Saturday, January 10, 2009

Gerd Gigerenzer's "Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconsious"

Gerd Gigerenzer is one of the investigator's on which Malcolm Gladwell used in writing his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

Gigerenzer's book is chock-a-block full of interesting experiments and facts that will help you to understand how subconscious processes are very effective for quick decision-making. One example early in his book is a story about how a baseball fielder catches a fly ball. It isn't by calculating a trajectory. That is too complicated and time-consuming. Instead, he cites a number of simple heuristics that skilled players learn unconsciously to guide them to successfully field fly balls.

Here is a lecture by Gigerenzer on Gut Feelings where he repeats content from the book. If you don't like to read, watch this. But for me, all I can say is "Thank goodness for the text, it reads so much more beautifully than Gigerenzer's lecture delivery style!"...

No comments: