Bob says: Another thought occurred to me about Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Malcolm Gladwell, 2005) following my KJR column on the subject, last week's Advice Line, and all the correspondence that accompanied them. If you review the examples of where Blinking worked, they have a common thread: They warned an expert that something was wrong, often terribly wrong. The art forgery that started the Bob says:Another thought occurred to me about Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Malcolm Gladwell, 2005) following my KJR column on the subject, last week’s Advice Line, and all the correspondence that accompanied them.If you review the examples of where Blinking worked, they have a common thread: They warned an expert that something was wrong, often terribly wrong. The art forgery that started the book; the fire chief who somehow knew the floor was going to collapse and so on, all are cases of “fast cognition” providing a warning. Even here, Blinking isn’t infallable, of course, witness George Wallace’s attempt to block two African-American students from entering the University of Alabama. Wallace “knew” something was wrong just by looking at them. What was wrong, of course, was his bigotry, not the students.But as a generality, if you know a subject well and get a feeling that there’s a problem – whether it’s during a vendor presentation, an interview with a job candidate, or maybe even a server build – pay attention and dig deeper. There’s a pretty decent chance your unconscious is trying to tell you something you need to hear.Not, unfortunately, so good a chance that you can stop there. Your unconscious might be able to think quickly, but it’s biased in any number of ways. Which is to say, no matter how well you can Blink, cognition does matter.– Bob ——– Technology Industry