Bengals, Blink Both Prove Disappointing
Malcolm Gladwell's Blink started out strong, but faded to a limp-like end. Kind of like the Bengals game against the Patriots yesterday.
Cincinnati just flat failed to show up. The Bengals suffered a huge letdown after pasting Pittsburgh at home. Oh well.
I expected more from Gladwell's Blink, especially after all the hype The Tipping Point produced. Essentially, Gladwell builds excitement from three of four carefully selected academic studies that seemingly indicate the subconscious identifies clues and reaches conclusions (even with complex problems) much more quickly than conscious minds.
My trouble with the book? Gladwell leans too heavily on just a handful of supporting cases (there's an incident involving a sculpture, one regarding married couples, another associated with medical doctors and a few other strays thrown in). In other words, there's no statistically valid sample size here.
But then, there never was meant to be. This is a pop psychology book. Facts are for suckers.
I'd have even been OK with that. But his recounting (at the book's end) a horrible incident (immortalized by Bruce Springsteen) that essentially serves to undermine his neatly compacted "Blink" theory left me thinking "What? That's it? There's no more here?" Anyone can write a book supporting a surprising theory if they only have to find a few select case histories to support it (and that's not very hard).
All in all, the Blink concept's neat. Compelling, even. But there's no book here. A quick magazine article, yes, but no book.
Worse, I left the book thinking the Blink concept doesn't hold up in everyday life. After all, anyone watching the Bengals game yesterday would have thought the Patriots were in trouble inside the first few minutes. The Patriots couldn't move the ball. Brady was turning it over. Cincinnati gained yards then jumped on the board quick with two field goals.
But were you to jump to quick conclusions based on those facts and any evident subconscious clues - a supposedly common factor in the Blink theory - your instinctive reaction would have likely proven quite incorrect.
Cincinnati just flat failed to show up. The Bengals suffered a huge letdown after pasting Pittsburgh at home. Oh well.
I expected more from Gladwell's Blink, especially after all the hype The Tipping Point produced. Essentially, Gladwell builds excitement from three of four carefully selected academic studies that seemingly indicate the subconscious identifies clues and reaches conclusions (even with complex problems) much more quickly than conscious minds.
My trouble with the book? Gladwell leans too heavily on just a handful of supporting cases (there's an incident involving a sculpture, one regarding married couples, another associated with medical doctors and a few other strays thrown in). In other words, there's no statistically valid sample size here.
But then, there never was meant to be. This is a pop psychology book. Facts are for suckers.
I'd have even been OK with that. But his recounting (at the book's end) a horrible incident (immortalized by Bruce Springsteen) that essentially serves to undermine his neatly compacted "Blink" theory left me thinking "What? That's it? There's no more here?" Anyone can write a book supporting a surprising theory if they only have to find a few select case histories to support it (and that's not very hard).
All in all, the Blink concept's neat. Compelling, even. But there's no book here. A quick magazine article, yes, but no book.
Worse, I left the book thinking the Blink concept doesn't hold up in everyday life. After all, anyone watching the Bengals game yesterday would have thought the Patriots were in trouble inside the first few minutes. The Patriots couldn't move the ball. Brady was turning it over. Cincinnati gained yards then jumped on the board quick with two field goals.
But were you to jump to quick conclusions based on those facts and any evident subconscious clues - a supposedly common factor in the Blink theory - your instinctive reaction would have likely proven quite incorrect.
posted by Erik Eckel at 5:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home