What a surprise to meet Gladwell. Since I started to read The Tipping Point, I always imagined him as an older man at his earliest 60s. I don't know if it was because of his style of write or because of the broad experience with which he narrated the cases in the book. However it has been, it was really nice to know he's a young life's philosopher.
I take my last point about Gladwell to start my appreciation about his lecture on "Happiness and Spaghetti" because I'm more and more convinced he's a philosopher. Each case, each reflexion, and each concept he poses in the book makes us inquire our lives -our enviroment, our daily life, our simple actions, among others.
In this opportunity, Gladwell compares our insatiable pursuit of happiness with the ongoing search of perfection in the food industry field (and he uses for it a research leaded by Dr. Howard Moskowitz). The results are pretty similars. In both cases when questioned people on what do they want, none could say exactly their desires. Furthermore, people looked more comfortable reaching their aspirations with something that makes their seem sophisticated and cults. And finally, in both groups exist the idea of an unique way to do things.
However, all of these three assumptions were wrong. All of them demonstrated only one true, both happiness in life and perfection in food rely on the diversity. As there exist diferent ingredients and ways to create a dish, so too exists diferent kind of people. In life and in the kitchen nothing is wrong or bad. The diversity is the key that open the oportunity to reach the happiness and make recipes that suit the taste of everyone.
This is very nicely written, Veronica. So here is my question for you: What lesson should we take from this as professional communicators (you as a journalist and me as a teacher)?
In this lecture,Gladwell talked about that the variety is important.He talks about Mr Moskowitz, he states that the market should identify the variety of the the customer's needs,and supply various products to people in order to meet their all needs. Different people have different needs because of human variety. So many choices can meet all kinds of people's needs.They could choose what they prefered from a large amount of varieties,they know what could make them happy. He also refered to "one size fits",it focuses on the groups, they produced a single product which is majority of people prefer. Because some people don't know what they like, and what makes them happy.so they need to focus on the groups.
In Gadwall’s lecture, the main idea is that happiness also relate to food people have. Furthermore, he also maintains that not all people have the same sense of taste. As a result, we feel one kind of sauce is the best what is not similar to others. He also divides people into three kinds of food taste styles. In my opinion, I approve of him argument on people have different taste sense. However, I oppose his idea about best taste food make people happiness. That is because I don’t think the food make your fell good not the reason what make people happy. For example, when someone broke down the relationship with his girlfriend, he buy his favorite kind of ice cream which he ate with his girlfriend on the past. What’s his feeling? Happiness? No, he will feel sadness. Therefore, I think happiness doesn’t have close relation to food or sauce.
The main idea of Gladwell's speech is make us conscious about the diversity of human beings in any kind of matter. He used the spaghetti sauce story to exemplify the relationship between the different choices that we make and the real desire that we have about things, moreover, the diversity of those things.
I think that is completely true that we all are differents, each one of us is unique and that make the world a mix of thoughts, tastes, feelings, also, each one of us could has differents positions about everything. For instance, the things that make me happy not necessarily make other people happy, moreover, what is a good taste for me could not be a good taste for someone else and so on.
I'm not sure if to be conscious about diversity could help us to find happiness in our lives, but it's clear that in some areas like food, it could for sure.
"I'm not sure if to be conscious about diversity could help us to find happiness in our lives, but it's clear that in some areas like food, it could for sure."
So what is the message for you and me as people who want to sell our products or ideas?
Happiness is not the one standardized thing. The measuring philosophy has been changed from the universal to individual's variety of satisfaction . In the view of happiness, no one thing can make all people happy. It is the perfect diet pepsis, 45 diverse of potato sauces;various types of spaghetti sauce that make people happy instead of one perfect diet pepsi or spaghetti sauce from Italy only. However, these spectrum of satisfaction can be clustered in some specific ways. For example, there are 14 kinds of the most popular mustard, and specific type of the most popular spaghetti sauces such as plain, spicy, or chunky sauce.
