I felt he was poignant although it was slightly depressing. He started off well by telling us how his current tour is getting bad reviews! He had found a blog where one guy said that after listening to him speak he is now pro euthanasia... Here is the review titled Don't EVER go to see Malcolm Gladwell. I suppose maybe it is hard to keep coming up with brand new "wow" ideas and theories but as I hadn't heard him speak before I enjoyed it. Plus at least my mind was stimulated, it was certainly better than sitting at home and watching TV!
Basically in a nutshell the theme was Serendipity and he stated that there are 3 levels of serendipity: Columbian, Archimedian and Galilean.
1) Columbian depends on luck and chance like when Columbus discovered the Western Indies in his search for a route to Asia. He stated how Columbus had messed up by using a map in Arabian miles that he thought was in Italian miles. So he thought he had travelled 12,000 miles when really he travelled 1,200 or something like that (my memory is sketchy). Thus this is the lowest form of serendipity as it is just down to pure luck.
2) Archimedes on the other hand was searching for an answer to a problem (he had to find out the weight of a golden crown to see whether it was solid gold). His answer came to him when he was in the bath as when the water rose he had a eureka moment. This kinda represents a more deliberate good luck when he is taken by surprise by something profound in an ordinary activity. This is the second level of serendipity.
3) Galilean serendipity is claimed to be the highest form. Galileo manufactured a telescope with the aim of peering into the heavens but he had no notion of what he might discover. In the end his hunger for discovery led him to learn a lot about cosmology and Jupiter's moons etc.
So basically the tale here is to set your sights high, go out into the unknown but ultimately be well prepared and who knows what you might find.
His main story was about a guy called Safi Bahcall who worked for a small pharmaceutical company in America (Gladwell would also go off at little tangents with anecdotes about the guys character etc. so it was entertaining as well as interesting). So basically Safi worked for a company that used variations of chemical compounds in tests against cancer until it found something successful. Safi however had the idea that there must be millions of chemical compounds throughout the world so why just concentrate on what they had discovered. He told his theory to a venture capitalist who was overwhelmed by the his enthusiasm and wrote him a cheque for $10m. This led Safi on a quest and he thought the best place to find rare compounds would be Russia...
So he set off to Russia with a suitcase full of money and eventually he found some chemicals in Russia that seemed to work. As it was the height of the cold war he was also worried that whilst these drugs might kill cancerous cells they might also kill healthy cells (Russia at the time were not building chemical compounds to beat cancer). So he narrowed down all the different compounds until he found one that seemed to kill cancerous cells but not affect healthy cells. The drug was called Elesclomol. So basically they did a load of tests on various different cancers and nothing happened but they did a small test on melanoma and it seemed to work. This was a massive breakthrough as Melanoma is said to be the worst of all cancers. Whilst other cancers over the years have seen success rates increase by 30% to even 80% through drug treatment, melanoma actually got worse over the years and people were 30% more likely to die than in previous years. As melanoma is deemed to be a bit of a lost cause they only did a small test (it costs millions of dollars to do these tests) so once the small test worked they did the bigger test and ultimately this test failed and Elesclomol was deemed to be ineffective against melanoma. This is very brief, there was a lot about the anticipation, the joy in finding something through adventure etc. etc. however I'm sorry that I am not as entertaining as Gladwell :(.
So that's kinda how it ended. It was much more in depth with lots of facts, figures and anecdotes and you really thought there was going to be this great happy ending about a guy stumbling upon something great through pure Galilean serendipity but no... serendipity does not always give a happy ending, you can go on a roller coaster and be teased with discoveries but you're not always going to find the golden egg and sometimes your heart will be broken as is the case with Safi. It is sad but true :( although in my eyes I believe that you're much richer having experienced heartbreak than having done nothing at all.
This struck a chord with me as in a way we are all on our own little quests and has serendipity brought us to this forum? Laura and co are certainly explorers and I thank them for sharing their findings. The C's and EE are certainly a brilliant breakthrough in Galilean serendipity, and it is up to us to keep practicing, networking and ultimately keep the flame burning in our quest for true existence.
