they don't amount to much of a point. For all the talk about our potential to change our lives through thin-slicing, his examples are almost exclusively about people who have a lifetime of experience and study in a certain discipline, and are able to parlay that into remarkable thin-slicing abilities. It makes sense that those people would be able to develop that ability. But I didn't feel like he ever presented a case where the ability wasn't the result of serious study and experience. So, it was kind of a no-duh message to me. He never made the transition to how normal people can apply thin-slicing WITHOUT needing an intense level of knowledge and experience on whatever they are thin-slicing. We already know that people who are experts are better equipped to make quick decisions in their chosen fields.

Also, I found his theory of temporary autism to be pretty ridiculous and thinly supported. It's like he came up with the idea, liked it, and did whatever he could to back his way into a rationale for it. For example, in the case of the police shooting, he talks about how officers saw the victim pulling something out of his pocket and pointing it at them, and then acts as if their focus on this movement over everything else that was going on was somehow INEXPLICABLE, comparing it to an autistic child watching a movie's most dramatic moment, and focusing intently on a clock in the background. Of course that would be your main focus if you were a police officer chasing someone you thought may be a criminal. An autistic response would be to focus on anything BUT the unidentified object being pointed at you. (Note: I think the officers were in the wrong and made a really shitty decision, I just think Gladwell tried, and failed, to use the incident to illustrate a spurious point.)

Anyway, I haven't read The Tipping Point, but I have read a lot of Gladwell's New Yorker work, and he always really makes you think with fascinating theories, but rarely arrives at any useful real-world application of his theories.

For example, and I'll shut-up soon, he wrote about the homeless problem, and in theory his solution was very interesting. Long story short: only a small fraction of a city's homeless are perpetually homeless. These are the ones that are the most expensive burden, in terms of medical and psychological care. So instead of focusing money to feed and house the thousands who will most likely only be homeless for 48 hours at most, we should just pay for apartments and round-the-clock nurse care for the most hopeless cases, because from an economic stand point, this makes the most sense. And it's fascinating to think about. But if you actually try to think about applying this theory to reality, it becomes obvious that it cannot work, for different ethical and logistical reasons. So you have some great food for thought, but that's about it.

Anyway, I honestly look forward to reading more of Gladwell's work, but find its best to use his intriguing case studies on perplexing problems and issues as a springboard for my own thoughts and conclusions, because unfortunately, I don't usually get much out of his.