Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Been reading this book called Blink, by Malcom Gladwell, who also authored “The Tipping Point”. In the book he makes light of something we have all done, he calls it “thin slicing”, or the subconscious act of your brain supercomputing a situation or an observation and taking the vast reservoirs of your mind to give you that Light bulb effect or that sudden insight or snap decision. He goes further to show how this thin slicing often seems to be the best way of thinking or decision making as opposed to studying the subject in question at great lengths. I am about 2/3 of the way into the book and I tell ya, it is really something, and in some ways it may change the way I look at and encounter situations and events. So far, it also goes onto demonstrate even further the untapped ability of the human mind…

So this has drawn me to other thoughts. In the book Mr. Gladwell brings to light, two interesting exercises, first is a priming experiment that is done through a scrambled sentence test. In the “test” are keys words that are placed to work on the sub conscious (adaptive unconscious). Done right this test will affect the behavior of a person through these key words that are put into these tests. Thus, a person can be “primed” through these key words. This was shown to work to make one rude and inpatient, and others to perform in the opposite direction of polite and…patient. This is done entirely with out the person even being aware they have been primed.

Now, I can’t help but think that through properly placed words in a conversational construct you could conceivably achieve the same effect. In turn if you can interpret someone’s thoughts /or state of mind from their physical actions/reactions then couldn’t you possibly effect someone’s (prime them) unconscious with your physical action or movement?

This actually helps with thoughts I have had since having read Frank Herbert’s Dune books. In those books he describes a religious type of sect that over 10,000 years has been studying and manipulating both humanity and its genetic lines . Known as the Bene Gesserit, a sect made entirely of women. Among many super natural abilities they have perfected the power of “voice”. Its kind of the ability to speak in tones and inflections and sounds that are literally able to control another human. They also seem to be able to manipulate others by the use of keys words. Words that have a meaning in a sub conscious level…a level that has meaning and is associated with other thoughts and feelings on a sub conscious level.

There is also this part where a doctor creates a diagnoses tree for determining a heart attack by its signs. While creating this tree he uses an algorithm to help make a determination. Have you ever seen the movie Pi? One of the many ideas that you can get out of that is, that numbers, math, is everywhere and in everything. Everything can be quantified and determined with and through numbers. I realize this is a bit off subject, but then again isn’t our brain a big computer? Is it a number cruncher? I don’t know.

The second test that is described is called the Implicit Association Test IAT. This test is said to hit you over the head with its conclusions because of the test takers strong prior associations or the lack there of. What seems to come out of an IAT is that through this test, your mental association with certain words or the ideas behind them become evident. I almost don’t want to let the cat our of the bag on this one. Go this web site http://www.implicit.harvard.edu/ and take some of the tests and see for yourself.

Here an interesting quote before you go…it goes along the lines about what this test will do. “The disturbing thing about the test is that it shows s that our unconscious attitudes may be utterly incompatible with our stated conscious values.”

“Introspection destroyed people’s ability to solve insight problems. By making people think, it turned them into idiots.”

“Blink is a book about rapid cognition” from the site geekswithblogs.net/bbrelsford/archive/2005/02/13/22927.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(book)

http://www.gladwell.com/blink/

Ya know that this whole Blink thing, I think…the concept, or act of “Thin Slicing” I think a true attribute of a leader. Yes Gladwell gives the example of Napoleon and Patton and the perfect General Thin Slicer’s of the battlefield. But a real leader, decision maker and leader of men I think has to have that thin slicing ability weather the stress is on or not.