Transcripts For CSPAN2 Malcolm Gladwell Blink 20240712

Book blink the power of thinking without thinking which looks at how people make splitsecond decisions. Hello . If everyone can hear me my name is henry center, editorial director of the new yorker magazine i would like to welcome to you to the fifth annual new yorker festival. The message here to say please turn off any cell phones or pager devices. Malcolm will be speaking for about 40 minutes, we will have 20 to 30 minutes of q a after that. During the question period there will be microphones down the aisle and we request that you would speak into the microphone during that time. Malcolm gladwell has been a staff writer for the new yorker magazine since 1996, before that he was a new york bureau chief for the washington post. At the new yorker he very quickly made his mark establishing a new genre of story, the Malcolm Gladwell story. Theres very few people like that in the 80 years of this magazine stop editorial meetings the subjects abcome up and say thats been done to that. Someone else will say, yes but if we have a Malcolm Gladwell take on it. Its a great conversational trump card. Malcolm has really a peculiar genius for exploration. Sometimes very peculiar. Its tempting to try to explain what makes him such an important writer. I think a lot of it has to do with certain originality of mind a certain distinctiveness of voice and both of those qualities were on display in his bestselling book the Tipping Point which is a book thats been quoted by at least one u. S. President , by joint chief of staff, by ceos, philanthropists, also the title of new album by the hiphop band the roots which is an homage to the intellectual hero. [laughter] his new book is coming out in january its called blink the power of thinking without thinking. Ive never actually seen malcolm when he wasnt thinking so im curious to see how hes gonna pull it off. Please welcome Malcolm Gladwell. [applause] thank you henry. In nine years of editing me thats the kindest youve ever been. [laughter] im very happy to be here and happy to see all of you. Im guessing most of you are here because you couldnt get into the site hirsch evening last night. Think i got assigned to overflow. Which is fine although i should say if any of you are here expecting to get some major blockbuster earth shattering revelation on American Foreign policy are in the wrong place. It was sometimes into dinosaurs and cartoon dinosaurs and. I was told us posted talk about my new book which is blink, coming out in january. I hope all of you buy it in triplicate at that point. [laughter] its about the power of thinking about thinkinr of thin without thinking what happens the first two seconds and in the counter in a person at a person or person an idea or person and situation. So far the book has been reviewed twice one of which said was quite good and the other of which said it was utterly forgettable piece of juvenile you. The question of its merits is still up in the air. This is one of my favorite stories in the book. I think its a pretty good introduction to what this book is about and the kinds of questions trying to address in blink. Something that happened five years ago that i think something story all of us in new york remember but i think not all of us particularly at the time in new york absolutely understood. Its a story of amity diablo. Diablo was from guinea, a recent immigrant, 22 years old and he was short. About five foot five or five foot six. I tell you those facts because not because im warming up to tell a story but because these kinds of facts, the smallest details of the case are absolutely critical in understanding what happened that night and one of the faults i have with the way we came to learn about that story and understand that story is that it was interpreted as a story about grand themes, racism, Police Departments, status of the law a story about grand themes. Its a story about details. These Little Details i start with as i said absolutely essential to understanding what exactly happened that night. Diablo lived in a part of the bronx called soundview. Soundview is in the southeastern bronx and in the late 1990s it was a pretty bad neighborhood and major open air drug markets had just been shut down about two or three blocks over from one diablo lives. Wheeler avenue is one of the streets that comes down off the made thoroughfare which is western oliver. Its a very narrow street two story red burke road house built around the turnofthecentury and theyre very close to the street the sidewalk, there is no graph strip in the sidewalk, street, sidewalk, two quick stops and then you have these buildings, these two story building. He lived in one of the secondfloor on the night of february 3, 1999 he comes home from, he was a peddler he sold, one of those guys and 14th street he comes home around midnight and goes upstairs and talks to his roommate and the reasons we dont know he comes downstairs maybe he wanted to have a cigarette maybe he wanted to take in the night air, maybe he was feeling claustrophobic, we dont know. The vestibule of his building is very small, probably no more than this wide and no more than from the top of the stage back to about where i am now. He standing on the edge looking out in the street and as he standing there a car drives by down Wheeler Avenue, ford taurus unmarked for people in it, for Plainclothes Police officers part of the nypd street crime room unit which is a special unit set up in the late 1990s basically to break up open air drug markets. Who all in the mid20s and early 30s. They are green. These are not experienced Police Officers. All dressed in jeans and sweatshirts they got bulletproof vests and just kinda puffed out and they have baseball caps and regulation nine millimeters handgun. Cruising down Wheeler Avenue and they cruised by and they see diablo and carol says whos that guy what is he doing there . Carol says later he thought diablo was one of two things maybe he was racist they been looking for in that area for some time because thered been a racist very active about a year before they never caught them. The Second Thought was that he was a lookout for a pushing robber, pushing robbers of the guys to come to an apartment building, hit all the buttons, until someone lists them in and they go in and knock on the door and basically if someone answers, pushed in. They often had a lookout on the ground floor to alert them to the presence of other people coming in the building so he thinks its one of those two things. They drive by and stop the car and backup. In carol and mcmillan get out of the car and carol opens up and shows his id and says Police Officers, can we have a word. He doesnt speak much english. A very recent immigrant from america. He also has a very bad stutter. Hes inclined to never talk at all. Thirdly, one of his friends several months before had been robbed by a series of people by a group of people posing as a Police Officer. He is terrified by these guys. Hes on a dark street sitting there taking