Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Blink
The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell
I saw this book months ago at Kinokuniya and other major bookstores in Jakarta after seeing it in the bestseller list of Amazon.com, but somehow didn’t happenned to buy it. The one I just finished reading now belongs to my boss, it’s in our office library…
The book tells about the ability of some people that are highly skilled in their fields to make snap judgements. They know things (e.g. quality of things) only by looking or hearing or sensing in a very short duration of time (seconds or even fractions of a second). The explanation is that the process of thinking in such cases is done in subconscious level. Art experts can sense instantly and accurately (although mostly they cannot provide good explanations on their opinions) that art objects they see are fake ones. Vic Braden, the famous tennis player/coach, can know almost perfectly (almost right all the time in his guesses) that a tennis player is about to make a double fault when doing the first service, although desperately fails to explain why he can sense that.
The author gives an entertaining story of such cases, to show us how our minds work. He also write about studies in psychology which show that we have prejudices/assumptions/associations on unconscious level that can reflect in our actions when the actions are done unconsciously; those actions may be the opposites of the ones we would choose consciously. So snap judgements are not always good.
The book doesn’t teach us on how to think without thinking (making accurate snap judgements). For me it is an obvious fact that experienced persons will have those kind of abilities, and some exceptional individuals have the best abilities.
But then again, it is an entertaining book to read. Another title from the author is "Tipping Point", haven’t read it, a reviewer in Amazon doesn’t like it saying "Freakonomics" is better. So I didn’t buy Tipping Point, hoping I can find it in our office library (unfortunately not, just checked it).
