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Christian Science Monitor ^ | January 4, 2005 | Clayton Collins

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from the January 04, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0104/p14s02-bogn.html

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The author of 'The Tipping Point' returns with a book about the science of leaping to conclusions

By Clayton Collins

Ever quickly sized up a situation and just known what action to take - or had a startlingly clear first impression of a stranger that later turned out to be preternaturally astute?

You may have jacked into what Malcolm Gladwell calls "the giant supercomputer in [your] unconscious." To get to know that mental motherboard, you might consider enlisting Gladwell as your IT support man.

In "Blink," Gladwell cleanly decodes the science of rapid cognition, those snap judgments made with only the subtlest clues. Some of his examples:

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	BLINK: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking By Malcolm Gladwell Little, Brown 277 pp., $23.95

[KeyWest]

I immediately dismissed the book as garbage.

First impressions are good but are just as often wrong. The examples used are really based on years of experience (seeing the vase as a fake) rather than innate ability.

The law of survivors is at play here- "all successful outcomes are based on evidence of the survivors". You never hear from people who die from a disease, only those who survive, so it appears that more survive than die. Same here, you only hear from those who were successful in their first impressions, not those who fall for the "fake vase".

[snarks_when_bored]

I think you may be onto something there. And, indeed, when I added the key words FOOLSRUSHIN and HASTEMAKESWASTE and SNAPJUDGMENTS to this thread, I was thinking along the same lines.

Pop psychology is often fun, but, hey, it's pop psychology.