the night air in front of his house for big guys, way bigger than him with big puffed out chest, white guy in the middle of the south bronx. Speak in a language he may or may not completely understand. He standing in a small festival he sees these guys and turns around and goes back to go back into his house turns around put his hand on the door. Carol and mcmullen who were standing there say, show us your hands. Put your hands up. We dont know if he even understands what that means at this point but he turned his body away from them ever reaching for the door and seems to be doing something with his right hand. This starts to get carol and mcmillan a little bit nervous because they think, why is he turning his body because he wants to conceal what hes doing with his right hand . They start to run after him, their mo sidewalk and go up the steps to go out to see what he is doing. They are thinking this is getting a little strange. Then they looked closer and they see that what he is doing with his right hand is his pulling out an object out of his coat. They see the subtle thing coming out. They start to get even more and they see the top of this black object and its shiny and their thinking, my god, guns. Carol yells out, hes got a gun he just keeps going pulling it out. Until hes actually pointing towards them like this. Mcmillan says hes got a gun he panicked. He is on the top step of the vestibule and pushes back and jumps back and gets terrified he pulls out his gun and starts firing. Carol is standing right there any season flow backwards and thanks hes been hit. My well sweetie fall backwards. He sees the bullets ricocheting around is very small vestibule he thinks, diablos firing gun he pulls out his gun and starts firing. Back in the car you got boston murphy and Lacey Mcmillan flow backwards a they think hes been hit. In the end carol and mcmillan fire 15 to 16 bullets each. Is there firing at abhes in the corner of the vestibule is back straight and knees are bent there thinking classic shooters crotch. This guy has been trained, thats what theyre thinking. What hes trying to make himself a small as possible. Theyre all going bang, bang, with their backs up against the vestibule. How do they stop . Hes down. Can boss gets up and walks toward diablo he looks down at his right hand to find out and see the gun. Hes got the gun. Palms open he looks down and theres no gun just a wallet sitting on the ground. He screams, where is the gun he starts running up Wheeler Avenue because he completely forgot where they are hes got to call the ambulance. He is just running up and down Wheeler Avenue screaming out, where is the gun he looks down and sits down on the steps next to him and starts to cry. Thats what the ambulance finds when they arrive. What happened that night . I was attracted the story when i wanted to write this book because its an unusually complicated and ambiguous story and all the ways i think we have for explaining it at the time were deeply unsatisfactory. Think back to when that case was in the news, there were two sides to the story the way it was told one side said these cops are racist, see a black guy you see a criminal, bang, bang. 41 bullets. Bruce springsteen writes a song called 41 bullets how you can get shot for just for living in your american skin which was this reductive notion that that was all about this incident was all about same color. aball about skin color. To say this is about the open and shut case of racism is absurd. Everybody in the south bronx is black or hispanic. Theyre not shooting everybody. Didnt tell us why they single out the sky. Theres no evidence whatsoever that these four guys are bad eggs nothing in the past to suggest dervishes are angry. This isnt like the cop who attacks, throughout his name with the plunger. Nothing like that case. These are good kids, the people who knew them. There like good solid honest, not a blemish on their record. On the other side there was the whole line adopted by the jury which later acquitted these guys of all charges. The line adopted by nypd which was just one of those things. It just happens. Its called police work. Get a situation sometimes and its really sad but you make a mistake and theres nothing much we can do about it. Thats also deeply unsatisfactory. This isnt just some kind of routine thing. The guy goes up to take in the air maybe have a cigarette and gets shot 41 times by four cops cruising up and down the street. There is nothing normal about that particular event. Something actually went wrong. What we need is a kind of third understanding of what happened that night. The only way to get that understanding is to break down that little incident second by second and until we can see all the moments the decisions that went into that particular tragedy and try to understand how it came about. Think about that, this case for a moment. There are three particular moments in that instant i think our worthy of discussion. In that instance decides hes suspicious. State number one, hes innocent, you think you suspicious any backup and one of things carol said that was very interesting that when they backed up they saw that diallo was Still Standing there. Didnt move. Carol would say later that that amazed him. Why did the sky move. If youre standing out there on a Street Corner in the middle of the night four cops in an unmarked car backup toward you you run. Thats what everybody else did. Point number two they think, hes really brazen. This is hes completely undeterred by the side of four monstrous cops. Hes not a bad guy is not brazen, hes curious. Hes from africa. Hes only been in the country a couple months. He sees four white guys in the car backing up toward him and says what is this. Mistake number two, confusing curiosity with brazenness. Then Carolyn Murphy are put down standing on the vestibule and they watch diallo turn to his side and start to pull something black out of his coat in the instant they decide hes dangerous, but he is not dangerous. Hes terrified. Mistake number three, the mistake terrified for terrifying. Ordinarily in the normal course of our lives we have no problem with these distinctions. We are really really good as human beings at making a distinction between innocence and suspiciousness of making a distinction between brazenness and curiosity and most of all making a distinction between terrified and terrifying. He walked down the street the middle of the night you make those judgments every moment when you see somebody. Im scared of him, that person is scared of me. Nothing we are better at than doing that. We been good at that for millions and millions of years. Thats whats interesting about this case. In that moment on that Street Corner on that street that night they make three really basic errors they should have made. Three errors that most of us would make very rarely in our lifetime but they compound them. Why would they do that . What is it that happened that night that caused them to be somehow fundamentally incapable of reading diallos mind because thats