Slashdot Mirror
Blink
First, Gladwell introduces a concept called "thin-slicing." This involves the human brain's critical reduction of information to make predictions about complicated systems. For example, a system developed at the University of Washington can predict with 95% accuracy whether a couple will be divorced within fifteen years, based entirely upon one hour of observed interaction.
Next, Gladwell discusses analogous ways the human brain uses thin-slicing to make subconscious snap decisions. Interestingly, this rapid decision-making process can easily be primed by external influences. External influences affect more decisions than many people care to admit; these factors form the basis for snap judgments and first impressions.
Gladwell relates a study of how well a subject's personality was evaluated either by strangers who visited the subject's dorm room for fifteen minutes or by friends that knew the subject well. Friends were more accurate about extraversion and agreeableness, but the strangers were better at gauging conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to new experiences. Thin-slicing isn't always correct; it depends on having the right information.
Superficial traits can be used to the advantage of an actor trying to project a particular characterization. Similarly, an authority figure can dress and behave in a particular fashion to influence subordinates. Warren G. Harding made overwhelmingly positive first impressions throughout his political career, although he is considered by historians to be one of the worst American presidents. Despite his consistently lackluster performance, his attractive bearing and appearance camouflaged his shortcomings.
On the other hand, by understanding the fallibilities of intuition, one can influence others' unconscious decision-making processes and be more aware of influences on one's own intuition. People can control and develop their intuitive decision-making skills. For instance, a successful car salesman would never be distracted by the appearance of a customer to the detriment of a sale. A portion of the book discusses physiological tests that reveal the strength of stereotypes in subconscious decision making by measuring reaction times.
Having defined the capabilities and limitations of intuitive decision-making, Gladwell spends a chapter focusing on spontaneity through the story of General Paul Van Riper and Millennium Challenge '02. A technologically advanced military with a vast array of information collection and "common operational picture" was pitted against a less technologically capable adversary led by General Van Riper. Much as David defeated Goliath, Van Riper's force inflicted staggering losses on his information-gorged enemy. His victory illustrates the utility of pre-arranged structure (such as "commander's intent" or "desired endstate") to empower subordinates to make spontaneous decisions. The fog of war couldn't really be defied, but decision makers could be trained to cope well with uncertainty.
The latter parts of the book discuss how intuitive decision-making can fall short. Humans' senses and subconscious minds can be negatively affected in stressful environments where stimuli are distorted and thin-slicing can easily go awry. Gladwell takes examples from recent developments in police procedures designed to avoid situations that adversely affect law enforcement personnel. For instance, many departments make their officers patrol individually. Without partners, they are more likely to wait for backup before entering dangerous situations. The author also performs a detailed deconstruction of the Amadou Diallo shooting in New York City. He concludes that the tragedy was not a product of conscious injustice, but simply a chain reaction of impaired snap decisions made within seven seconds of violence.
Overall, Blink makes for a quick read and is sure to stimulate conversation. Its premise is simple, and it contains ample food for thought. Its discussion of priming the intuition with particular stimuli and impaired "thin-slicing" provides a useful tool in deconstructing human behavior. The strengths and weaknesses of intuition-priming and thin-slicing are useful knowledge for any professional decision-maker.
You can purchase Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Steve Sailor reviewed this book recently too.
It only took me two seconds to decide this was a bad book. Sounds kind of new-ageish.
For example, a system developed at the University of Washington can predict with 95% accuracy whether a couple will be divorced within fifteen years, based entirely upon one hour of observed interaction.
Where is that system, i want it.
ajf
Sounds like most slashdot postings... thinking without thinking..
Local Libraries and Slashdot, what a team. Every time I hear of a book mentioned on /. I go to my local library's web page and place a hold. I am number 70 on the list today for this book now. I'm still waiting for a couple O'Reilly books to come to me from a while ago. Please someone tell me if it is worth reading so I can decide if I want to cancel my hold.
I can name that book in three letters:
Gut
as in, trust yours, it provides the best results... yes i know this is an over simplification of what he writes in the book but its closer to than farther from the truth...
i bought and read "The Tipping Point" His first book...and stopped after the first couple of chapters...
