TIPPING POINT AUTHOR TURNS TO INTUITION

Grossman, Lev (2005) "Jumping to Conclusions" TIME, 1/30, p. 57

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best selling TIPPING POINT, has uncovered a new subject. Although he calls it "thin slicing" it really is intuition or the immediate jump of assessment one makes after first seeing a problem. It could also be a person or anything else in reality. What first comes to mind? What conclusion do you jump to? How often are you right or correct?

Gladwell then gives example after example and anecdotal data to suggest that jumping to conclusions should be brought back into the field of science. The quick insight is not always right. However, the author suggests that intuition NOT be excluded from the process of the search for relationships as well as causes and effects.

Here are some examples:

1. A tennis coach can tell when a player will 'double fault."
2. A marriage expert can tell from a 15 minute tape if a couples' marriage will last.
3. An ornithologist can identify at 200 yards an exotic bird that he has never seen before except in print.
4. A psychologist that can identify 10,000 expressions in one's face.
5. A speed dater that can quickly recognize a bad choice.

Numerous other examples are given that can mesmerize the reader. This includes following super salesman and emergency room cardiologists. The book is called
BLINK. It is a narrative of how are unconscious makes quick assessments of numerous phenomena around it.

Jumping to conclusions still has flaws, but it should not be thrown out of the scientific method. It may be very helpful at the stage of forming hypotheses it's like a butterfly in the whirl wind of chaos theory.