the failure here. They did it correctly understand his intentions in that moment. As a result they completely misinterpret what that social situation is all about. They put their own construction on it about a crime and a criminal instead of being about the person outside getting some night air. I call this kind of failure momentary autism. The idea is that i use that phrase because the simplest definition of autism is that autism is a neurological condition that renders us incapable of reading someone elses mind. The british psychologist a refers to autism is simply my blind. People with autism can listen understand your words but they cannot understand any of your intentions. You will what im saying is there are certain situations when otherwise normal people become effectively autistic. Just in that particular moment. Not the chronic condition but acute condition and a handful of cyclists when there are moments of extreme stress. I think thats actually a surprisingly common kind of failure. If you look at the way the world works or more accurately does not work we see the pattern repeated over and over again that lots of mistakes happen because there are certain situations abto read other peoples minds into a temporary state we are incapable of doing. What i want to do is talk about this and then talk about what it takes to try to prevent these attacks of momentary autism. Theres a really wonderful researcher and yelled called a has done some really fascinating work in trying to explain what happens when someone has autism. He has this patient, a guy named peter and been seeing peter for many years and peter is 40s or 50s. Has a job thats on his own but he has autism. To try to demonstrate precisely how peter makes sense or does not make sense of social situations. He put a pair of goggles on him and these are the special goggles that trick who your eyes move. To show somebody something put the goggles on and actually their eyes will draw a line on the screen you can see precisely where their eyes have fallen and given time. They give peter these goggles and, whos afraid of Virginia Woolf, the movie with Elizabeth Taylor. He shows that will be for a reason which was at first of all its one of his favorite movies but more importantly its a movie about a very complex social situation. Its three people in the room, for i forgot who the other actress was. Thank you. [laughter] its for people in a room having this incredibly fraught interaction over the course of an evening, getting really drunk, getting upset at each other. Theres all kinds of complex dynamics. He said he was in a show terminator two where the actual gun was the hero. But this would be really interesting test and extraordinary sophisticated interaction among four people how to peter make sense of this . He shows in this movie peter said youre on the print of the movie we are seeing where peter eisen moving at any given time and he does the same thing with people who dont have autism and watches where their eyes go. The scene where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are kissing when you and i watch the scene where residue is heres burton, heres taylor, arise go back and forth between their eyes, thats what we do and watch people kissing in a movie. We look at their eyes because the truth is in the eyes. I want to know what kind of kisses this. Whats happening with the kids are they happy . Excited . All the information or much of the information is contained in the eyes. What did peter do . He looked at the light switch behind them. Why did he do that . Because for someone with autism there is no special meaning attached to eyes. He cant make sense of the information he finds in someones eyes. Because he cant read intentions. He cant mind read. As a result, theres no particular reason for him to look at the eyes in the given scene. The thing thats equally interesting for him to look at the light switch, turns out hes very mechanically minded. So it really interests him. He was looking the whole time at the light switch. Another scene george segal poinsettia painting on the wall and says, who did that painting . And Richard Burton hands it to them. When we watch that scene our eyes follow the line of george segals hand until we see the painting. Then arise go over to Richard Burtons eyes and get the answer. Then arise come back to george segal to see how he reacts to the answer. We form a triangle really quick in a millisecond. What is peter do . Hes listening to me is watching, he hears, who did that painting . Painting he doesnt follow the line of the finger of george segals finger because he cant make sense of his gesture. Hit this gesture Means Nothing to someone who cant read minds. To know what im pointing at and why am pointing at you have to be able to inhabit my mind for that moment. It was a why would malcolm do that whats the purpose of that . Peter cant do that. All he has is the information who did the painting come he looks at the wall where the painting is but theres three paintings on the walls, not one. What peter does is go back and forth frantically among all the paintings trying to figure out which painting is being referred to. Meanwhile, the conversation has moved on. Hes behind. He missed the whole meaning of that particular encounter. In the background Richard Burton is getting angrier and more jealous and angry and more jealous. Its really cool to look at the way normal viewers look at scenes because you doing the triangle thing at breakneck speed. Its building and building its incredibly powerful scene of movie. Its gripping. Whats Richard Burton gonna do, how does abhow dare she flirt with this man in front of her husband. What is peter do . Peter looks at george segals mouth for a little while and then he looks at the drink in george segals hand and he spent a lot of time looking at this really cool brooch that Elizabeth Taylor is wearing. He cant understand the social context. The words in that scene mean nothing. Its about the meaning of the three people interacting and he misses all that. Because he cant mind read. That shred of literal evidence is being said is wholly insufficient for making sense of whats happening in the movie. Disappointed that scene work climaxes with Richard Burton, takes out a gun and points Elizabeth Taylor and pulls the trigger. If you sit in the Movie Theater watching that theres a kind of shocked stunned silence because you are thinking, oh my god, then the umbrella comes out you are like abone peter saw that, burst out laughing. Because it slapstick to someone who doesnt understand the social context of what has gone on in that movie. The inability to read minds creates an enormous problem when it comes to making sense of any fast flowing complex social situation. This is a very long way of saying i think its a very useful and powerful model for understanding what went on with those abthey get to that scene with diablo and they are completely incapable of extracting the necessary and critical social information from it. They are missing all the cues. They are