 | Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
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 2008-11-26 - No facts, all speculation
If you want to try something a bit more practical, try this: Tao Cycle Therapy: Natural Happiness via Self Directed Cure for Chronic Anxiety & Depression [Updated 2008 3nd Edition]
 2008-11-23 - Another fascinating subject!
Having read The Tipping Point for our book club, I was looking forward to reading this book with the same group, and was not disappointed. Fascinating insights into a fairly obscure topic. Makes one really think about ones own prejudices and intuitions.
2008-11-22 - Entertaining but often confusing if you think too hard about it
Although I found "blink" engrossing, Gladwell's talent as a writer often lets him get away with murder. The distinctions he makes sometimes seem arbitrary, particularly if one takes just a little more than 2 seconds to mull things over. Some of his extrapolations not only seem unjustified but mislead. For example, in his discussion of malpractice, Gladwell urges his patients to find their doctors "wanting" if they appear not to be listening or talking down. But the research on which Gladwell bases his malpractice discussion simply found a correlation between this sort of behavior and a physician's likelihood of being sued. There was no discussion of whether the physicians who were sued more frequently when this sort of behavior was present also had delivered less appropriate care with any greater frequency. While many of us would prefer a doctor who takes the time to listen, we also want a competent doctor. Would it necessarily be wise to pass up a doctor with an excellent clinical reputation simply because he/she was a cold fish? In a discussion about hospital emergency departments, Gladwell asserts that "what screws up doctors when they are trying to predict heart attacks is that they take too much information into account." He bases this conclusion on research performed in the 1970s that produced an algorithm for determining heart attacks that considered far less data than traditional methods of diagnosis and was far more accurate and safe. What seems obvious, however, is that the algorithm worked better not because it required less information but rather because it had identified the right information to use. And the algorithm had been developed after only "feeding hundreds of cases into a computer", so there also appears to have been nothing intuitive about which data would prove to be the best data to use in assessing the likelihood of heart attack. Gladwell ends his Afterword with the suggestion that, given the demonstrated bias against black defendants in criminal trials, "the accused shouldn't be in the courtroom" and "should answer all questions by e-mail or through the use of an intermediary." In this manner, the jury's and judge's bias would be mitigated. Constitutional issues aside, if juries and judges are on average (at least unconsciously) biased against black defendants, why shouldn't those same biases affect jury and judge perceptions of black witnesses? Do we also need to remove all witnesses from the courtroom? But after having removed all witnesses and defendants from the courtroom, how much potentially valuable information is lost by the inability to view witness and defendant (if the defendant chooses to take the stand) facial and body language of the sort that Gladwell earlier in the book asserts is so meaningful? Has one type of injustice been "solved" in exchange for creating the possibility of many more? My gut tells me that figuring out how to remedy courtroom racial bias is going to require more thinking than blinking.
2008-11-19 - Great storytelling
I really love a good story, and the stories in this book were fascinating, especially since you weren't sure where each one was going. So much food for thought-- you may just read it in a few days, but spend weeks thinking about it (or telling your husband about it over and over...). Great!
2008-11-10 - pretty much goes nowhere
I found this a tremendously interesting read: during two days or so it took me to read it, I really couldn't put it down. (A teacher, I put my students to work doing a bunch of soul-crushing busy work so I could finish reading it during classtime.)
It's full of great anecdotes, and Gladwell has a lucid and engaging style.
The problem is this: as far as what Gladwell's actually saying, his observations don't sum to much.
The basic thesis -- as I'm sure you know -- is that people in certain walks of life are frequently found to exhibit eerily reliable snap judgments, whereby they can arrive at the core of (what seem to us) monstrously complex problems in only a second or two.
Fair enough. The phenomenon certainly exists. Gladwell documents it well and you find yourself convinced that he's not making this up.
Alas. The book attempts to go further than that, and that's where it falls flat.
Gladwell never successfully articulates exactly how it is that his various "thin-slicers" actually work their magic. Further, he fails to give proper weight to the counter-evidence: loads of cases where snap judgments fail. Offhand, I would imagine that judging situations based on one's initial impression is, on average, a dumb way to go most of the time (even perilous in some contexts).
But so enthusiastic is Gladwell about the laundry-list of exceptions he has collected that it's almost to the point where he's implying that preternatural snap judgments are USUALLY reliable, rather than OCCASIONALLY reliable. Which is quite the daring claim.
Finally, Gladwell fails to provide any guidance on the question of how one could systematically learn to hone such a skill, assuming that it can even exist in one's discipline (I remain to be convinced that snap judgments have a role to play in all walks of life).
The end result of these shortcomings is that the only thing "Blink" does effectively is point out that the phenomenon exists. By itself this is not terribly useful.
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