The Tipping Point I Got Wrong | Malcolm Gladwell | TED

35,149 views ・ 2024-10-30

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:04
I want to tell you a story
0
4292
1252
00:05
about when I moved to New York City in 1993.
1
5585
3671
00:09
I was 30 years old,
2
9297
1919
00:11
and I was moving to what was known
3
11258
1876
00:13
as one of the most dangerous big cities in the United States.
4
13134
4130
00:17
And every night,
5
17597
1168
00:18
I would go out with my friends on a Friday or Saturday night,
6
18765
2920
00:21
and at the end of every night we would have a little conference
7
21726
3045
00:24
and we would pool all of our money,
8
24771
1710
00:26
and we would figure out how everyone was going to get home,
9
26481
2795
00:29
because you couldn't go home on the subway by yourself
10
29317
2586
00:31
and you couldn't walk home,
11
31903
1293
00:33
and if you were a woman, you definitely were not allowed to go home by yourself
12
33238
3712
00:36
at one o'clock in the morning on a Saturday night.
13
36992
2335
00:39
That's what it meant to be in this very scary city called New York.
14
39369
4129
00:43
I used to live in the sixth floor of a walk-up in the West Village,
15
43498
4588
00:48
and my bedroom faced the fire escape.
16
48128
4004
00:52
And even in the summer, I had no air conditioning,
17
52132
3044
00:55
I had to keep my window closed
18
55218
1460
00:56
because I was scared that somebody would come down the fire escape
19
56678
3128
00:59
into my apartment.
20
59848
1585
01:01
And then one day I woke up and I realized that I wasn't scared anymore.
21
61474
3337
01:04
And I kept the window open.
22
64853
1793
01:06
And I realized that when I was going out with my friends,
23
66688
2711
01:09
we weren't having that conference at the end of the evening anymore.
24
69399
3253
01:12
We were just going home.
25
72652
1335
01:14
This city that I had thought, we all thought,
26
74029
2294
01:16
was one of the scariest in the United States
27
76364
3337
01:19
wasn't scary anymore.
28
79701
1460
01:21
And I remember at the time
29
81161
1293
01:22
I was absolutely transfixed by this transformation.
30
82495
4004
01:26
I couldn't understand it.
31
86541
1251
01:27
It was the same city full of the same weird, screwed up people,
32
87834
4004
01:31
same buildings, same institutions.
33
91838
2419
01:34
Only nobody was murdering each other anymore.
34
94299
2919
01:37
And I would call up criminologists
35
97260
1794
01:39
and I would ask them, "What's your explanation?"
36
99095
2253
01:41
And no one could give me a good explanation.
37
101389
3128
01:44
And I remember one day -- I used to go to the NYU,
38
104517
3045
01:47
New York University has a library called Bobst Library.
39
107562
3212
01:50
I used to go to Bobst to look for ideas.
40
110774
1918
01:52
And I remember one day I was on the sixth floor in the sociology section,
41
112734
5672
01:58
HM-1A6,
42
118448
2085
02:00
and I was reading back issues, yes, I was,
43
120533
2253
02:02
back issues of the American Journal of Sociology,
44
122786
2669
02:05
and I ran across an article from 1991
45
125497
2377
02:07
by a guy named Jonathan Crane
46
127874
1710
02:09
called “The Epidemic Theory of Ghetto Life.”
47
129626
2377
02:12
And I'm going to read to you how it began.
48
132003
3545
02:15
"The word epidemic is commonly used to describe
49
135590
2628
02:18
the high incidence of social problems in ghettos.
50
138259
3254
02:21
The news is filled with feature stories on crack epidemics,
51
141554
2837
02:24
epidemics of gang violence, and epidemics of teenage childbearing.
52
144432
3796
02:28
The term is used loosely in popular parlance,
53
148228
3128
02:31
but turns out to be remarkably apt."
54
151356
3086
02:34
And what Crane was saying
55
154442
2086
02:36
is that if you look at these kinds of social problems,
56
156528
2878
02:39
they behave, they come and they go,
57
159406
1710
02:41
they rise and they fall exactly like viruses do.
58
161157
3003
02:44
He was saying that that term epidemic is not a metaphor.
59
164160
3420
02:47
It's a literal description.
60
167580
2461
02:50
And I'll never forget when I read that little paragraph
61
170041
3545
02:53
and I was standing in this aisle in Bobst Library,
62
173586
3671
02:57
and, you know, it's a library.
63
177298
1460
02:58
It's got that hush and that musty smell of books.