I think he should have named it:
Obvious...
"It's the art of fighting without fighting." Now thats deep.
Doesn't compare to the star-nosed mole, who strikes me as two notes cooler by the fact it overclocks its own brain:
"The pace of the star-nosed mole's feeding is so fast that it is approaching the maximum speed at which its nervous system can process information."
More revelations worthy of a New Yorker article just make me yawn. And, more evidence of my, um, correct opinion is corroborated here, in Black Table's "believe the hype?" review.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
Researcher: Thank you for participating in our study. According to our model, you and your spouse are likely to be divorced within fifteen years. Have a nice day!
Isn't that kind of news likely to be self-fulfilling?
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
if you had to decide if 4,294,967,297 was prime or not.
It would seem this "resoning" is only applicable to certain kinds of decisions. Likely those more influenced by emotion than logic.
This makes good conversation fodder, but can frustrate readers who prefer direct presentation of scientific arguments. Plato's Republic is presented as narrative and imagined dialogue. It's been providing good conversation fodder for, oh, a little while now. Perhaps the limitation isn't the form ...
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
His previous book "The Tipping Point" has gotten some buzz in recent years around nonprofits I know. Haven't read either, but by the descriptions it sounds like The Tipping Point is about crowd/mass decision-making in the sociological realm and this one's about individual decision-making in the psychological realm. Interesting if he stuck to one topic, but not one field.
I understand this behavior because I see it; Our very own Fearless Leader exhibits this "thin slicing" with a remarkable success rate.
I do a significant amount of research in an effort to predict certain kinds of market trends and behaviors but what bothers me is that he [often] gets the same results without that work.
Nevertheless, I wonder mostly, why he is dismissive of a technical method that produces his results. Sometimes, it produces different results, and for those times he is extremely grateful, but when it doesn't- that is, when a technical and exhaustive method yields the same result as his snap decisions, he is very frustrated that the technical method was performed at all.
Like it's "obvious" to those of us without the manager hair and posture...
The more interesting part of the Van Riper story (according to Gladwell's book) was that this war game was used as a test of concept to see if the US could invade Iraq successfully utilizing technology to remove the fog of war.
Van Riper (playing for Iraq) utilized (what seemed to the military brass to be) unorthodox methods and won. The military brass found this to be unacceptable and changed the rules of the war game midway, so that Van Riper lost. Then the US invaded Iraq.
Basically a case of "if the results of the test do not coincide with what we are looking for, change the test."
Blink
The Tipping Point
The Wisdom Of Crowds
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Gladwell and James Surowiecki, the author of "The Wisdom of Crowds" got into an interesting co-review of each other's work on slate. I would think that the slashdot crowd would associate more with Crowds since it could be used to laud the value of the FLOSS development models.
Personally, I'm interested in reading both.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
"This makes good conversation fodder, but can frustrate readers who prefer direct presentation of scientific arguments."
One of the things that makes Gladwell such a popular writer and thinker is the way in which he presents things -- in a way that makes these topics interesting to non-scientific people.
I got a galley copy of this last fall, and thought it was an excellent book.
This book has been on my wishlist for a while, saw it recommended on some blog. Apparently Amazon sells an audio version on CD, I will be getting that today.
Few things in life are really as simple as the question "is this number prime"?
When deciding to do just about anything, there are a large number of variables - most of which could never be fully determined. Not the least of these variables is how capabile are you, the desicion maker, of being successful with the choice you have made?
Thus the act of trusting your gut feeling is also one of understanding how you really feel about a project internally, and thus how likely you are to be able to bend unresolved probabilities that are at all alterable in your favor rather than letting the dice fall where they may. Plenty of things in life have succeded just because of extra effort on the part of those promoting them.
Furthermore I do think the brain is great at correlating all sorts of things for you automatically and thus you can get an accurate "feel" for if something is going to go right or wrong based only on a lot of loose data and seeming anecdote.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My gut instinct tells me that this one has... FAILED IT!
on his website you can find dates where he is making guest appearances/ book signing type deal...to get an idea of what a great speaker he is you could hit up IT conversations where theres a podcast/mp3 whatever you want to call it of his under the poptech conference section...
w ell.com/
http://www.itconversations.com
http://www.glad
What we need to learn about is reason, science and logic; the very things that are NOT intuitive.