like peter seeing some objective facts. Black guy, young guy come up bad neighborhood, shiny black object. It misses all of the whats going on. All of these interpretations that might cause you to think twice all that is somehow pushed aside. They locked in on the extremely narrative interpretation and that moment they are effectively autistic standing and driving the car standing on the steps of the vestibule. The question is, what caused it . Why were they turned into the equivalent of autistic people at that moment on the steps . In the book i have the explanation goes on for pages and its far more interesting than the explanation i will give you now which is why, as i said, you should buy the book the Tipping Point. [laughter] i will give you a sense of them things to understand what autism wouldve descended on the four guys at that moment. The first issue is the issue of abthat is what affect does being physiologically aroused having our ability to mind read . This case we have two guys convince the person in front of them is trying to kill them. We know that all kinds of weird things happen to people when other people point guns at them. Its not like the movies where this is handled as a kind of everyday occurrence. If you read through testimony of particularly Police Officers who have been fired upon. Of completely bizarre things that happened to us in that situation. For example, almost everyone has been fired on a firing gun describes an extraordinary moment of television. Basically you only see whats immediately in front of you. Everything else is gone. And then overwhelmingly people lose their sense of hearing. You dont hear anything. This is actually a huge issue in Police Shootings because time and time again Police Officers fired their guns more times than they should. The empty their gun to somebody afire once or twice always comes up why did you fire 16 bullet. This is always not taken seriously as an explanation but its a completely serious explanation they keep firing because they cant hear their gun going off and they think their gun is not working. Absolutely the case. Part of our sensory system shuts down to that kind of stress. Theres a guy named david clear wrote into the kill zone. Im going to read from one of them which i think is really interesting about the Police Officers partner, a guy named dan, is wrestling with the criminal. The officer is like this criminal is trying to kill his partner danna trying to kill the criminal before he kills dan. This all happened real fast in milliseconds. At the same time i was bring my gun up dan was fighting with them and the only thought that came to my mind was, oh dear god, dont let me hit dan. Fired five rounds. My vision changed as soon as i started shoot. It went from seeing the whole picture to just the suspects head. Everything else disappeared. I didnt see dan anymore, didnt see anything else. All i could see was a suspects head. I saw four by five rounds hit the first hit on his left eyebrow and opened up a hole in the guys head snapped back and he said, oh, like all youve got me. I fired another round. It hit on the outside of his left eye and his left eye exploded just ruptured and came out. My fourth shot just just hit just in front of his left ear. Thats a really weird explanation because of course hes describing something thats not physiologically possible. You cant actually observe the actions of bullets in real time. Yes he was in that moment so utterly locked in on this task and the person in front of him that it seemed to him as if everything had slowed down to the point where he could see the entry of his boots and the kind of consequence of the bullets hitting this guys head. Its very easy to see how important from an evolutionary perspective this kind of physiological process is. If we are in a position of extraordinary danger, it makes total sense our body would just say, look, anything extraneous, were not to worry about. I want you to focus just on the thing in front of you. Go to slow things down im going to cut off things like noise you dont need at this moment, i just want you to one of the things people find actually in shootings and particularly in war times is an extraordinary number of people who were fired upon lose control of their bowels. Unpleasant but true. For the simple reason is that when your body is confronted with a lifeanddeath situation is nonessential. Focusing instead on the problem at hand control of that particular part of your body is something we can worry about later. Same thing with abcar accidents talk to cops who done a lot of car accidents, first thing is the smell. People under that kind of stress shut down various parts of the body. In any case. Think about that taken to an extreme. In the beginning that kind of reaction is enormously useful but lets push it out a little bit further. Your body starts to shut down and according to people studying this, between about 100a50b45 all the kinds of processes are really really useful. They help us zero in on whats going on. When you get beyond that starting get to 150a75, 200, it starts to become a real problem because you start to get incapable of any kind of rational thought and your hearing in your eyesight shut down to the point we are essentially blind and deaf. Your motor coordination starts to really seriously deteriorate and your behavior becomes extraordinary but aggressive number access to do any higher cognitive control. This is why Police Officers will always tell you that you need to practice dialing 911 because an extraordinary problem with people when they are in serious trouble is they cant dial 911. They cant hit the buttons on the phone because they have no coordination left because their heart rate is 200, and they cant remember 911. The number of people who dial 411 is extraordinary. Its gone. The other spot people forget to press the send button on the cell phone. They dial something and then look at their phone, its not working. All that stuff god in that moment under that extraordinary abthis is why Police Departments recently, very lately have started to ban highspeed chases. But the problem with highspeed chases is what happens during the chase. You kill innocent bystanders. Thats a serious consideration. Not the only consideration. The other, and in some ways more important consideration is what happens after the chase. If you have someone driving at high speeds after some suspect in the middle of residential areas, their heart rates go crazy. The rate of arousal going on with them is absolutely insane. They get out of the car and then no longer humid in a certain sense abno longer human in a certain sense. Think about rodney king, i had long discussions when i was writing my book with former lapd officers, they would say them everyone said that was about race and lots of lots of things have happened with the police in la and the public are about race but this is not about race. Nothing to do with race. Rodney king could is been white as snow at exactly the same thing would happen. This was about what happens when you have a group of eight young men chase another young man the residential area of 100 miles per hour. Get out of the car in your heart rate is at 200 and you go and find this guy and go crazy on them. There was a moment when stacy kuhn said told him to stop and they dont. A huge issue in trial. Its because they dont hear him. The hearing is gone. The first thing that went was hearing. Completely oblivious to anyone shouting any direction or instruction because in that moment there out of their mind. One of the cases really broke my heart like this is the case a couple years ago in chicago guy name roscoe ross was a kid he was a college student. Hes driving to chicago and he makes illegal uturn the cops see him and come after him. But he doesnt stop. So they have a chase. Gets on to the dan ryan. Finally they cut him off and hes on the side of the road. Cops jump out and they say get out of the car. The cop starts running toward the car. Smashes back window of the car, sticks his gun in and says that russ went out for his gun. Shoot him, russ is dead. A completely heartbreaking case. Its really really really bad police work. Its also a classic example of what happens in these chases. People forget all sense. What exactly is going on there . The Police Officer in that moment in order to successfully involve that situation must engage in a kind of mind reading he must understand this whole situation from russs perspective. Russ is a kid. Russ did something really stupid and illegal uturn in front of a cop then the cops came after him and what address do . He panicked. He goes in this chase and finally they cut him off. His heart rate is going crazy. They yell, get out of the car. He cant hear them. He sitting there terrified and this cop comes up behind him, smashes the window and sticks a gun at his face. He is dead. What that cop lost in that moment, what he lost as a result of his arousal was any ability to interpret the meaning of that event in a sophisticated way. He lost any sense of the social context of that event. He lost his ability to migrate at the moment when he smashes the window and sticks his gun in, his effectively autistic. I think its very important lesson in trying to understand what happened. Theres another key element here, the element of time. I think we lose our ability to mind read when we run out of time to step which is very obvious point but ethic its worth getting into more detail. This is a huge element in any kind of deadly encounter. We forget this because we are used to hollywood depictions of shootouts. In the movies or in television show, theres two cops, their firing and talk to each other and the victim the person they are firing at shots off some challenge in a fire again and the whole thing takes 20 minutes. , this never happens in the real world. A guy named gavin the becker who wrote this wonderful book a couple years ago. He runs a bodyguard Security Agency and i had a long talk with him because he studied assassinations. He became a student of assassinations of history. He has all these tapes. He showed me the tape of the ragged assassination and 81, outside the washington hills, ragan coming out of the speech he waves to the crowd, they go, ragan, ragan, this kid robert hinckley, 22 in his hand leans in six shots. Hits the Police Officer, hits the secret service guy. Hits james brady in the head. Hit the car. Its ragan. The question with that is how does he get six shots off . Ragan is surrounded by bodyguards. This guy pokes a gun and shoot six times before they can wrestle him to the ground. Hes right there. How does that happen . The answer is, it happens because that whole thing was over in a blink of an eye. You know how long that whole incident was from the moment hinckleys gun is visible to the moment hinckley is on the ground, 1. 8 seconds. Do you have any time to make sense of that situation . To mind read hinckley to look at the crowded think whos a threat whos not a threat whos terrified . No time whatsoever. 1. 8 seconds. Shooting assassination attempt to the president of south korea a couple years ago. The assassin stands up, takes his gun out, he so nervous he starts by shooting himself in the foot. Then he goes and points at the president and fires a shot and mrs. And hits the president s wife in the head. She fools over dead. The bodyguard gets up, shoots, hits a sixyearold kid sitting next to the assassin. The crowd grabs the guy they wrestled him to the ground. Beginning to end, 3. 5 seconds. Its over. Who can make sense of that . Everything happens too fast. When things happen too fast we lose our higher faculty mood lose our belief to make due to any sophisticated reading of whats going on a psychologist named keith payne who did a beautiful little aba couple years ago inspired by the diallo shooting he sits you down in front of the computer he flashes a black face, base of young black male and then says to you, he says im going to show you this black face and its going to be one of two objects appear on the screen either a ranch or gun. If its a wrench they wanted hit this, the question is, how often do you make the diallo do you hit the button for god when its the ranch . The answer is can you make quite a lot. You can do all because of cool things if you flash of white face first they dont make the diallo error quite as easily. So it plays a role. Thats not the interesting finding, the interesting finding is the more that you speed the process up, the last time you give somebody to think about their choice. It doesnt matter how many times they will always say gun. When you speed things up people no longer try to make sense of it they just retreat to the most basic most simple and most destructive function. Only to say, its a blackeyed chances are hes got a gun. You see how the element of time erodes our ability to do any kind of clearer and more sophisticated analysis of the situation. This is why Police Departments you look at the way they train Police Officers are obsessed with time. All about time. When you train Police Officers they talk endlessly about the need for cover and concealment. Confronting a suspect the first thing you do is to look for some way either to be out of the suspects line of sight or obscure in some way. But more importantly, it buys you time. You never in a situation of standing in front of that person and having to make a decision in a millisecond of the weather to fire or not. Thats why in the case of traffic stops theres a whole procedure of traffic stops when the cop pulls you over and then he walks up and parks his car slightly outside of yours he walks up on the driver side and stops behind your head. Have you ever noticed this. Not supposed to stop in front of you. I do. Shined his flashlight over your shoulder, why is he doing that . Because hes got a gun. He slowed the situation down. In order to shoot him you have to take the gun twist around to see if you have a seat seatbelt on abif you standing in front of you just go boom. By doing that hes helped save your life, in a certain sense. He tried to introduce an extra couple of seconds and allow him to make a much more sophisticated analysis of whats going on. There was no whitespace in the bodyguard business there wasaround ragan. You must have a protective protective area where there is no people of 10 or 15 or 20 feet the greater the amount of space there is between any potential assailant and target the more time any kind of action aggressive action is going to take end time means safety in that situation. Time gives the bodyguard the ability to scan the crowd and get an understanding of who might be dangerous and who might not be. This is also why its been such a push in recent years and Police Departments to replace two man cars with oneman cars and that seems really kind of counterintuitive people look at this and say theyre just trying to save money. It has nothing to do with money. It has to do with time. If you do all kind of research that shows two officer cars get into far more trouble end up shooting far more innocent people and theres all kinds of bad things far more the officers traveling by themselves. The reason is when youre with someone else you speed things up. You have the kind of social courage to rush in it if you buy yourself you never do it in a million years. You stay behind and call for help. As a result, something that mightve been accelerated gets decelerated. The significance of all of this is that its a reminder of how impoverished our vocabulary is for describing failures or describing disasters for accidents. We have this very simplistic way of trying to make sense of why things have gone wrong. We look at rodney king and say its about a bunch of racist cops. Actually, no, its about what happens when you chase someone for 100 miles an hour. Thats far more useful way of understanding that particular problem. We look at the cop who rushes up after rocks and bangs window and sticks his gun and says what a terrible awful person that cop is. He should be in jail. While he is a terrible awful person but maybe he was really bad to train maybe at some point in line he was not trained that when youre in that kind of situation you stand by your vehicle undercover and call out to the person that has the car. Is that training or false appraisement . Maybe a little bit of both. Most of all, when we look at these kinds of social blunders, all the pieces ive been describing our social blunders. When we look at these things people go wrong at the kind of cues they miss we forget the kind of skills we have to make us human that allow us to function intelligently in the world are really really fragile. Theyre not always there with us. There are times when these very powerful Critical Skills can be obliterated. To take us from being sophisticated to being extraordinarily unsophisticated. To go back to diallo, there they were, sean carroll, can boss Eric Mcmillan and Richard Murphy. Its late, theyre in the south bronx, they see a young black man, he seems to be behaving oddly. Their driving they cant see him that well, theyre cruising barbot right away they can start to system, rigid system. Black guy, late, 12 30 a. M. , cant be good. He small too. Five foot six inches, what a small mean . At 12 30 a. M. At night in the south bronx. It means you got a gun. Hes not out there by himself at that size unless hes packing. Thats the first thing they are thinking. Hes got a gun. Then they back up and he doesnt move. Now they are thinking, not only does he have a gun come this guy is a bad ass. Hes fully not scared by the cops. Now they are abup even more. Now they are like they get out of the car, mcmillan says, Police Officer, may we have a word. Gail turns and runs back in the building because hes totally and utterly terrified. Four big white guys in the south bronx late at night coming after him with their chest puffed out with bullet proof vest. But they dont have time to think through all of this because its a pursuit. Hes running back into the building. Chase. What happens with chases start . Your heart rate source. These guys arent seasoned professionals who done this before. They are raw, new to the bronx. There harboring ghosts from 100, 150, 200, bounding up the steps. Diallo is at the door at the back of the vestibule. He turned his body and tugging at something in his waistband. They have no way to slow this down. Did right in front of them and its a narrow vestibule. Knows chance to try to figure out what is that . Things are getting faster and faster. Its a wall its not a gun but think about it, diallo is black and were measuring this in milliseconds. Whenever you have to make a decision about a black person in a few milliseconds, you think its a gun. You always think its a gun. Everyone in this room will say gun. In that situation. He is completely autistic, he is locked in on this object the same way peter was locked in on the light switch in that scene. He yells, hes got a gun mcmillan panics and jumps backwards and starts firing. Someone jumping backward in that situation means only one thing, hes been shot. So can boss and Richard Murphy jump out of the car and they start firing too. The next day the paper for months afterwards a huge amount was made on the fact that 41 bullets are fired. 41 bullets could be fired by people with semi automatic pistols in two seconds. Three seconds. If youre in that degree of excitement. In fact, the entire incident probably takes place from beginning to end no more than about six or seven seconds. They stop the car and call out to diallo. Diallo turns runs back in the building they jumped toward him, 2002. He reaches into his pocket to get something, comes up, 1003. Carol says hes got a gun, 1004. Shooting starts, 1005 from 1006. Silence. Can boss gets up walks to diallo on the ground looks at his hand and tries to see where the gun is and he sees a wallet and he goes, where is the gun . 1007, 1008, he runs up the street because he forgot where they are. Sean carroll goes and sits down the steps and starts to cry. 1009, 1010. Thus the end of chapter 8. Thank you. [applause] thats the end of diallo. Thank you. [applause] [applause] such a downer. [laughter] what is this information tell us about, im not trying to make this political, but what does it tell us about trying to win the war in iraq with 19yearold kids in a foreign culture . [laughter] well. I hesitate to give any kind of global interpretation of this because im not interested, in grand themes, i will say that it can teach us a lot about those instantaneous moments when things go wrong in war. Theres a moment in this war where theres a lot of cases where the checkpoint is. At the checkpoint and the car comes to the checkpoint and full of iraqis and it doesnt stop in the open fire and everybody dies. Its a classic case of that. There needs to be some way to slow things down in that situation, the 19yearold private who two months ago was in kentucky somewhere has to decide at that moment whether the people in front of them are car bomber this innocent family out for a drive that dont understand the instruction to stop their car. Do you o address Law Enforcement or military groups with this information . No. I hope is a necessary. But if people would like me to i would love to. Im not telling them something they dont know. There has been a lot of work on this in the lost few years in the Law Enforcement community. There is a reason why shootings are lower today than they were in the past because people took these lessons to heart and training for officers has changed dramatically. Its far from perfect and not as good in other parts of the country as new york city but its getting a lot better. Talk about people are raised in a culture of fear. So i remember when fear was a common response and as an adult i had to slow down. So i wonder if looking into this applications to less dramatically extreme moments and to meditate . As of all things when sure finish people to you all kinds of ideas the way you ought to have written the book. [laughter] and you have just done that. [laughter] you describe the ability to interpret the scene of who is afraid of Virginia Woolf happening in milliseconds but the viewer can do this because they are not adrenaline loaded im wondering if the application of your thesis is only two or there is no application is not adrenaline fueled order to speed up that capacity due to mindreading . Its interesting in the chapter in the book on mindreading and limit myself to thes very stressful situations. Thats where the application is clearest. You can do this in all different types of context. But there are far more cases where we are in the stressful situations than we think. Not just Police Officers anyone in a car has a moment in a situation where things have sped up at adrenaline is racing. So there is that applicable that he to everyday life and that is enormously important because they are culturally significant events how we talk about things like race and address Law Enforcement. They really impact the way we construct society. I like the idea of that momentary autism but what you describe is the inability to read another person basically through the eyes. Wasnt there something about the darkness of the vestibule and to see his eyes . And how does that hide with that artistic response . Absolutely. Two things. Realize and never had a minute. So tempting. The way they teach Police Officers. There is a little bit of training in many ways they are taught to what could tell them a lot and there is a reason where you ought to be looking in those critical moments they should tell you if there is a weapon but as you can see itself is ambiguous if a wallet can look like a gun then maybe but it was dark so even if it was perfectly light out they would have makes the evidence but in this case it was dark with the driving path the first time. And its something we interpret from a lot of things. Peoples demeanor of where they are standing they dont have a lot of these visual cues to make that initial assessment of somebody is a threat are harmless. So the darkness plays a role it doesnt help them jump to that conclusion but its 1230. I read blink already and i loved it and one of the things that sounds so interesting is that the artist can spot the forgery immediately. And in a way its almost the opposite example where somebody can make the right decision very quickly and unconsciously because of their expertise. Yes. The more eight talk about the book the longer i diminish or incentive to buy it but the two sides that it is extraordinarily good i told this story they spent 10 million on and it turned out to be fake they analyze it for 14 months but they it was a marble greek statue of a boy and was given theres 200 around the world and they are in poor shape this is a beautiful shape. Just starting off as a museum and a that this is extraordinary. They took it said very clear its not a fake wheel taken alone for one year to put it through the paces. There is a paper published in Scientific American by a lead geologist proving why the marble was 2000 years old and they were so happy they bought it 10 million it was in the basement one of the worlds foremost experts on great Greek Culture is visiting so the curator says i have something to show you. Come with me. They go into the dark room the statue is standing there 7foot high. Look at that. Is that is ours in two weeks. She says thats fake. No. Two weeks later thomas hoven also a greek expert comes to visit and he says tom has something to show you. Takes him down and he said is the check cleared . Is it too late to stop it . So then they take it to greece. [laughter] a room full of all the top greet guys another sculpture they take the cloth off and they all say where did you get that . [laughter] it was intuitive repulsion. [laughter] oh my god. It turns out its make. One fake they find a plastic cast that is exactly like this and is not 2000 years old it actually dates malign 1979. Today you look in the catalog the pictures says either 636 bc or 1980. [laughter] thats my favorite. So thats when its really good. So goes back and forth when are they good and when are they bad . What are the things that destroy this that is inherently a very powerful tool that we have. When does it break down . Because normally they have no problem if you structure that situation right they look and say what you doing out here . And says we dont want your wallet under normal circumstances that works in that is concerned with this normally extraordinary faculty to fall apart. Talk about the situations were really good cops in that moment of making extraordinarily sophisticated judgments and i have a story about a cop who confront the kid and he pulls a gun on him. Kid has again. Says dont pull the gun on me. Hes pulling in and hes pulling it and then he waits that is someone who is extraordinarily well trained and experienced. And i really enjoyed the stories talking about indicators to focus on to make that snap judgment. So talk about the Tipping Point and then eventually what did not make it in . You mean you want to know about the outtakes . I have been publishing all of my outtakes. [laughter] thats not true. So use your entire notebook. So the thing im going to do is magic and i will write something for the new yorker on that. I have a lot of stuff that was left out. I was is having an problem with the term mind reading. It plays a prominent role it seems to me its not really the mind we are reading and those with mild autism. And then to learn about that. Its not really the mind we are reading. You are right. We cant read minds literally but what are the intentions its a phrase that is used to describe so pointing at the camera can you look inside my head and see it says camera pointing . Know that you can logically infer that from the hands and the eyes in my tone of voice. And then to make sense of a whole group of external cues. Its important to distinguish between those inferences in the evidence of language. And peter has an iq of 119 150 that people cannot make this to interpret this something as simple as this gesture. It does go to something about his inability to put himself in the mind of someone else. And thats what they cant do. And then the experiment but in fact this is fundamentally about racism and then to be deeply ingrained the First Response type doesnt make it less troubling. Then the kkk. And then by better training to fundamentally change the way you think. So in that chapter and another chapter. That there are two kinds of racism and to figure out your levels and the family disconnected phenomenon to be at a conscious level on the extraordinarily unbiased person and my behavior of discriminatory impulses it is a powerful contributory factor in that situation but that whole sequence they construct the fact he is a young man, howr it does not speak to the central factor. And then we cant stop. But it is this send the sand this. Is not black it is park avenue. 1 00 oclock at night 2 00 oclock in the night. And then they see a guy. And then he turns around you can construct the scenario regardless of the color of the mans skin. Its much more likely to happen with a black person but it could happen without. Same as rodney king. That could very well be. That happens with white people all the time. I do think its important to stress it is a powerful contributory factor and not a sufficient factor for what you think could happen. I kept waiting for you to address the issue of the role of desire of the Police Officers in the case or the idea that we see what we want to see to see those realities over and over. So there is a little more of that in the book so with that analysis what is the context those four guys are operating . They are in the midst of the most rampant season in the nypd history to conquer crime in new york. And have been told correctly the way they have conquered crime have been far more aggressive and active. You cannot do that if you are passive in the Police Department and then you have to be aggressive so that part of the nypd. Is proactive you go into the community then you stop and say whats going on with that so what the hell is that guy doing . That was not the culture of the Police Department so there is that institutional desire so what we are seeing is the flipside and then gets her into trouble if you dont correctly observe the proper way to approach a suspect they are not well trained. So of that overall environment. I loved it. So when i read page 53 a started crying and when you know you know it is so powerful. And then to come out of the intellect more into a spiritual realm. And then when she talked about medication and then we have to be very quiet. How do we get quiet and not speed up that time . And even know if you know what youre doing. [laughter] thats been said many times. But i want you to know that i know you probably dont even know it absolutely love you. [applause] thank you very much. And then to become infatuated and then to become dismissive. In then and then to dismiss it as a second order. Its every bit as critical and rational is the thinking that we are doing with that conscious to liberation. So at least five of you. And this five chapter what you describe today was more reactive and then that was a proactive way to use quick judgment. So how did you choose the term . So it describes the process to reach those conclusions so if you look at those complicated decisions people make is possible to reach that sophisticated conclusion were information then you would think going in who is able to diagnose with uncanny accuracy when a couple will be together or not 15 years in the future based on 15 minutes of conversation. A tiny thin slice of that couple allows him to make an extraordinarily accurate and meaningful prediction. That is not an anomalous situation. Time and time again if you look at how predictions are made you can see there are very small number taking place over a short period of time to be enormously predictive of any kind of future outcome. Read the marriage is formal but we do this constantly making searching and reaching conclusions. You need and then you go on the date you have a Job Interview with someone any think youre making a decision based on five or six hours and then you make a decision. And a senior at harvard for those random processes everyone was trying to hire and then its like this kid from harvard. We really like this kid nolan myers from harvard. So that i just had lunch with him in Harvard Square brothers people wanted a higher including Steve Ballmer to microsoft. So not the best at harvard. Solid student really nice guy then after talking to him i wanted to hire him. [laughter] so why do you want to hire him so much . How long did it take you to desired you want to hire him . Pretty much right away. [laughter] thats the way we operate. For better or worse extraordinarily dependent on information gathered and that i spent time trying to figure out and where that is justified. I spent a good deal of time talking about them. How does your own intuition or thin slice operate as a writer and reporter . Im the least intuitive person ever. I am constantly missing things. So when someone else says what about that . My father is a mathematician with that deliberate professional side. So this book was written from that perspective i have in the land of the intuitive i am a tortoise. [laughter] i nearly got a hold of the book if i had it would have read it. [laughter] theres so i did take this little drug and then it makes the heart rate very stable. And then i will choose to blame on the drug so have you looked into the drugs and judgment because i didnt feel even though i was physically calm and for people who need to be calm. Interesting. Do we want to put our Police Officers on beta blockers at all times . [laughter] when it comes to pharmaceutical pharmaceuticals. [laughter] maybe we ought to try that. All the pressures on you for the last question. With people navigating those right i dont know the answer to that. But i suspect the visual cues that we get on the part of that intentionality. And with those other aspects i dont know. Its a really good question. But i do know for example when there is a wonderful place years ago with their people to mind read could you successfully detective somebody was lying. And those who had suffered certain kinds of strokes were remarkably better than those who had not. So being deprived of certain faculties to pay much more attention to the nonverbal pieces of information. And then to have some of your sensorys disabled can be an improvement to pick up on this other information. [applause] [inaudible conversations] every saturday evening we take the opportunity to open the archives with one wellknown author and tonight we are featuring bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell hes appeared on the tv and coming up is his book outliers looking at why certain people succeed. 2008. [applause] if my mother knew i was standing in front of a church with her to the people she would have a heart attack. Very happy to be here my editor is here who is primarily responsible for the success of my first two books