May 2014: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Gladwell)

Post date: May 27, 2014 1:11:45 AM

I was overbooked and did not make it to book club, so extend special thanks to Deebie for sending in this write-up, as well as hosting the May 21 book club discussion of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

Deebie writes:

We had a good turnout last night and some good critique of Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. We agreed it was an interesting topic and take on what it means to be more in touch with your instinctive decision basis. There was agreement in the idea of doing more of this, but also some skepticism that Gladwell didn't really expand on how we can know the distinction in ourselves between good snap judgments and potentially bad ones. It seemed true that 'thin slicing' makes more sense if you are very experienced in that domain, like a physician, or the art historians, and so may not be widely applicable. There was some critique of Gladwell's writing style--a bit too chatty and "soft' in fact-based support of his points--but we all managed to get his message. Catherine [who also missed the meeting unfortunately] passed on some aspects of rapid decision making that takes place in police pursuits, and what exercises she uses to train her staff to be fast but careful. She described an interesting concept, the 'optimal range of arousal' in which a person is alert and maybe on edge, enough to be safe and hyper vigilant, but not to the point of nervousness or hair trigger. Her test was if you can process enough to decide where to run if you are being pursued.