Malcolm Gladwell's Genius
I really enjoying reading Malcolm Gladwell.I just finished Blink last night -- it isn't as polished or harnessed as The Tipping Point, but Gladwell sure makes for some damn good reading, the reason being that he takes us academia nuts back to our grad school days.
That is because Gladwell's writing is not only cross-disciplinary, but examplary of well researched essay writing.
Blink is about human cognition, all its frailties and wonders. Perception, intuition, and judgement -- if these topics are dear to your heart, pick up both of Gladwell's books. At the core of Blink is a concept Gladwell calls thin slicing, which postulates that snap judgments -- instinctual, gut reactions -- are more accurate, much more accurate, than we think. Gladwell defines thin-slicing as "the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience."
Drawing on the power of unconscious experience to illustrate how intuitive decisions lead us astray less often than imagined, "Blink" examines the cognitive processes police officers, soldiers, stock traders, and relationship experts undergo everyday. The chapter on the Amadou Diallo shooting up in the Bronx a couple of years ago is haunting.
Diallo was killed - you remember - under controversial circumstances by four police officers in the New York City Police Department's Street Crime Unit, at 1157 Wheeler Avenue. On February 25, 2000, a jury acquitted the four officers of all charges. On April 18, 2000, Diallo's parents filed an $81 million lawsuit against the City of New York and the officers, charging gross negligence, wrongful death, racial profiling, and other violations of Diallo's civil rights. In March, 2004, they accepted a $3 million settlement.
Gladwell's scientific objectivity in light of such a polarizing event is astounding. That chapter alone -- free of any race war polemic -- is worth the price of the book.
Even so, I like The Tipping Point better.
The best part about The Tipping Point is the "Broken Windows Theory," which has been used by urban sociologists to explain the ebb and flow of crime. Specifically, Gladwell examines NYC crime rates during the 80s and 90s. The theory states that one way to deter the big criminals is by punishing and making an example of smaller, petty criminals. Take a broken window in a worsening neighborghood. If you leave a broken window unrepaired, those who were "thinking" of joining the crime wave will be further inclined to do so because order and regulation appear absent. But if you fix the window right away, that sense of anarchy dwindles and future criminals take a step back.
Whatever it is that falls under Gladwell's intellectual purview, he interrogates and cross-examines with ease.
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