youngchinq's Full Review: Malcolm Gladwell - Blink: The Power Of Thinking Wi...
I don't typically like science written for the masses, particularly 277-page novel-like efforts conspicuously beyond the ambition of Popular Science articles (which I don't read). This is because as I trudge deeper into the quagmires of science, as my academic career requires me to do, I become increasingly protective of their sanctity from freakish hybrid entities such as "creation science" and, the topic of scrutiny, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Science does lack certain cornerstones of humanity such as subjectivity and it is supposed to be soporific to most, and most science reporters turned staff writers for magazines that attempt verbose forays into scientific topics represent the worst of both worlds. The premise of Blink is interesting, which is why I bought it, but the execution is ultimately too subjective, frankly boring, and the conclusions are just wrong.
The crux of Blink is that first impressions are correct impressions, with the addendum: except when their not. The creators of the book obviously understand the power of first impressions and have made a simple, clean white and navy-blue cover you can't help but gravitate to. The subtitle "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" is about as attractive as you can be with six words. How would you like to think powerfully without thinking? Even better, after the instantly captivating example of the Getty museum's seven-figure mistake of purchasing a "fresh" 6th Century BC kouros, Gladwell writes that even you possess the capacity to think without thinking and come to the correct conclusion in the blink of an eye. This is wrong and ironic because Blink takes advantage of the same unconscious quick-decision centers of your brain and forces you (forced me) to jump to a wrong conclusion: that this book is worthwhile.
The problem with Blink is that for a book that attempts to claim skimming facts and leaving out the details is the way to go, it goes into too many details. The trend of modern thinking is that no conclusions should be made without an abundance of supporting evidence and endless analysis of such evidence. Blink gives a convincing example where overanalysis leads to failure in the chapter "Paul Van Riper's Big Victory" that details the Millenium Challenge, the most elaborate and expensive war game in the history of man, where Van Riper generalled the red team, a terrorist faction; and the blue team were the Americans, afforded the intelligence-gathering capabilities and technological superiority that comes with the United States military. The consequences were eerily foreboding of the events that would happen in the near future as, the effectively luddite red team, with no central strategy but decisive, quick, and unpredictable actions was able to cripple the blue team, bogged down by protocol. Blink, however, has many other chapters that contain copious meta-analysis - which critical details should be analyzed in snap judgments, which should be left out; when snap judgments fail because circumstances cause bare minimum analysis to be bypassed; and how expertise and endless practice refines analysis; it just goes on and on. While you can follow the logic of Blink and it's not all-over-the place, it can't escape the disappointing irony of being a book criticizing overanalysis that overanalyzes.
To the credit of being science reporter, Gladwell picks interesting examples, some obvious and some novel stories I'm glad to have read up on. But, to the fault of trying to sell a book rather than being true to science, Gladwell invents some fanciful conclusions. In particular, he tries to pass the power of the blink as something we evolved; a bonus to our ability to think critically and consciously. Here, he has the order reversed; our mental blinking prowess, as described in Blink, is nothing special and is common to all species. The uncounscious, split-second thinking that allows us to dive out of the way of a speeding truck before we realize we have to dive out of the way of a speeding truck occurs in our lizard-brain (which lizards have) smothered by our huge and convoluted cortex responsible for consciousness. It is conscious and critical thinking that is the bonus humans have that makes us special and civilization possible. It is why we can take advantage of the snap judgments of other species and invent bug zappers that bugs can't help but fly into.
The initial promise of "thinking without thinking" is too good to be true and the author acknowledges this fact by including the chapter "Seven Seconds in the Bronx." I am dismayed that Gladwell, who claims he is half-Jamaican, attempts to alleviate the blame on the officers involved in the shooting of Amadou Diallo. There is no excuse for police officers shooting someone terrified and innocent 41 times for pulling out his wallet to show some identification. Gladwell blames the inexperience of the police officers and the media for continuously associating black with bad. He seems to agree with the court decision to exonerate the officers who shot Diallo. Earlier in Blink, he talks about the Race Implicit Association Test, which you can still take at www.implicit.harvard.edu, which is an ingenious test that proves on an uncouscious level almost everyone's a racist. Blink goes into a lot of detail about the exam and I highly recommend it myself; the revealing point is that Gladwell announces in Blink he registered a "moderate automatic preference for whites" on the exam. He mentions that about half the Americans who've taken the exam have showed automatic preference for whites, and he's half-black. Although Gladwell doesn't make the connection himself, I connected the two dots and believe he believes he's not racist, just like the NYPD officers who shot Diallo aren't racist.
It is sad because "Seven Seconds in the Bronx" is actually well written, poignant at times, but leaves those who do not find automatic preference for whites uncomfortable because he doesn't label overt racism as racism. The rest of Blink, while exploring some equally interesting topics, is not nearly as well-written. Gladwell repeats many key phrases of previous chapters in later chapters, as if he's not confident that his style is interesting enough for a reader to not skip pages. While I did not skip pages, I was certainly tempted to, because Gladwell is a typical scientific writer, adept at neither writing nor science. The only pop science novel I've enjoyed reading is Natalie Angier's Beauty of the Beastly because she wrote with a feeling of energy and enthusiasm that Blink lacks for large portions. Blink is a book smug with the wonderful first impression it makes and ends up beating a subject to death and, due to more unfortunate subjectivity than malice, plays with conclusions I can't agree with.
Blink really disproves itself. It is a celebration of the snap judgment and convincingly sells itself for $25.95 on the strength of the phrase "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" and the promise that it will teach or at least show you why you can make good decisions instantly. I do not doubt that sometimes, even more often than not, our snap judgments are better than those we make after protracted analysis, but it's also too easy to hijack our "blink," and lead us awry. Blink is a deft conscious attempt to appeal to our unconscious and sells an idea that it destroys itself.
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