64
178800
4463
03:03
And I'm reading this crazy article from 1991,
65
183304
3379
03:06
and I remember thinking to myself,
66
186725
1668
03:08
oh my God, that's what happened in New York.
67
188435
2794
03:11
We had an epidemic of crime.
68
191229
2002
03:13
And what is the hallmark of an epidemic?
69
193273
2085
03:15
It's the tipping point.
70
195400
1168
03:16
It's the moment when the epidemic order goes up all at once
71
196609
2795
03:19
or crashes all at once.
72
199404
1918
03:21
And so I wrote an article for "The New Yorker" magazine
73
201364
2586
03:23
called "The Tipping Point,"
74
203950
1335
03:25
which was my attempt to use this theory to explain what happened in New York.
75
205285
4171
03:29
And then I, because of that article,
76
209456
1793
03:31
got a contract for a book called "The Tipping Point,"
77
211249
2503
03:33
which did very well.
78
213793
1168
03:35
And that book led to another book and another book and another book.
79
215003
3211
03:38
And I am standing here today
80
218214
1669
03:39
because of that moment in the library 25 years ago.
81
219883
4254
03:44
(Applause)
82
224137
2044
03:46
So "The Tipping Point," my first book, was about all kinds of things.
83
226181
3753
03:49
I talked about Hush Puppies and Paul Revere and teenage smoking.
84
229976
4296
03:54
But at the heart of it was a chapter on why did crime decline in New York.
85
234314
6381
04:00
And in that chapter
86
240737
2627
04:03
I talked a lot about a theory called broken windows theory,
87
243364
2962
04:06
which was a very famous idea
88
246367
2962
04:09
that had been pioneered by two criminologists
89
249370
2128
04:11
called George Kelling and James Q. Wilson in the 1980s,
90
251498
3253
04:14
very influential article,
91
254793
1501
04:16
in which they argued that very small things in the environment
92
256294
5088
04:21
can be triggers for larger crimes.
93
261424
3128
04:24
That essentially small instances of disorder
94
264552
3545
04:28
are tipping points for very serious things
95
268139
2086
04:30
like murder or rape or any kind of violent crime.
96
270266
4547
04:34
It was an epidemic theory of crime,
97
274854
2586
04:37
and the New York City Police Department took that idea very seriously.
98
277440
4505
04:41
And one of the things they began to do in the 1990s during this crime drop
99
281945
4504
04:46
was to say what this argument means
100
286491
2919
04:49
is that we can't be passive anymore.
101
289452
2336
04:51
We have to be proactive.
102
291830
1334
04:53
We have to go out there
103
293164
1168
04:54
and if someone is jaywalking or jumping a turnstile
104
294374
2461
04:56
or doing graffiti or peeing on the sidewalk,
105
296876
2753
04:59
we've got to stop them.
106
299671
1168
05:00
And if we see a young man walking down the street
107
300839
2335
05:03
and he looks a little bit suspicious,
108
303216
1793
05:05
we've got to stop him and frisk him for his weapons.
109
305009
2628
05:07
That's how the NYPD interpreted
110
307637
4588
05:12
the broken windows theory in New York.
111
312225
2461
05:14
And my chapter was how millions of people around the world
112
314727
4004
05:18
came to understand the crime drop in New York,
113
318773
2711
05:21
that it was all broken windows.
114
321484
2086
05:24
And here's the thing that I have come to understand
115
324821
2419
05:27
about that explanation I gave of why crime fell in New York.
116
327240
4421
05:32
I was wrong.
117
332620
1210
05:35
I didn't understand this until quite recently,
118
335957
2169
05:38
when I went back
119
338126
1376
05:39
and I decided on the 25th anniversary of my first book, "The Tipping Point,"
120
339502
3796
05:43
that I would write a sequel.
121
343339
1460
05:44
It's called "Revenge of the Tipping Point,"
122
344841
2085
05:46
and I went back and, for the first time in a quarter century,
123
346926
2920
05:49
I reread my original book.
124
349888
1584
05:51
I'm not someone who likes to revisit things, but I did it,
125
351514
2711
05:54
and it was a uniquely complicated experience.
126
354267
3253
05:57
It was like looking back at your high school yearbook.
127
357562
2794
06:00
You know, when you see yourself and you have some combination of,
128
360398
3754
06:04
"Wow, I look young,"
129
364152
1251
06:05
and also, "Wow, I really wore that?"
130
365445
2669
06:08
It was like that.
131
368740
1751
06:11
And what I realized is that in the intervening years
132
371117
4046
06:15
since I wrote that explanation of why I think crime fell in New York,
133
375204
4547
06:19
the theory of broken windows had been tested.
134
379751
3295
06:23
There was a kind of classic natural experiment
135
383087
3170
06:26
to see whether that theory worked.
136
386257
2378
06:28
And the natural experiment was a court case,
137
388676
2920
06:31
maybe one of the most famous court cases in New York history
138
391596
3211
06:34
called Floyd v City of New York.
139
394849
3420
06:38
It involved a young man named David Floyd,
140
398311
2044
06:40
who had been stopped a number of occasions by the NYPD
141
400355
3628
06:44
and was the face of a class action lawsuit
142
404025
2669
06:46
that said the practice of stopping young men,
143
406736
2794
06:49
largely young men of color,
144
409530
1919
06:51
just because they look a little suspicious to police
145
411449
4004
06:55
is not constitutional.
146
415453
1543
06:57
You can't do that, right?
147
417038
1418
06:58
And to everyone's surprise,
148
418456
1752
07:00
the Floyd lawsuit goes before a federal judge.
149
420249
2753
07:03
And the federal judge rules in David Floyd's favor.
150
423044
4004
07:07
And overnight, the broken windows era
151
427090
2544
07:09
in New York City policing ends.
152
429676
2294
07:12
And the NYPD goes from --
153
432011
1752
07:13
In 2011, they stopped and frisked 700,000 young men, right.
154
433805
5505
07:19
And after the Floyd lawsuit was decided in 2013,
155
439352
3712
07:23
that number drops to less than 50,000.
156
443064
2878
07:26
So this is the perfect natural experiment.
157
446567
2336
07:28
You have New York before Floyd and New York after Floyd.
158
448945
3211
07:32
Before Floyd,
159
452824
1376
07:34
the principal tactic of the NYPD is stopping everyone they can.
160
454200
3712
07:37
And after Floyd that goes away.
161
457912
2878
07:40
They can't do that anymore, right?
162
460832
1626
07:42
This is the perfect test case
163
462500
1543
07:44
for whether you think that's why crime fell in New York.
164
464085
3128
07:47
And if you believe in the power of broken windows policing,
165
467255
4045
07:51
then your expectation has to be that after the Floyd case,
166
471342
3796
07:55
when broken windows goes away,
167
475179
1877
07:57
crime is going to go back up, right?
168
477056
2294
07:59
And I should tell you that in 2013, in the wake of the Floyd case,
169
479392
3629
08:03
everybody thought crime was going to go back up.
170
483021
3503
08:06
The NYPD thought that,
171
486858
1835
08:08
the city government thought that,
172
488735
2252
08:11
the pundits thought that,
173
491029
1292
08:12
even the judge who wrote the opinion
174
492321
2962
08:15
saying that stop and frisk was unconstitutional,
175
495324
3337
08:18
said in her opinion that she strongly suspected
176
498661
3212
08:21
that as a result of this opinion, crime would go back up.
177
501914
3129
08:25
I thought crime was going to go back up, right?
178
505084
3295
08:28
All of us had internalized the logic of broken windows.
179
508379
2753
08:31
We said, yes, we know this strategy poses an incredible burden on young men,
180
511174
6131
08:37
but what choice do we have, right?
181
517346
2002
08:39
You know, if the choice is being stopped repeatedly by police or being killed,
182
519766
4004
08:43
maybe we're better off with the former than the latter.
183
523811
2586
08:46
This is the price we pay for a safe New York, right?
184
526397
4797
08:51
So what happens after the Floyd case?
185
531652
2211
08:54
Stop and frisk goes away
186
534447
2669
08:57
and crime falls.
187
537158
1293
08:58
In fact, crime in New York City undergoes a second,
188
538826
4546
09:03
even more miraculous decline, right?
189
543414
4129
09:07
And what's interesting about this is, you know,
190
547585
2252
09:09
when the first crime declined in the 1990s,
191
549837
2002
09:11
you see that decline almost everywhere in the United States,
192
551881
2878
09:14
not quite as steep as New York,
193
554801
2127
09:16
but crime goes down everywhere.
194
556928
2252
09:19
And then in every other city in the United States, crime plateaus.
195
559222
4045
09:23
But New York gets rid of broken windows,
196
563309
1960
09:25
and crime starts to fall and fall and fall all over again.
197
565269
3796
09:29
To the point by 2019
198
569107
2711
09:31
that New York City is as safe as Paris,
199
571818
3586
09:35
which is not a sentence I ever thought anyone would ever say in my lifetime.
200
575446
4797
09:40
And what we realize in that second crime decline
201
580910
3170
09:44
is that it wasn't broken windows.
202
584080
1835
09:45
It's not indiscriminate policing that causes crime to fall.
203
585915
2961
09:48
Rather, it is the intelligent and thoughtful
204
588918
3170
09:52
and selective application of police authority
205
592130
3253
09:55
that causes crime to fall.
206
595383
1752
09:57
Now, there's a couple of really puzzling things here.
207
597718
3379
10:02
One is that people don't seem to have internalized the fact
208
602098
4546
10:06
that New York underwent this second,
209
606686
2461
10:09
even more dramatic crime fall.
210
609188
1752
10:10
People still act like it's the year 2000
211
610982
3795
10:14
when it comes to making sense of New York.
212
614777
2211
10:16
You know, a whole bunch of very, very wealthy hedge fund guys
213
616988
3170
10:20
have very loudly left New York for Miami in recent years.
214
620158
3712
10:23
And they all say,
215
623870
1418
10:25
when they're packing up their offices in New York,
216
625329
2545
10:27
"We can't take the crime anymore."
217
627915
1710
10:29
Well, violent crime in Miami is twice as high as New York City.
218
629625
5422
10:35
If they were really concerned about violent crime,
219
635047
3337
10:38
they would leave Coral Gables before they get murdered
220
638426
2544
10:41
and move to the Bronx,
221
641012
1168
10:42
where it is a whole lot safer.
222
642221
1460
10:43
(Laughter)
223
643681
1126
10:45
(Applause)
224
645433
2669
10:48
The other even more important thing, though,
225
648102
2544
10:50
is that people act like stop and frisk actually worked.
226
650688
4296
10:55
No one seems to have internalized the lesson
227
655026
3044
10:58
of the great Floyd case natural experiment.
228
658112
4379
11:02
If you listen to people -- I'm not going to name their names,
229
662533
2878
11:05
but people going around the country now campaigning for higher office,
230
665411
3629
11:09
they will say things like,
231
669040
1293
11:10
"It's time to bring back stop and frisk and broken windows policing.
232
670374
3963
11:14
It worked so well in New York."
233
674378
1544
11:15
They're acting as if we didn't have
234
675922
2043
11:18
that great moment of understanding in 2013.
235
678007
3545
11:22
And for that, for that misunderstanding,
236
682011
3378
11:25
I think I bear some of the blame.
237
685431
2586
11:28
I was the one who wrote this book
238
688017
1793
11:29
saying this was the greatest tactic ever in stopping crime.
239
689810
4255
11:34
Now, how do I make sense of my mistake?
240
694774
2836
11:38
Well, I can give you all kinds of excuses.
241
698569
2127
11:40
You know, I can say I'm not a fortune teller.
242
700738
3462
11:44
I didn't know that David Floyd was going to come along
243
704200
4046
11:48
10 years after I wrote my book
244
708287
1752
11:50
and give us this great test case in broken windows policing.
245
710081
3753
11:53
You know, I could say that, you know,
246
713834
1794
11:55
I was just writing what everybody believed back in the 1996 and 1997.
247
715628
5213
12:00
But I don't think those excuses hold any water whatsoever.
248
720883
4713
12:05
I think that journalists,
249
725596
1877
12:07
writers need to be held to a higher standard, right?
250
727473
3712
12:11
I wrote --
251
731727
1335
12:13
(Applause)
252
733562
3254
12:16
I told a story about how crime fell in New York,
253
736857
4255
12:21
and I told the story like the story was over.
254
741153
3003
12:24
And like I knew what the answer to this story was.
255
744156
3921
12:28
And it wasn't over
256
748119
1251
12:29
and I didn't know the answer, right?
257
749370
2044
12:31
I wrote, "I know this is what happened,"
258
751706
3920
12:35
and what I should have said is
259
755668
2044
12:37
"This is what I believe happened now," right?
260
757753
4505
12:43
And those words "I believe happened now"
261
763092
5172
12:48
have to be at the center of any understanding
262
768306
2293
12:50
of how the world works.
263
770641
1710
12:52
We have to acknowledge that we are representing
264
772393
2336
12:54
the position of this very moment,
265
774770
1835
12:56
and that that position could change if the facts change, right?
266
776647
3671
13:00
The great desire of any writer is to write a book for the ages,
267
780651
4088
13:04
that will forever explain the way things are,
268
784780
3128
13:07
but that's not possible,
269
787950
2544
13:10
and no one should ever try.
270
790494
1961
13:12
That was my mistake.
271
792496
1585
13:14
And I'm sorry.