Intuition - we already got.
Funny also how he mentions that he got into the topic because cops jumped to the conclusion he was a bad guy 'cause he was a longhair.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
I have to believe this is not the author's intent but the impression I came away with from reading his own words was this books makes it OK to follow our first instincts.
Should I play the lottery? I got a hunch that tonight is the night I am going to win so yes I should play.
Should I buy a new car? Yes, I can figure out how to pay for it later.
Reminds me of the scence from the "Matrix" when Neo asked his girl if she knew how to fly a heliocopter. She replies "not yet" and ten seconds later, after a quick upload, she does.
Instant gratification needs validation and now here is a book to validate not having to give anything more than a quick thought. Another step forward for our instant, microwave society.
I just read it, and it is an excellent book. A must read. /. readers, I have no life.
I could not put it down.
But then, like all
wake up and hold your nose
Anyone who reads slashdot at -1 can tell you about "The Wisdom of Crowds".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Warren G. Harding made overwhelmingly positive first impressions throughout his political career, although he is considered by historians to be one of the worst American presidents. Despite his consistently lackluster performance, his attractive bearing and appearance camouflaged his shortcomings. Remind you of somebody?
This is not the sig you are looking for...
This is the kind of book review I want to read on Slashdot. Unlike many magazine book reviews, this one is not an excuse to hijack the book's potential audience for the reviewer's own take on the same subject. Even the summary on the Slashdot homepage helped me learn whether I want to read the book or not. The review was also focused, balancing some "plot" coverage with style and subject explanations. So after about 90 seconds, I felt familiar enough with both subject and book to decide, if I have to, whether to read the book, and maybe track developments in the subject. It's inuitive when you know how! Give ThinkMagnet (James Mitchell) more books to review.
--
make install -not war
I'm on the road mangling the network at one of our satellite locations, and went out seeking coffee Tuesday night. I went to a local book store, grabbed a book that looked interesting and sat down to read while I slurped. Sitting on the table was a copy of Blink that another customer had left there. I picked that up and was immediately engrossed. I've already decided (no two second jokes here, it took a few dozen pages) to start handing it to various friends and coworkers.
I highly recommend this one, and am glad I stumbled across it. As soon as I get home I'm gonna find a copy of Tipping Point.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
How do they know how accurate are the predictions? Won't it take 15 years just to get the results?
--
make install -not war
When I first saw the title The Power of Thinking without thinking , my first reaction was to reword the title in my head to The Power of Voting Republican.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
I've got a real problem with this entire concept. It encourages actions based on an evaluation of past patterns, which in turn discourages uniques and inovation. Also, people trusting their intuition and gut is a lot of what is wrong about people in the first place.
Sigs are awesome huh?
I haven't read Blink, although I've been meaning to pick it up. I'm waiting for the purchase to be a "snap decision". ;)
However, I wanted to recommend another book. While it's highly technical, I would describe it as one of the most impressive books I've read. It's kind of like "Essential Cryptography" in that it's sort of the "Bible" for what it is. It's called "Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases". It is one of the few books in a while that actually changed the way I made decisions.
For example, a system developed at the University of Washington can predict with 95% accuracy whether a couple will be divorced within fifteen years, based entirely upon one hour of observed interaction. So what I want to know is can they take two people and predict if a relationship would work? If so, they'd make a lot of money at www.sciencepicksyourbitch.com
Support Liberty, Support Ron Paul
If you are really interested in this, you should check out Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein. Klein has been a name in judgment and decision- making circles for some time. His book is well written and is theoretically pretty sound. He addresses the use of heuristics in decision-making.
The whole premise of this book should not be surprising at all. Human beings evolved under conditions where they needed to make snap judgments and make them quickly. Those that guessed wrong were weeded from the gene pool as a large predator made lunch of them. The ability to quickly analyze a situation and make a judgement within a few seconds was certainly selected for as we evolved.
