Blink

During the house project phase I checked out three audio books from the library. I'm still listening to Blink on my way to and from work. It's a book about rapid cognition and how we make decisions. When intuitive, gut-level reactions are good, and when they are fallible.

This morning he talked of a Marine general who tends to think outside the box. This commander took a bunch of other Marines with him to Wall Street. They observed the trading floor for a day, then played trading games after the bell. They then did cocktails with some of the traders, and the traders visited the Marine base and did some war games. What he discovered is that they use different commodities (money for one group, lives for the other) but the decision making process was the same. Thousands of split second decisions every hour with constantly changing variables. I enjoyed the visual he created of overweight long-haired traders being soul-mates of these three and four-star Marine generals.

I don't have any grand conclusion to make, but its a fascinating read. It's filling my mind with all sorts of random factoids I can use to bore people at parties!