malcolm-gladwell on S Anand

Is all AI content slop?

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Is all AI content slop?

I asked Claude to:

Analyze this thread. Then explain it like a Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45820872

It gave me a beautiful, engaging and insightful essay about a 300+ message debate about AI vs humans on routine tasks. https://claude.ai/share/60c5810f-5c81-4970-8026-a24bf89c3392

Is this slop?

One phrase stood out:

There’s an irony here that the commenter doesn’t quite state but implies beautifully: we’ve spent so long celebrating automation because humans are imperfect that we’ve forgotten we also value humans because they’re imperfect.

Note: it’s something “the commenter doesn’t quite state” and yet Claude inferred it. “Beautifully”.

Is this slop?

Another paper, The Hidden Curriculum, is quite readable as papers go. https://mgcuna.github.io/website/JMP_latest.pdf

But look at how it begins:

Despite dramatically expanded access to selective U.S. colleges, first-generation students persistently trail continuing-generation peers in GPA, internship attainment, and early-career outcomes.

Here’s how Claude’s Malcolm Gladwell essay begins: https://claude.ai/share/81d7ff3c-db89-4c9f-8423-82358fb660a3

When Sara Martinez arrived at UC Berkeley as a freshman, she did everything right. She showed up to every class. She completed every reading assignment. She took detailed notes. She studied harder than most of her peers. By every visible measure, she was the model student.

I read every word of the essay. The paper has value, but the essay has accessibility.

Is this slop?

History repeats this pattern.

The printing press displaced calligraphers.
But typography emerged as an art.
Film displaced theater but gave us montage, screenplay, and editing.
CAD displaced drafting but birthed parametric design.
3D printers are displacing workshops, creating toolpath sculpture and generative objects.

Maybe AI slop is the start of new arts?

Birthday matters

Sun, 15 May 2011 20:33:23 +0000

Does it matter which month you’re born in?

Based on the results of the 20 lakh students taking the Class XII exams at Tamil Nadu over the last 3 years (via Reportbee), it appears that the month you were born in can make a difference of as much as 120 marks out of 1,200 – or 10%!

Most students who took the Class XII exams in 2011 were born between March 1991 and June 1992. The average marks of each student (out of 1200) is shown in the graph below.

Students born in June 1991 scored the lowest – around 720/1200. This suddenly shoots up in July, then in August, and the students born in September score as much as 840/1200 on average. From there on, it’s downhill.

This result is consistent across years. In 2009 and 2010, you see a similar pattern.

Why could this be?

Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers offers a clue.

Outliers opens, for example, by examining why a hugely disproportionate number of professional hockey and soccer players are born in January, February and March.

The answer turns out to be completely unrelated to numerology or astrology.

It’s simply that in Canada the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1. A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn’t turn ten until the end of the year—and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity.

In Tamil Nadu, students must be 5 years old before entering Class 1. Schools open mid-June. So students born in June 1994 would barely make it in June 1999 – making them the youngest students in the class. July and August students would be missed – but since many schools implement this policy leniently, they sometimes make it in as well. September borns are often consistently the eldest students in a class.

This pattern reflected in the marks. The eldest – the September 1993 borns – score the highest. The next eldest, the October 1993 borns, score a bit less. And so on. (There are older students who take the exam – the ones born before September 1993 – but many of these are failed students from the previous year, introducing a bias in the results.)

Perhaps this initial advantage that the elder students have over their classmates continues through the years? Whatever the reason, it’s clear that if your child is born in September, he or she already has a 100 mark advantage!