272
794749
1209
13:17
(Applause)
273
797710
6882
13:29
Monique Ruff-Bell: That was some mea culpa, Malcolm.
274
809597
3545
13:33
And so I have a couple of questions for you.
275
813726
2461
13:36
If you don't mind, I want to take you back 25 years
276
816479
3169
13:39
to that version of yourself.
277
819690
1752
13:41
And so you talked about how there was a sense of anxiety and fear
278
821817
5172
13:47
about what crime was happening around that time.
279
827031
2544
13:49
I grew up in New York around that time, 25 years ago.
280
829617
3170
13:52
Being in my early 20s
281
832787
2085
13:54
and having these experiences with my friends
282
834872
3003
13:57
where they experienced unfortunate instances with stop and frisk,
283
837917
3462
14:01
so much so they had anxiety, hurt and fear.
284
841379
4629
14:06
And so when you were thinking about this and the support,
285
846384
2711
14:09
did you ever think about what if they got it wrong,
286
849095
3211
14:12
what if it was wrong
287
852348
1793
14:14
and innocent people were going to have to experience this?
288
854183
2711
14:16
What were your thoughts about that back then?
289
856894
2377
14:19
Malcolm Gladwell: Well, I wasn't thinking about that.
290
859271
2670
14:21
I mean, it's funny,
291
861982
1335
14:23
I went, when I was sort of trying to figure out
292
863359
2669
14:26
what I did wrong in that chapter,
293
866070
1585
14:27
I went down to Philadelphia
294
867655
1877
14:29
and I went and met with a group of doctors,
295
869573
5840
14:35
all of them Black, at University of Pennsylvania,
296
875454
3003
14:38
because they had done some really interesting work on crime,
297
878499
2836
14:41
and I wanted to get their sense.
298
881377
1626
14:43
And one of the doctors had read that chapter on crime.
299
883003
3003
14:46
And she said, "You know, when I read your chapter on crime,
300
886048
2836
14:48
you were exceedingly interested --"
301
888884
1919
14:50
I opened that chapter with the famous story of Bernie Goetz,
302
890803
2836
14:53
the guy who shot the kids on the subway.
303
893639
2586
14:56
And she said, "Go back and reread the way you wrote that story,
304
896267
3461
14:59
and you'll realize you spent a lot of time talking about the fear of the white guy,
305
899728
3963
15:03
and you have two sentences on the kids.
306
903691
2544
15:06
And the kids were every bit as damaged as the guy who shot them."
307
906235
3795
15:10
And I realized, I think I was just in --
308
910030
3212
15:13
like so many of us, I was in a little bubble,
309
913242
2127
15:15
and I was seeing the problem from one perspective.
310
915369
3295
15:18
And like many, you know,
311
918706
3420
15:22
middle- and upper-class professionals in Manhattan,
312
922126
3253
15:25
I wasn't thinking about the world
313
925421
1585
15:27
through the eyes of someone in the Bronx or Brooklyn.
314
927047
2545
15:29
And some of that has to do with youth,
315
929592
2043
15:31
and some of that has to do with foolishness.
316
931677
2628
15:34
And I'd like to think I'm a little wiser now.
317
934305
4087
15:38
MRB: Right. So you had a quote --
318
938434
2377
15:41
(Applause)
319
941479
2460
15:43
"I told this story like I knew the answer and it wasn't over."
320
943939
4129
15:48
How has that insight affected your thinking and your writing now?
321
948068
3796
15:52
MG: I've tried to be, I mean, I realize when I look back at my younger self,
322
952531
4755
15:57
I was way too certain about the ideas that I was putting forth.
323
957328
6381
16:04
And I thought that if you wanted to win over an audience,
324
964001
2836
16:06
you had to communicate certainty.
325
966879
2127
16:09
And now I realize that's actually backwards,
326
969048
2711
16:11
that you're more willing,
327
971759
2210
16:14
you're more capable of winning over an audience
328
974011
2252
16:16
when you admit to the uncertainty and the fragility of your position.
329
976263
3837
16:20
People want that.
330
980142
1919
16:22
They like that,
331
982102
1877
16:23
they appreciate that spirit far more.
332
983979
1877
16:25
And people are much more likely, I think,
333
985898
2461
16:28
to be suspicious of someone who seems falsely certain.
334
988400
4588
16:33
MRB: Well, we appreciate you bringing your thoughts to this platform
335
993030
3212
16:36
and sharing that.
336
996242
1167
16:37
And so thank you to Malcolm Gladwell for doing that.
337
997451
2461
16:39
(Applause)
338
999912
3378
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7