Wednesday Bonus - Blink

 

Amazon - Blink

If you have Textbooks you would like to sell check this website out.  I highly recommend them.  They even pay for the shipping.  I will get a small commission if you use the above link and it will not cost you anything.

My regular Wednesday post was posted previous to this.  This is just an added bonus for today.

The introduction of the book starts with The Getty  Museum in Cali deciding on whether to buy a kouros, a Greek sculpture from 6th century BC in unbroken condition.  It had all the paperwork.  They were given lots of time to make their decision and get expert opinion.  After 14 months they bought it.  Afterwards some people on first sight just thought it didn’t look right.  Gut feeling stuff.  They were correct.  You can read about this by clicking here.

 

The first chapter dealt mostly with a University of Washington  psychologist named John Gottman who studied married couples.  He would video tape couples having a 15 minute conversation about anything in their marriage that was contentious.  Every second of the video was coded along 20 different categories.    From this he has a 90% success rate of telling whether the couple is still married in 15 years.  The chapter talks about “thin slices”.  For example if Gottman is out for dinner and eavesdrops a conversation and hears one partner showing contempt for the other you can put a fork in that marriage.

 

The second chapter talks about Vic Braden who is a world class tennis coach.  He can call a pro’s double fault almost 100% of the time but doesn’t know why.  The next thing on snap decisions was about speed dating.  Yes that was a thing  at the beginning of the millennium.

 

The third chapter deals with when you F#ck up by”thin slicing”.   The first bit was about Warren Harding, the worst US and A president at the time of the book writing.  We all know it is really t-rump.  Shut your cake hole you trumpanzees.   Then he talks about the Implicit  Association Test.  Take it for kicks at  https://implicit.harvard.edu/ .  He uses this to explain why most Fortune 500 CEOs are over 6 foot tall.  Finally he talks about car salesman.  

 

The fourth chapter starts with US Military‘S Joint Force Command or JFCOM and their war games in the summer of 2002. After desert storm the Pentagon figured war would not be waged as it was then.  They set up a mock battle for 2.5 weeks.  It cost a quarter billion dollars.  The government or blue team was able to analyze or over analyze everything the enemy or red team did.  Retired Paul Van Riper had a long distinguished military career was in charge of the red team or the militants.   Paul did not behave as the blue teams computer modelled.  The short of it is that Paul did not over analyze everything and the government did.  Guess which team won?  You guessed it.  

 

The second half of the chapter dealt with Cook County Hospital in Chicago.  It was a public hospital and had little money.  It’s biggest expense was the Emergency Department and how to deal with heart attacks.  It seems doctors try and get as much information on their patients as possible.  However it seems with this much info almost everyone needs to be admitted.  The new  chairman realized there needed to be a better way.  He eventually used an algorithm based on 3 yes or no questions and an ECG.  It turned out 70% better than just what the docs thought.  They over analyzed everything.  

 

The fifth chapter dealt with singer Kenna.  He was loved by all music execs that saw him but when  it was given to outside market research it did not do well.  Put vid in.  It dealt with New Coke as the old Coke was losing blind taste tests to Pepsi that were just sips.  Show commercial.  Also in this chapter was the new Areon ergonomic office chair that every office has now but not at that time as initially it was thought to be a monstrosity.   Put pic in.  Since these things and others in this chapter are very radical the situation was different then just “thin slicing”.   It even explains margarine acceptance.

 

The sixth chapter deals with how when police thin slice and get things wrong and what can be done about it.  He spends quite a bit of time on research into reading peoples facial expressions.  Then he spends time on how this relates to autism.  

 

The concluding chapter concludes with reference to professional symphonies and orchestras using a blind when having tryouts.  When this started happening you guessed women started getting hired.

 

Another good read by Gladwell.  My Song of the Day and rant that putin sucks is in my previous post.  This is just Bone Ass.