Diferrent happiness among people is the important concept I learn from this section. There are various types of happiness such as happiness from getting good grades, happiness in family's life, or happiness from having a great vacation so that all people in the world can have a pursuit of happiness eventhough they are the poor or the rich,children or adult,or students or working people.
As we know by reading The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell loves to make us know his central point by giving practical examples. In this lecture, he uses a metaphor of the design of certain kind of foods, to share his thoughts about happiness. He said that: “embracing the diversity of human beings society would find the sure way to true happiness”. First, with the spaghetti’s sauce he tried to make us understand that people do not know what they want. Secondly, with the creation of an expensive mustard such as Dijon´s mustard, he explain that people buy things in order to aspire so they spend more money for something that they think is better just because it is more expensive. Finally, Gladwell confront the notion of a platonic dish, he explicate that in the past people use to look for “cooking universal” instead of understanding the human variability. Malcoml´s idea of making people happy embracing the variety is odd, I think we could find happiness also in simple things. Variety of products, make our lives more difficult as we heard in one of our previous lectures. I prefer simple and traditional things instead of having a bunch of differences in one single product, this variety confuse me instead of making me happy. So I do not support Gladwell in this idea.
No, they are not on the same page. In fact, they are in opposite sides. I agree with Barry Schwartz, he said that a lot of choices make our decision of buying something too complicate and that make us unhappy. What can I do, I love simple things!!!
It seems like he has spent like almost 80% of the speech to talk about sources and food, but I still got the main idea of the whole speech, and that's why this speech was so awesome. Gladwell wants to tell us that there is no such a thing has only perfection. It always has many different kinds of perfection to fit different kinds of people. Like what he said in the speech, there's no perfect Pepsi, but perfect Pepsies. People were wrong that they limited themselves into a very smell space. What I learnt from the speech is that people sometime will get influence from other thing, such as culture or tradition, in stead that people don't know what they really want. Therefore, what we really need to do is to find our own happiness, but not follow to other people.
The main idea about this presentation is that to reach the happiness people must understand that what make them happy does not necessary make the others happy and what make others happy does not necessary make them happy. For that, people have to understand themselves, to understand the way they think, behave and what really they like. And because people differ than each other their choices will differ so there is no such thing perfect. So, they do not have to try to find the perfect or to consider what the other like such as the perfect things. So the presenter stated that if anyone wants to reach the happiness has to realize that there is verity in human being so the happiness for each one is different. In addition to that, people need to have the courage to explain what they want. I learn that people usually do not trust themselves and they think all people have the same way of thinking and desire but the fact is that each one has his/her own way in testing or seeing things. Comment: Oh My God, this writer Malcolm Gladwell talks exactly like his book *0*, how he talks exactly, he seems like I am looking at the book at the paper, moving paper , not only the word he use but even the way he move like his book *_*, is that means all of us such like our writing we speak like our writing we move like our writing. *_*
I like your final comment. I'm glad you enjoyed meeting Mr. Gladwell "in person," so to speak!
You wrote:
"So the presenter stated that if anyone wants to reach the happiness has to realize that there is verity in human being so the happiness for each one is different. In addition to that, people need to have the courage to explain what they want."
If happiness for everyone is different, then what does that mean for you or me as a communicator of ideas?
the main idea of the speech is that each person has different choices in different things.Gladwell want to tell us that when people have more choices they will feel more happy. he gave tomato sauce as an example and to support his idea.
i think that if you give people more choice they will more struggle in choosing what they want.the reason is that if person wants to buy something and he/she see different choices this will make them be confused. as a result, they will not be happy or satisfied on what they bought.
