Blink

I went to the Elliott Bay Book Company this afternoon to see Malcolm Gladwell talk about his new book, Blink. Gladwell writes for The New Yorker and in my experience his articles are always worth reading.

I had very much enjoyed his previous (and first) book, The Tipping Point - which term by now has become somewhat of a cliche - and was curious about the new one, which deals with snap judgements ("in the blink of an eye"), and under what conditions they can be successful. It was a great talk. Rather than read directly from the book, he had a couple of anecdotes and then took questions.

The first anecdote was about the unbalanced hiring practices of major orchestras. From the dawn of classical music through the early 1980s, there were practically no women in major orchestras. Maestros of the era made comments such as "I can tell the difference between a male and female violinist just from hearing a recording." Then, this changed rapidly. Why? Because a musician's union insisted that screens be put between musicians and the decision committee during auditions. The original rationale was that there was favoritism going on. Well, yes indeed, but according to Gladwell part of the favoritism was, in fact, a bias against female musicians. Once the screens were in place, surprise, surprise, around half of the musicians selected turned out to be women.

The second anecdote concered a multimillion dollar acquisition made by the Getty in L.A. of a purported Greek statue of antiquity. The Getty spent a great deal of time and money having the statue examined for authenticity. After the purchase but before it went on display, there was a private showing for several museum directors. The cover was whisked away, and instantly they said "it's a fake." And it was.

Gladwell then spoke briefly about how restricting the available data to only the most necessary can enable people to make decisions quickly and with great accuracy. This is counterintuitive; my natural assumption is that, generally speaking, more information available leads to a more informed decision. I look forward to reading the book (which, yes, I bought and had signed) and seeing how convincing the arguments are in the rest of the book.