Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without ThinkingBlink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is super interesting, but after reading it I am not any smarter than when I started.

"Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?"

I don't know!

The psychologist predicts whether a marriage will last has been scientifically studying it for years. The tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault was an expert but just magically started seeing it without knowing why. The antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance had expertise but did so contrary to the science.

But even if you're an expert- don't trust your immediate reaction! All the politicians thought Warren Harding would be a great president and he was terrible. And there is the example of when police make huge instinct-based mistakes that result in them shooting unarmed, innocent civilians. We respond differently if we are subconsciously primed, a thing we fail to notice so we probably can't protect ourselves against.

The whole section on Coke and Pepsi seemed especially irrelevant and boring.

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