Dave O’Reilly’s Blog

	Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Author: Malcolm Gladwell Rating:
Buy this on Amazon right now.
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking–the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of “thin slices” of behavior. The key is to rely on our “adaptive unconscious”–a 24/7 mental valet–that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us “mind blind,” focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to “the Warren Harding Effect” (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the “dark side of blink,” he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell’s ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. –Barbara Mackoff

This book is about first impressions and “knowing” something before you can really explain why you know that. Ironically enough I got a pretty bad first impression of this book; there was something funny I didn’t really like about it. The book uses examples of how experts in an area such as archaeology can get a bad feeling about something which later turns out to be right. In fact the core hypothesis of this book is almost the exact opposite of the one proposed in the widsom of crowds which says that a group of uneducated people can make a more intelligent decision than even an expert in a particular area.

I suppose the point here is that sometimes groups make better decisions and sometimes it’s the individual experts that will make the best decision. Both of these books, when you are reading them, would have you think that their way of thinking is the only way of thinking, and if you’re not doing it their way, you’re doing it wrong.

I would assert that the best way to know whether or not something is true is to take your time and conduct a series of experiments and build the body of knowledge until a scientific consensus emerges. If you can’t wait that long then at least conduct some well thought out experiments! Hurray for science!