Thalasar
'Blink' is a very eye-opening read, to say the least. It has most certainly changed the way that I approach certain situations, especially those where I find myself dealing with new people...because no one, NO ONE wants to make a Warren G. Harding error.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in furthering their understanding of why people sometimes do the things they do.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki (author of The Wisdom of Crowds) discussed the relative merits of snap decision-making and collective decision-making in a recent Slate "Book Club."
I saw that book the other day in recieving.. It intrigued me. Oh well. I am happy for the bn link at the bottom of the story! Buy books from bn! Make my company stock go up!
Instead, you could react by saying, "Well, these guys see some problem signs. Let's figure out what they are, and start fixing things." If you follow through (consistently), you may well save the marriage.
I haven't looked at the study, but it wouldn't shock me if what they look for is whether the couple expects to have to continually work to make the marriage work, or if they just assume that it'll all work out fine on it's own.
I've been married almost 15 years, and we've had to kind of rebuild our relationship about ten or twelve times in those years. You can't just sit around and let entropy do a number on you...
Insightful. Most Slashdot book reviews are awful but this one was very good. (The flamebait-ish last line of the blurb was a little grating but excusable)
Random is the New Order.
See? The Blink works!
I think it's quite insightful to use gut feeling to determine where the number came from.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I haven't read the book myself, but Posner's somewhat scathing review doesn't keep me from wanting to read the book. It does, however, make me want to read it with a critical eye.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I really like Gladwell's writing style and how he manages to pull together a wide variety of interesting anecdotes.
I wanted to strongly recommend Blink, but I can't.
His first book, The Tipping Point, is much much better -- it has a tighter thesis and keeps a much better argument. By the end of Blink, I was increasingly annoyed that Gladwell kept mentioning previous points and restating his thesis. Enough already, I remember your concept and I'd rather not be beaten over the head with it.
When I finished Blink, I was also left unsatisfied. I love the concept of "thin slicing" and I loved the anecdotes. But unlike The Tipping Point, where he brought it all together successfully, when I finished Blink, I had little sense of where to go next.
Here's the problem -- Gladwell basically credits the intuition of experts. From art historians to Van Riper, the success stories are those who have honed an incredible expertise in an area. But Gladwell doesn't successfully explain how the rest of us can begin to hone our "thin slicing" abilities. (Honestly, I don't think he knows himself.)
In the end, I think it's a book people should read -- but borrow it from a friend or get it from the library. It's not worth the money in hardcover. (This from a family-owned bookstore person!) Better yet, wait for the paperback.
In the meantime, read The Tipping Point!
Gladwell responds, though:
"I always thought that the critics of "Moneyball" misinterpreted what Lewis was saying. He wasn't saying that all instinctive scouting judgments are flawed. He was saying that there are some questions -- like predicting hitting ability -- that are better answered statistically, and that the task of a successful GM is to understand the difference between what can and can't be answered that way. That's my argument in Blink as well."
So the question becomes, then, how do we know when we can make an appropriate snap judgement about something? Why is "this statue looks like a fake" reasonable but "this guy looks like an athlete" not?
Gladwell makes the point that too much data can hinder, rather than help, but you end up needing to make a judgement on how much data is too much then. One of the examples Gladwell gives in "Blink" is of doctors making better diagnoses of heart trouble when they have less data- they jump to the heart, rather than investigating everything else chest pain could be. But do you really want your doctor operating on less than complete information- and if so, where do you set the line at? "Sorry, Doc, I'm afraid if I tell you how long I've had this pain, you might misdiagnose me."
I agree largely with Gladwell's ideas that snap judgements can be better than waffling, but he definitely should have done more to point out differences between good snap decisions and bad ones- he points out the "Warren Harding Effect" where someone "appears qualified" for something, but doesn't say enough in my opinion about knowing when your prejudices are boldly leading your gut astray.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
You might be disappointed by Blink.
I think Gladwell had a ton of great stories like he did in Tipping Point. But I think Blink is a bit more diffuse -- no equivalent to the classification system in TP that you mention.
I like the concept of "thin-slicing" and very much enjoyed the stories in Blink. But I didn't think there was a core argument that stuck together, just a brief concept and some surrounding stories. I'm still not sure I know how to apply the idea of thin slicing myself or how to improve my abilities, other than to assume that with increasing expertise, it'll improve.