Comments

abhijeet 16 May 2011 8:14 am: “Whatever the reason, it’s clear that if your child is born in September, he or she already has a 100 mark advantage!” But at the cost of being older and “losing” 8-9 months!
Shankar V 16 May 2011 10:00 am: Nice…!! Thank God I was born in July! If not on the crest, I at least made it into the upward curve! ;)
S Anand 16 May 2011 10:21 am: @abhijeet: That reminds me of the “Life is a race” dialogue in 3 Idiots :-) Well, not sure how bad being a bit older is. I personally don’t mind, but maybe others do?
Shailesh 16 May 2011 10:33 am: Oh…now I know why I was getting good marks…. :-) I am born in September…and my headmaster changed my birthdate (to Jul month) in school register to not waste my 8-9 months…..
ravi atluri 16 May 2011 10:47 am: They made me study LKG “TWICE”, because I was born in September and didn’t have enough time to be 3! and I have been an anomaly to the september-born-high-performers trend. If the marks are related to the mugging capacity, which if related to age would explain the graphs only for the schooling during. Would like to see, how would these change in college and bachelors :D One more doubt, I have is, many parents have the dob’s of after-aug-born’s to sometime between may to june. If that’s the case, the months on the graph have to be offset ;)
S Anand 16 May 2011 12:35 pm: @Shailesh – if you got into school early, then statistically, you had a DISadvantage. So guess you were MUCH brighter than your classmates! @Ravi – true. No idea how to correct for the real date of birth, though…
k 17 May 2011 2:53 am: this is similar to the paper on Israeli schools where an externally imposed rule created a disproportionate class size, which helps in identifying the effect of class size on performance. date of birth can help in identifying the effect on performance then.
Vasant 17 May 2011 6:14 am: Ha! Now I know why I scored so less in the boards. It’s when I was born! :-) Jokes aside, brilliant analysis.
Sathya 17 May 2011 6:43 am: Good One ! If you still have access to data, would it be possible to plot the same graph against their “numerology numbers” ? ie., 28th born would be 2+8 = 10 => 1+0 = 1. I used to wonder that astrology ( perhaps numerology ) could provide certain insights and that it astro/numero predictions should be verified using statistics. ( Pls note that I do not suggest astro determines a person’s fate. But perhaps it can predict events with some accuracy. How a person reacts to those events are not in the realm of astrology). I would love to do this if I had access to the data. In case you find it worthwhile, it would be interesting to see if numero number matters at all !
Swetha 19 May 2011 9:34 am: M a September born and a gold medalist . (*Grins*)
Sumit Dhar 21 May 2011 3:36 am: And, I know this is extremely difficult, but was wondering if it would be possible to assess the impact of month in which you were born on your professional growth / salary growth. Or even more simply, if marks are correlated with professional success. We Indians tend to believe that good marks == success at work. Would love to know if data validates this belief. If only this kind of data were available… Maybe HR teams in organizations could perform such an assessment. Cheers, D.
Vish 16 Aug 2011 9:59 am: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8227268.stm Summer-borns tend to lose out at school because, in England and Wales, 1 September is the cut-off date for school entry, so they can be up to a year younger than their classmates. June baby Frank Lampard Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies two years ago found only 53% of girls and 47% of boys born in August reached the expected educational level at age seven in state primary schools in England, compared with 80% and 70% of those born in September. Their sporting prowess is affected too. Older children tend to be bigger and more confident, receive more encouragement, and their advantage grows over time. For unto everyone who hath shall be given. Among the 25 most capped England football players, 11 were born between September and November, while only one, Frank Lampard, was born between June and August. In his case, having an England international for a father probably outweighed the disadvantage. So for educational and sporting opportunities, the cruellest and kindest months sit next to each other in the calendar like resentful neighbours.

Knowing less is better

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Malcolm Gladwell argues that knowing less can be an advantage. This is based on a study in which kids in the US were asked which was a bigger city: San Antonio or San Diego. Many didn’t know. Kids in Germany were asked the same. Most knew: San Diego was bigger. Why? Because they’d heard of San Diego, but not of San Antonio.

P.S: A comment mentions that the actual difference in population between these cities is only 2%. So maybe the US kids were right to be unsure…

Comments

texan 29 Jan 2007 4:20 am: Please read the actual pschologist’s blog at http://www.dangoldstein.com/dsn/archives/2006/03/malcolm_gladwel_1.html#note to see the distinction between “city limits” & “metro area”. i or any outsider ( still a US person ) would associate san diego(San Antonio) with its metro area than ‘city limits’. I think the american kids were influenced by the popular saying ‘Everything is big in Texas !!!’ i live in Texas BTW

Power law distributions in homelessness

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Malcolm Gladwell on how homelessness obeys the power law distribution, and its implications.

Comments

bharani 10 Feb 2006 12:39 am: u got a new look! cool!

Patents in the US healthcare industry

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 12:00:00 +0000

Malcolm Gladwell on drug prices in the US.

AstraZeneca twenty-six billion dollars on Prilosec. The patent was due to expire. AstraZeneca decided on a subtle piece of chemical reengineering, creating a single isomer version. The new drug was called Nexium. The F.D.A. gave its blessing, and Nexium hit the pharmacy shelves priced at a hundred and twenty dollars for a month’s worth of pills.

But the article goes on to show that the US drug industry isn’t necessarily overpriced.

Smart people are not so special

Thu, 27 Feb 2003 12:00:00 +0000

Gladwell on The Talent Myth. Maybe smart people aren’t as special as they’re made out to be.