I've just finished my third Malcom Gladwell book of the month. The Tipping Point was my favorite, followed by Blink, and then Outliers. After my Plato phase last summer, these books were refreshing, quick reads that blend sociology and statistics into a compelling narrative.
Here are few clips I particularly liked. Hope you do, too.
Summing it up in a sentence
"We have come to confuse information with understanding" p264
On Improv
"One of the most important of the rules that make improv possible, for example, is the idea of agreement, the notion that a very simple way to create a story - or humor - is to have characters accept everything that happens to them. As Keith Johnstone, one of the founders of improv theater, writes: ' If you'll stop reading for a moment and think of something you wouldn't want to happen to you, or to someone you love, then you'll have thought of something worth staging or filming. We don't want to walk into a restaurant and be hit in the face by a custard pie, and we don't want to suddenly glimpse Granny's wheelchair racing towards the edge of a cliff, but we'll pay money to attend enactments of such events. In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very 'gifted' improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.'" p 114-115
On Management
"This kind of management system clearly has its risks. It meant Van Riper didn't always have a clear idea of what his troops were up to. It meant he had to place a lot of trust in his subordinates. It was, by his own admission, a 'messy' way to make decisions. But it had one overwhelming advantage: allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly turns out to be like the rule of agreement in improv. It enables rapid cognition." p 119
On Taste
"Jam experts, though, don't have the same problems when it comes to explaining their feelings about jam. Expert food tasters are taught a very specific vocabulary, which allows them to describe precisely their reactions to specific foods. Mayonnaise, for example, is supposed to be evaluated along six dimensions of appearance (color, color intensity, chroma, shine, lumpiness, and bubbles), ten dimensions of texture (adhesiveness to lips, firmness, denseness, and so on), and fourteen dimensions of flavor, split among three subgroups -- aromatics (eggy, mustardy, and so forth); basic tastes (salty, sour, and sweet); and chemical-feeling factors (burn, pungent, astringent)." p182
On Microexpressions
"Paul Ekman has developed a number of simple tests of people's mind-reading abilities; in one, he plays a short clip of a dozen or so people claiming to have done something that they either have or haven't actually done, and the test taker's task is to figure out who is lying. The tests are surprisingly difficult. Most people come out right at the level of chance. But who does well? People who have practiced. Stroke victims who have lost the ability to speak, for example, are virtuosos, because their infirmity has forced them to become far more sensitive to the information written on people's faces. People who have had highly abusive childhoods also do well; like stroke victims, they've had to practice the difficult art of reading minds, in their case the minds of alcoholic or violent parents. Ekman actually runs seminars for law-enforcement agencies in which he teaches people how to improve their mind- reading skills. With even half an hour of practice, he says, people can become adepts at picking up microexpressions. ' I have a training tape, and people love it,' Ekman says. 'They start it, and they can't see any of these expressions. Thirty-five minutes later, they can see them all. What that says is that this is an accessible skill.'" p 239
