Blink

by Malcolm Gladwell

We have some experiences. We think them through. We develop a theory. And then finally we put two and two together. That’s the way learning works.

The only way that human beings could ever have survived as a species for as long as we have is that we’ve developed another kind of decision-making apparatus that’s capable of making very quick judgments based on very little information.

decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.

We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.

How good people’s decisions are under the fastmoving, high-stress conditions of rapid cognition is a function of training and rules and rehearsal.

If you get too caught up in the production of information, you drown in the data.”

‘Hey, say you are looking at a chess board. Is there anything you can’t see? No. But are you guaranteed to win? Not at all, because you can’t see what the other guy is thinking.’

The problem with market research is that often it is simply too blunt an instrument to pick up this distinction between the bad and the merely different.

if we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition.