Blink is clearly a must-read. But until I get round to it thanks to Paul Goodison for this snippet.
Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book Blink, takes a look at how people make snap decisions.
“We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit to quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.”
This becomes quite apparent when we interview experts… When we interview them, we are asking them to peep into their subconscious (their “locked door”) and to come up with explanations for their actions. But its difficult for experts to figure out why they do what they do — they can’t open their “locked door” — so they end up telling us only the most plausible story, which as Gladwell describes, can be far from the truth.
Ain’t that the truth. Far too much effort goes into unravelling the reasons for a person’s success on the highly dubious assumption that the person concerned actually knows the reasons.
More grist to my simple principles, lightly held mill.