Based on Howard Moskowitz’ perspective, Malcolm Gladwell pointed out that it is impossible for all people to share the same preference. Each person tends to have their own preferences -- some of which can be the same as the others’ preferences, while some of which can be different from the others’ preferences. However, since there is some intersection among people’s preferences, producers can cluster people into groups and supply satisfied products for each group. In conclusion, this idea is important because it changed the way the producers had thought. First, although people want to be happy, they do not know what they really want. Second, there is only different thing that suit different people. Last but not least, by embracing the diversity, people can be happier. I was not surprised by the information that each person has different aspects. However, what I was surprised was that although each person is unique from one another, there is some intersection among people’s uniqueness that can be clustered into groups reasonably and explicitly. For example, there is no one spaghetti sauce that can satisfy all people, but it is because there are various spaghetti sauces that can satisfy every group of people in the world.
Thank you, Bank, for explaining this so accurately and clearly. You're the first person in the class to discuss the idea of clustering, which means that a company does not need to sell an INFINITE amount of spaghetti sauces to please the majority of the people, just A FEW.
Now tell me, what lesson can a teacher like me learn from this?
Malcolm Gladwell was deliver this lecture based on Howard Moskowitz' theory of happiness. He mentioned that every customers has their own preferences about many things. He gave and example of spagetti sauces. At first, they were just available in limited types and customer's preferences seem to stick with the available one. Then when Moskowitz conducted the experiment, it was surprised that actually customers had different preferences. And with those preferences, they were happy. So this lecture gave us a fact that people are varies in preferences so companies, like foods companies, are try to provide the wide range of choice to customers to make them happy. This fact does not really surprise me. Since everyone has self-preference, and with that preference bing them the happiness. As by the end of this lecture, Gladwell talk about the idea of happiness for everyone is to provide the choice which can satisfied people' preferences.
But its important to note that the choice is not unlimited. As Bank said, the preferences can be grouped into clusters. We don't need thousands of spaghetti sauces, just three.
In this lecture Gladwell is trying to illustrate his idea about happiness through spagatti sause and coffe , there are so many types of spagatti sauce and coffe , and there is a wide variety in people preference and choose . Are people choose usually what they really like? No , some times they choose thing just because it is the standard choice in that time . Sometimes they choose what they think is the best related to its price for instance but it's actually not . The succeess in buisness requires to know what people really like , and there are many "likes" . The right availability in choices makes consumer happy , and give the buisness and companies remarkable profits . It is the art about how to find the "s" in any product , like what Ragu did .
I think you "hit the nail on the head" here when you wrote:
"The succeess in buisness requires to know what people really like , and there are many "likes" . The right availability in choices makes consumer happy , and give the buisness and companies remarkable profits . It is the art about how to find the "s" in any product , like what Ragu did ."
Now what is the lesson that a teacher could learn about making a lesson successful?
In this lecture, Malcolm Gladwell used several examples to explain the relation between choice and happiness. Firstly, he introduced Howard Moskowitz who had a PHD dergree in psychophysics in Harvard. Gladwell used Howard's result which from his research of spaghetti sauce for Prego explained that choice does not exist on a hierarchy, it exist on a horizontal plane, which means there is no good choice or bad choice, there are only different kinds of choice that suit different kinds of people.
People generally think happiness is to be wealthy and can get whatever they want easily. However, is it exactly what every body consider happiness as? Not really. As far as I'm concerned, compared with wealthy, I prefer to consider happiness as the time with family and lover, no matter we are rich or not. Just like what Gladwell talked about in the lecture, there has not happiness for every body, there just has different opinion of happiness for different people.
What a surprise to meet Gladwell. Since I started to read The Tipping Point, I always imagined him as an older man at his earliest 60s. I don't know if it was because of his style of write or because of the broad experience with which he narrated the cases in the book. However it has been, it was really nice to know he's a young life's philosopher.
ReplyDeleteI take my last point about Gladwell to start my appreciation about his lecture on "Happiness and Spaghetti" because I'm more and more convinced he's a philosopher. Each case, each reflexion, and each concept he poses in the book makes us inquire our lives -our enviroment, our daily life, our simple actions, among others.
In this opportunity, Gladwell compares our insatiable pursuit of happiness with the ongoing search of perfection in the food industry field (and he uses for it a research leaded by Dr. Howard Moskowitz). The results are pretty similars. In both cases when questioned people on what do they want, none could say exactly their desires. Furthermore, people looked more comfortable reaching their aspirations with something that makes their seem sophisticated and cults. And finally, in both groups exist the idea of an unique way to do things.
However, all of these three assumptions were wrong. All of them demonstrated only one true, both happiness in life and perfection in food rely on the diversity. As there exist diferent ingredients and ways to create a dish, so too exists diferent kind of people. In life and in the kitchen nothing is wrong or bad. The diversity is the key that open the oportunity to reach the happiness and make recipes that suit the taste of everyone.
This is very nicely written, Veronica. So here is my question for you: What lesson should we take from this as professional communicators (you as a journalist and me as a teacher)?
DeleteIn this lecture,Gladwell talked about that the variety is important.He talks about Mr Moskowitz, he states that the market should identify the variety of the the customer's needs,and supply various products to people in order to meet their all needs. Different people have different needs because of human variety. So many choices can meet all kinds of people's needs.They could choose what they prefered from a large amount of varieties,they know what could make them happy. He also refered to "one size fits",it focuses on the groups, they produced a single product which is majority of people prefer. Because some people don't know what they like, and what makes them happy.so they need to focus on the groups.
ReplyDeleteIn Gadwall’s lecture, the main idea is that happiness also relate to food people have. Furthermore, he also maintains that not all people have the same sense of taste. As a result, we feel one kind of sauce is the best what is not similar to others. He also divides people into three kinds of food taste styles.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I approve of him argument on people have different taste sense. However, I oppose his idea about best taste food make people happiness. That is because I don’t think the food make your fell good not the reason what make people happy. For example, when someone broke down the relationship with his girlfriend, he buy his favorite kind of ice cream which he ate with his girlfriend on the past. What’s his feeling? Happiness? No, he will feel sadness. Therefore, I think happiness doesn’t have close relation to food or sauce.
Jo,
DeleteI think you missed Gladwell's point, which is not about food. Food is just the example that he uses to discuss the nature of choice and happiness.
The main idea of Gladwell's speech is make us conscious about the diversity of human beings in any kind of matter. He used the spaghetti sauce story to exemplify the relationship between the different choices that we make and the real desire that we have about things, moreover, the diversity of those things.
ReplyDeleteI think that is completely true that we all are differents, each one of us is unique and that make the world a mix of thoughts, tastes, feelings, also, each one of us could has differents positions about everything. For instance, the things that make me happy not necessarily make other people happy, moreover, what is a good taste for me could not be a good taste for someone else and so on.
I'm not sure if to be conscious about diversity could help us to find happiness in our lives, but it's clear that in some areas like food, it could for sure.
Luisa, you wrote:
Delete"I'm not sure if to be conscious about diversity could help us to find happiness in our lives, but it's clear that in some areas like food, it could for sure."
So what is the message for you and me as people who want to sell our products or ideas?
Happiness is not the one standardized thing. The measuring philosophy has been changed from the universal to individual's variety of satisfaction . In the view of happiness, no one thing can make all people happy. It is the perfect diet pepsis, 45 diverse of potato sauces;various types of spaghetti sauce that make people happy instead of one perfect diet pepsi or spaghetti sauce from Italy only. However, these spectrum of satisfaction can be clustered in some specific ways. For example, there are 14 kinds of the most popular mustard, and specific type of the most popular spaghetti sauces such as plain, spicy, or chunky sauce.
ReplyDeleteDiferrent happiness among people is the important concept I learn from this section. There are various types of happiness such as happiness from getting good grades, happiness in family's life, or happiness from having a great vacation so that all people in the world can have a pursuit of happiness eventhough they are the poor or the rich,children or adult,or students or working people.
As we know by reading The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell loves to make us know his central point by giving practical examples. In this lecture, he uses a metaphor of the design of certain kind of foods, to share his thoughts about happiness. He said that: “embracing the diversity of human beings society would find the sure way to true happiness”. First, with the spaghetti’s sauce he tried to make us understand that people do not know what they want. Secondly, with the creation of an expensive mustard such as Dijon´s mustard, he explain that people buy things in order to aspire so they spend more money for something that they think is better just because it is more expensive. Finally, Gladwell confront the notion of a platonic dish, he explicate that in the past people use to look for “cooking universal” instead of understanding the human variability.
ReplyDeleteMalcoml´s idea of making people happy embracing the variety is odd, I think we could find happiness also in simple things. Variety of products, make our lives more difficult as we heard in one of our previous lectures. I prefer simple and traditional things instead of having a bunch of differences in one single product, this variety confuse me instead of making me happy. So I do not support Gladwell in this idea.
Ileana,
DeleteI agree with you that the food is just a metaphor to share his thoughts about happiness.
I'm so glad you referred to the first lecture we listened to, the one entitled "The Paradox of Change," by Barry Schwartz.
Tell me, are Gladwell and Schwartz on the same page in their ideas about choice and happiness?
No, they are not on the same page. In fact, they are in opposite sides. I agree with Barry Schwartz, he said that a lot of choices make our decision of buying something too complicate and that make us unhappy. What can I do, I love simple things!!!
DeleteIt seems like he has spent like almost 80% of the speech to talk about sources and food, but I still got the main idea of the whole speech, and that's why this speech was so awesome. Gladwell wants to tell us that there is no such a thing has only perfection. It always has many different kinds of perfection to fit different kinds of people. Like what he said in the speech, there's no perfect Pepsi, but perfect Pepsies. People were wrong that they limited themselves into a very smell space.
ReplyDeleteWhat I learnt from the speech is that people sometime will get influence from other thing, such as culture or tradition, in stead that people don't know what they really want. Therefore, what we really need to do is to find our own happiness, but not follow to other people.
But what did you learn from a marketing (ie. message) perspective? What should you do if you want to sell your great new product or fabulous new idea?
DeleteThe main idea about this presentation is that to reach the happiness people must understand that what make them happy does not necessary make the others happy and what make others happy does not necessary make them happy. For that, people have to understand themselves, to understand the way they think, behave and what really they like. And because people differ than each other their choices will differ so there is no such thing perfect. So, they do not have to try to find the perfect or to consider what the other like such as the perfect things.
ReplyDeleteSo the presenter stated that if anyone wants to reach the happiness has to realize that there is verity in human being so the happiness for each one is different. In addition to that, people need to have the courage to explain what they want.
I learn that people usually do not trust themselves and they think all people have the same way of thinking and desire but the fact is that each one has his/her own way in testing or seeing things.
Comment: Oh My God, this writer Malcolm Gladwell talks exactly like his book *0*, how he talks exactly, he seems like I am looking at the book at the paper, moving paper , not only the word he use but even the way he move like his book *_*, is that means all of us such like our writing we speak like our writing we move like our writing. *_*
*_* no.
Deletehahaha sorry i am kidding
*_* this is cute
Fatimah,
DeleteI like your final comment. I'm glad you enjoyed meeting Mr. Gladwell "in person," so to speak!
You wrote:
"So the presenter stated that if anyone wants to reach the happiness has to realize that there is verity in human being so the happiness for each one is different. In addition to that, people need to have the courage to explain what they want."
If happiness for everyone is different, then what does that mean for you or me as a communicator of ideas?
the main idea of the speech is that each person has different choices in different things.Gladwell want to tell us that when people have more choices they will feel more happy. he gave tomato sauce as an example and to support his idea.
ReplyDeletei think that if you give people more choice they will more struggle in choosing what they want.the reason is that if person wants to buy something and he/she see different choices this will make them be confused. as a result, they will not be happy or satisfied on what they bought.
Do you think Gladwell agrees or disagrees with what Barry Schwartz said in the first lecture about choice?
DeleteBased on Howard Moskowitz’ perspective, Malcolm Gladwell pointed out that it is impossible for all people to share the same preference. Each person tends to have their own preferences -- some of which can be the same as the others’ preferences, while some of which can be different from the others’ preferences. However, since there is some intersection among people’s preferences, producers can cluster people into groups and supply satisfied products for each group. In conclusion, this idea is important because it changed the way the producers had thought. First, although people want to be happy, they do not know what they really want. Second, there is only different thing that suit different people. Last but not least, by embracing the diversity, people can be happier.
ReplyDeleteI was not surprised by the information that each person has different aspects. However, what I was surprised was that although each person is unique from one another, there is some intersection among people’s uniqueness that can be clustered into groups reasonably and explicitly. For example, there is no one spaghetti sauce that can satisfy all people, but it is because there are various spaghetti sauces that can satisfy every group of people in the world.
Thank you, Bank, for explaining this so accurately and clearly. You're the first person in the class to discuss the idea of clustering, which means that a company does not need to sell an INFINITE amount of spaghetti sauces to please the majority of the people, just A FEW.
DeleteNow tell me, what lesson can a teacher like me learn from this?
Malcolm Gladwell was deliver this lecture based on Howard Moskowitz' theory of happiness. He mentioned that every customers has their own preferences about many things. He gave and example of spagetti sauces. At first, they were just available in limited types and customer's preferences seem to stick with the available one. Then when Moskowitz conducted the experiment, it was surprised that actually customers had different preferences. And with those preferences, they were happy.
ReplyDeleteSo this lecture gave us a fact that people are varies in preferences so companies, like foods companies, are try to provide the wide range of choice to customers to make them happy.
This fact does not really surprise me. Since everyone has self-preference, and with that preference bing them the happiness. As by the end of this lecture, Gladwell talk about the idea of happiness for everyone is to provide the choice which can satisfied people' preferences.
But its important to note that the choice is not unlimited. As Bank said, the preferences can be grouped into clusters. We don't need thousands of spaghetti sauces, just three.
DeleteIn this lecture Gladwell is trying to illustrate his idea about happiness through spagatti sause and coffe , there are so many types of spagatti sauce and coffe , and there is a wide variety in people preference and choose . Are people choose usually what they really like? No , some times they choose thing just because it is the standard choice in that time . Sometimes they choose what they think is the best related to its price for instance but it's actually not . The succeess in buisness requires to know what people really like , and there are many "likes" . The right availability in choices makes consumer happy , and give the buisness and companies remarkable profits . It is the art about how to find the "s" in any product , like what Ragu did .
ReplyDeleteEiman,
DeleteI think you "hit the nail on the head" here when you wrote:
"The succeess in buisness requires to know what people really like , and there are many "likes" . The right availability in choices makes consumer happy , and give the buisness and companies remarkable profits . It is the art about how to find the "s" in any product , like what Ragu did ."
Now what is the lesson that a teacher could learn about making a lesson successful?
In this lecture, Malcolm Gladwell used several examples to explain the relation between choice and happiness. Firstly, he introduced Howard Moskowitz who had a PHD dergree in psychophysics in Harvard. Gladwell used Howard's result which from his research of spaghetti sauce for Prego explained that choice does not exist on a hierarchy, it exist on a horizontal plane, which means there is no good choice or bad choice, there are only different kinds of choice that suit different kinds of people.
ReplyDeletePeople generally think happiness is to be wealthy and can get whatever they want easily. However, is it exactly what every body consider happiness as? Not really. As far as I'm concerned, compared with wealthy, I prefer to consider happiness as the time with family and lover, no matter we are rich or not. Just like what Gladwell talked about in the lecture, there has not happiness for every body, there just has different opinion of happiness for different people.