Van Rider Summary

slicing. The dark side of thin-slicing can be so devastating to business operations, decision making and other activities that requires unconscious cognition. That’s why I will recommend this book to any business man.
In the case of the Van Rider’s victory story, we can learn a fundamental lesson that can be used even during a war. “The first thing I told our staff is that we would be in command and out of control”, Van Riper said when he was in the millennium challenge. He actually meant the soldiers will follow the guide and intent coming from the top, but will fight based on their intuition. According to Gladwell, we tend to function effectively in activities requiring rapid cognition, when we have less information to deal with. Though, this system possesses its own risks, applying in certain situations aid good results.
Sometimes, people can’t interpret their first impression of things; they seem to view things corresponding with their beliefs. The story of the Aeron chair discussed in the book, gives a perfect illustration of how we hate something without knowing it was caused by our unfamiliarity with that thing. This is why
“….that our brains are like computers – uniform pieces of hardware that can be tested and reverse-engineered by scientist or psychologist in a lab”. This quote from David’s review drew some questions to my mind. I believe the brain still remains a delicate organ that can’t be easily controlled or tested, but can be studied. Secondly, David stated “Though Gladwell describes several ways of intuition can lead people astray, he doesn’t really dwell on how often that happens”. I support his view, because the readers of “Blink” will definitely question themselves on whether they will be always accurate when using their intuition. Gladwell ought to give a statistical explanation on how often we can get lead astray by our