In another post, I suggested that people wait for the paperback or borrow it from the library. Blink is a solid book, but IMHO not worth the $$ right now.
So, Van Riper was "constrained" but that doesn't mean "the books were cooked".
Bullshit. When you limit the options, you tilt the results.
I agree with you that the Tipping Point was better.
But I think he has a gift for finding interesting anecdotes and a general ability to spin them together.
So I'm hoping it's just a "sophomore slump" and later books will improve. In many ways, I just thought Blink lacked focus and tighter editing.
I have been waiting for months for this book to come out, based on the strength of the author's discussion on C-SPAN about it. And no, I don't normally watch Book TV, but I got sucked in because it was so fascinating (it was on the radio and even Book TV is better than ClearChannel crap).
The idea that autistic people can be used to model normal people in situations where there is not enough time to make a complex, socially-based decision. That police stopping a vehicle are safer if only one cop is at the scene than if there are two, because the presence of the other makes them proceed too quickly. The author even admits out that race and other prejudices are a factor in split-second decisions whether we like it or not, even when we don't consciously support it (ie raised in a blue state) -- regardless of how much as we might like that to be different.
Gladwell has clearly has done his research and has some really good ideas.
I'm afraid I missed it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First write down five good decisions you made: where you were sure it was a good decision, it turned well and you're glad you made it.
Then write down five bad decisions you made.
Then notice how you originally felt about making the good decisions - what feelings they had in common. Lastly notice how you felt about making the bad decisions - what they had in common.
Thin-slicing isn't always correct; it depends on having the right information.
Correct according to whom? Some panel of experts?
One of the studies mentioned in the book was done by Harvard. They created an online version of these tests that show whether or not you subconsciously associate certain things together. You can take the tests yourself and find out things you may not even be aware of.
The tests are all based on the same idea but are targeted for different prejudices. The black/white test is interesting because many Americans (and less so, other Westerners) will exhibit some form of bias against African-Americans on it. The test said that Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the book, also shows this bias even though his mother is black.
I don't know how accurate these things can be, but it's kind of disturbing to take these and realize how your mind may subconsciously influence your decisions/interactions with other people in such a way.
One of my favorite books of all time is Sources of Power by Gary Klein. Gary Klein studied how people made decisions in high pressure situations, like fire commanders and military personnel, and pioneered a lot of the concepts in intuitive decision making. This is one of the best written, most informative books I've ever read. I highly recommend it to everyone. The follow up The Power of Intuition is great in that it teaches you how to become a better decision maker, but isn't as well written as Sources of Power.
When I heard of Malcolm Gladwell's book, I immediately thought "Awesome, the great popularizer is going to be bringing these concepts to the rest of the world and people will finally know what I'm talking about."
Seeing the subtitle Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, I knew that this was a reference to Klein's book.
If you like Blink, or even like the idea of Blink, definately check out Sources of Power
This sounds like a book outlining an art blondes mastered centuries ago...
just kidding!!!...says the blonde
You see the look on my face, and yet you keep talking.
Now, it would be tremendously useful if Gladwell had figured out some general rules of thumb for when to rely on your instantaneous hunches and when not to.
But as far as I can tell, his book reduces to two messages:
Gladwell does make a genuinely useful point about how when people try to put their ideas into words, they often distort them into meaninglessness or falsehood.
Ironically, this happens to Gladwell every time he writes about race.
Because there were already plenty of books on the market advising corporate workers in tiresome detail how to look before they leap, the sales potential of a book telling them, "Wotthehell, just go ahead and leap," was clear.
Unfortunately for Gladwell, the best-known examples of thinking without thinking are racial and gender prejudices. But, then, you've forgotten Rule #2--Readers despise logic and consistency. So Gladwell just assumes that his otherwise beloved "rapid cognition" is 100% wrong whenever it's based on race or gender stereotypes.
(And that's why he makes a $1 million annually and I don't.)
The most intriguing aspect of Gladwell's book is that its hopeless confusion and mind-melting political correctness stem from the author's own racial background. Although mostly white, Gladwell is partly of African descent (his mother was black, Scottish, and Jewish). But he doesn't look noticeably black in most of his pictures.
The origin of Blink, he writes on his website, came when, "on a whim," he let his hair grow long into a loose but large Afro.
As you can see in this picture of Gladwell with his Afro, he wound up with more of a Napoleon Dynamite Mormon 'fro than the genuine kinky kind that ABA basketball players espoused back in the 1970s. Still, it does finally make him look marginally black.
As soon as Gladwell grew his Afro, he claims, he started getting hassled by The Man: highway patrolmen wrote him speeding tickets, airport security gave him the evil eye, and the NYPD questioned him for 20 minutes because they were looking for a rapist with an Afro.
"That episode on the street got me th
Seastead this.
If you'd read a little more before hastily posting to /. you'd discover that this is one of the core themes and purposes of the book. Here's more of the authors "own words":
"... I think that's an example of bad rapid cognition: there is something going on in the first few seconds of meeting a tall person which makes us predisposed toward thinking of that person as an effective leader, the same way that the police looked at my hair and decided I resembled a criminal. I call this the "Warren Harding Error" (you'll have to read "Blink" to figure out why), and I think we make Warren Harding Errors in all kind of situations-- particularly when it comes to hiring. With "Blink," I'm trying to help people distinguish their good rapid cognition from their bad rapid cognition."
Sounds like the old business plan thing again. Take some relatively obvious ideas, dress them up with nice sound-bitey names, books, speaking engagements, profit.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The quote you gave is a perfect illustration of my point. This book will give validation to instant gratification because people can figure out good from bad instant desicions. The whole idea of an instant desicion is as classic as "judging a book by its cover". We don't like it but if we wrap it in technical terms and provide "studies" to support it and, of course, always use PC responses (at least publically) than we no longer have to give it a second thought.
For you next arguement please share some of your own words. I already read his.
I see a lot of these postings disparaging the book's concept because it is supposedly unlikely to apply consistently to things that require logical analysis.
In radiology we're routinely looking at images that contain more information than can be systematically evaluated; you can't look at every thing on every scan. Certainly there are lists of things to check for in particular situations, but I find that when there is an abnormality, I nearly always first mentally register it as somehow 'wrong' - only afterward do I figure out why it seemed wrong to me.
In evaluation of things with more variables than we can keep track of - that is, when it's more pattern recognition than systematic analysis - I think the book's concept is useful. At least for me, it resonates with some of the things I do during the day. I thus feel compelled to give the guy his share of mad props.
Because what we really need is more encouragement for people to stop thinking about things before doing whatever fool thing pops into their head.
It was either him or one of his colleagues on CBC radio some time recently (past month or so) and the way the theory was pitched, it just sounded like nonsense. On top of it they spoke like marketing people, which made me think it's all really B.S.
Blink, the perfect accessory for your Jump to Conclusions Mat!
So he should have been let finish, for glory points? Not what the game's about. War games are about gathering info. What if we change this or that parameter? Add this or that constraint? And so forth. If the game's been played out to a successful conclusion - guaranteed victory by one side or the other - then it's over. In other words, it wasn't one war game where they rigged the result, it became two war games, one in which David won, another in which Goliath won. Both chock full of useful info to be analysed.
Having read the review and slasdot comments, I can see that there might be somthing to this blink business. However, to be fair to the book I'm going to go with my first impression (it's probably a load of tosh) and not buy it.
Eh, well, I used fast judgement to tell me to avoid this book, because it smells not so much of new-age (which I often like), but of content-free anecdotes. The kind where you enliven a perfectly good one-page paper with 499 pages of illustrative example. If you've read the slashdot blurb, you've pretty much read everything the book has to say.
Now, what I wouldn't mind in the least is some steps towards developing a "Bene Gesserit" style technology of the quick mind. But I doubt this book advances the state of the art.
The "people trusting their intuition" part is pretty much right-on, but throwing out intuition is a bad idea too.
I started playing with an open question in mathematics a while back (the "twin prime conjecture"). Within the first month of working on it, I had arrived at quite a few interesting conclusions related to the problem and come up with some new and unique (to me) ways of looking at it.
I've spent the past four years proving that several of those initial observations were correct. Repeatedly.
