Current reading

[kunstler89]

Finished Blink. Can't recommend it highly enough. Like The Tipping Point, it's completely changed the way I observe the world around me.

New book: Thomas Küng's ironical and instructive Gebrauchsanweisung für die Schweiz (Guide to the Customs of Switzerland), which my colleagues at Schellenberg Wittmer gave me as a parting gift. I've only finished

Comments

[sonoftomorrow]

I remember reading some pretty harsh criticism of the psychological theories put forward in Blink, but I cannot recall what or where. Are the theories put forward in the book backed up with solid experimental data, at least?

[kunstler89]

Well, if by "solid experimental data" you mean that Gladwell interviews the scientists who've published the data on each particular point, then yes. It would defeat the book's purpose (accessibility, popular appeal) to turn it into a tome of graphs and statistics, and that would be redundant anyway, since these other people have already done that work.

It's more that, like in The Tipping Point, Gladwell begins with a question or few about mysterious yet everyday human behavior, and then pulls together scads of scientific and lay evidence to put together a schema for understanding the phenomena in question

[sonoftomorrow]

I will I will if my coursework lightens up for long enough that I can squeeze in some pleasure-reading.

Meanwhile, I wonder if the theories expressed in the book would provide any specific insights on the perceiving/judging axis in Myers-Briggs personality typing, or vice-versa.