[Sigia-l] TMI - and expert-level knowledge

[Listera]

Donna Fritzsche:

> This looks fascinating - one question I have, do you know if the
> examples they give apply mostly to fields such as medicine -where the
> experts (in this case, doctors) have alot of precompiled,
> academically learned  and experience- based information?

"Blink" really talks about the ability to react to events/problems. That
'ability' is cultivated in various ways. The emergency room doctor has a lot
of pre-compiled information in his head but what makes him different than,
say, a podiatrist is the acuteness of the circumstances under which he needs
to parse a situation and make a split-second decision that's often a matter
of life or death. So it's really not necessarily the nature of the info but
how that info is contextualized and applied in highly compressed
circumstances. Gladwell talks about high-profile security guards and the
infamous case of NYC police officers mistakenly shooting a young black man,
etc., where application of 'best-practices', if you will, under extreme
duress is the differentiator. Many of the examples in the book are pretty
fascinating. Gladwell also talks about 'user testing' and how (not) to
understand what users may or may not be telling researchers with examples
from the Aeron chair to New Coke.

But don't read the book, Donna, as I may have once come into contact with
the author in a NYC bookstore last year, and that's easily worth $327,894.43
to me. :-)

Ziya
Nullius in Verba