The "gut reactions" that I had in that first month got me a long ways into the problem. Taking the time to prove the various results took me a long ways further: it got me less interested in the problem (a long-term form of ADD?), it vetted out many of my mistaken reactions (there were plenty of these), showed me how strong a couple of the initial month's ideas are, and allowed me to see the broader scope of the problem and the related ideas I came up with.
But that's the thing in mathematics: with any given problem, you try what you know about (gut reactions); if that doesn't work and you decide to keep working at it, you may have an incredibly difficult process to work through to find the solution (if one exists), but that part of the process is valuable in itself for when you might be faced with a similar problem in the future.
Same for "gut reactions" in real life... just like I didn't rush out and publish my twin primes findings right away, it's usually not a good idea to make irreversible decisions right away. You just keep the gut reactions in mind as you move forward and make decisions based on the reconciliation of your initial reactions with long-term knowledge of the subject.
Let S_n = {nst+us+vt : s,t in Z \ {0}, u,v in {-1,1}}. For all n in Z where |n| > 2, Z \ S_n is infinite... right?
Gladwell has developed a process for making intuitive decisions.
...Superficial traits can be used to the advantage of an actor trying to project a particular characterization. Similarly, an authority figure can dress and behave in a particular fashion to influence subordinates. Warren G. Harding made overwhelmingly positive first impressions throughout his political career, although he is considered by historians to be one of the worst American presidents. Despite his consistently lackluster performance, his attractive bearing and appearance camouflaged his shortcomings...
br. ok, that was a troll if you are from a red state but seriously...politics works the way it does because the "intuition" shit, so mystifying to nerds, is a pretty good model of behavior for the mythical average voter.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Oliver Sacks (who writes wonderful books on the mind) writes of these (or another) set of twins doing the same thing. They were trading 10 (?) digit primes. He told them some larger primes (12 digit?), which stopped them in their tracks, for five minutes and then they started trading bigger primes!
Happy moony
There's also an audio presentation from Pop!Tech 2004 on IT Conversations
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
There isn't a "meta-funny" moderation, so I'm just going to post this instead. Very clever.
I used fast judgement to tell me to avoid this book .... If you've read the slashdot blurb, you've pretty much read everything the book has to say.
Ok, which one is it? Did you avoid the book or have you read it?
An interesting idea I've been researching lately is "folksonomies", emergent non-hiearachical taxonomies built bottom-up by the "wisdom of crowds". Flickr tags/keywords are a good example. Humans are good at the messy, ambigious parts of life. Harnessing that power programatically is very interesting.
cpeterso
And, actually, the quote which you attribute to Churchill (which variably uses the word "communist" instead of "liberal", and sometimes changes the age of the different leanings) was never uttered by him at all. There is no record of Churchill -- who was a Conservative at the age of 15 -- ever having said this.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
About the divorce test: fifteen years! They can't have built the system fifteen years ago and just now have validated it. They must have used an existing dataset and fit their model to it. It would very easy to fit a model that had enough degrees of freedom to any existing dataset. You might hold out some data for validation but every time you tried them on a model and rejected the model you would be incorperating information from the validation set back into the next model you tried. Overfit!!!
Here's a little perl script that can figure out with just over 50% accuracy whether or not a couple will be divorced in 15 years. Note that the script does not even need to "meet" the couple.
/usr/bin/perl #or wherever your perl is
#!
print "They Will Be Divorced\n"
It only took me two seconds to figure out that this book was about the annoying and obsolete HTML tag.
I'm not sure that I agree...
First of all, the Republican and Democratic parties may have a base of conservatives and liberals respectivly, but that's not the same as saying that they are conservative or liberal. The goals of both parties are the aquisition and retention of power. Serving their base is the means to that end.
Similarly, I see the Republican vs. Democrat dichotomy to be a false dichotomy akin to the con game (no pun intended) of 'lets you and he fight.' Both parties are advocates, ulitmatly, of the increasing centralization of power. The Republicans advocate increasing the power of institutions like the millitary and the CIA, with their buddies in the defense industry profiting. The Democrats advocate bringing in the Gov. to solve one social problem or another, which creates jobs they can distribute to their friends.
The alternative would be an anarcho-libertarian approach; having an inherant distrust of any centralization of power be it corporate or governmental ( though some centralization is necessary in both areas ) The reasoning behind this view is that seats of power will ultimatly be corrupted or else used to undermine democracy in favor of their own organizational interests. While I've heard both Republicans and Democrats effectivly employ this type of rhetoric, very few have followed through with across the board action. Usually it's more a matter of 'attacking the other side while protecting your own base' and plundering the enemy's larder to better stock your own. It's hard to ask people with power to take a stand against power.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I think it's great that perl comes with such amazing support for statistical functions - without even needing any extra libraries.
When I saw it in the bookshop, I almost bought "Blink" on a whim, but then I realised I should really spend some thought on that before shelling out the money.
That is my quick judgement. So if quick judgements are right, the book is crap. And if not, well, then the book talks nonsense, so it is also crap. O, how I love judging a book by its cover!
Good review. It was easy to scan and read just standing at the book rack. It's nothing too deep. You either get it or you don't. He'll make a bundle in the short run, until people find out there's no 'meat' to it. Interesting to see if he starts a cottage industry with this or pursues his own line(s) of development. Lots of $ in this market right now.
just a cosmic pachinko ball in the game called life. the shortest distance between two jokes is a straight line.
The real research on this topic is that of Simple Heuristics that make smart - Gigerenzer & Todd (OUP, 2000) - on first appearance a dry academic psychology text on bounded rationality and how we use lots of shortcuts to get close to the right answer to complex practical problems. the slightly artificial but effective example they give is determining German city size.. which is bigger Wiesbaden or Stuttgart? you've probably no idea..(German readers - don't interupt just yet) but may have at least heard of Stuttgart as might surmise that it was larger. Not only would you be right in this case but you've just discovered the highly effective "recognition heuristic".. and whats more your ignorance works for you..
asked to say which was bigger from pairs of biggest 73 german cities, american college students were more accurate than germans in germany.. the result was reversed for american cities. neat huh?
This heuristic can then be extended to something called 'take the best' which uses extra information in a very frugal fashion.. all you do is compare two items on the best cue you have..(in this case 'have i heard of it?') if your best choice discriminates between them then pick the one it tells you to, if not move to the next best cue (for city size being a state capital or having a premier league sports team are good indicators)
this is a very plausible model of a low cost stategy that might be used in human decision making.. the most surprising thing being that it gives the computationally intensive and informationally exhaustive multiple linear regression a real run for it's money in accuracy at a fraction of the cost in storage and calculation.
just thought i'd let you know.
Perhaps true in the past, but less so now. And much less so when you can Google for information while you are talking with friends in a restaurant without having to stop paying attention to the conversation. Once network technology is intuitive and pervasive (ie: practical wearables) making intuitive decisions by checking trusted sources will only take a few minutes, possibly only matter of seconds once it matures.
Isn't that what cybernetics is about? Self-guiding systems using communication and feedback-control?
All we need now is to invent technology that makes it easier for people to be philisophical, so we can improve the models from which we derive our strategic goals.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Referenced paper:
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle 98195-1525, USA. carrere@u.washington.edu
This study tested the hypothesis that how a discussion of a marital conflict begins--in its first few minutes--is a predictor of divorce. The marital conflict discussion of 124 newlywed couples was coded using the Specific Affect Coding System, and the data were divided into positive, negative, and positive-minus-negative affect totals for five 3-minute intervals. It was possible to predict marital outcome over a 6-year period using just the first 3 minutes of data for both husbands and wives. For husbands this prediction improved as the groups diverged in the remaining 12 minutes; for wives the prediction remained equally powerful for the remaining 12 minutes as it had been in the first 3 minutes.
Post 183...
Screen capture
In seeing this irony I had to destroy it... But at least I got a screen cap of it. But there is a Band called Blink 182 for those that do not know. And I think they have done fairly well themselves
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
I just finished reading the book. I found it to be quite interesting and enlightening. If the reviewer thought that the author of Blink didn't go into enough detail about the research cited in the book, perhaps that's because it would have made the book too dry and much too large. I recommend reading it.
Best regards.