Probably one of the most amazing books I've ever read.

"This is the price we pay for the many benefits of the locked door. When we ask people to explain their thinking - particularly thinking that comes from the unconscious - we need to be careful in how we interpret their answers. When it comes to romance, of course, we understand that. We know we cannot rationally describe the kind of person we will fall in love with: that's why we go on dates - to test our theories about who attracts us. And everyone knows that it's better to have an expert show you - and not just tell you - how to play tennis or golf or a musical instrument. We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction. But in other aspects of our lives, I'm not sure we always respect the mysteries of the locked door and the dangers of the storytelling problem. There are times when we demand an explanation when an explanation really isn't possible, and, as we'll explore in the upcoming chapters of this book, doing so can have serious consequences. "After the O.J. Simpson verdict, one of the jurors appeared on TV and said with absolute viction 'Race had absolutely nothing to do with my decision,'" psychologist Joshua Aronson says. "But how on earth could she know that? What my research with priming race and test performance, and Bargh's research with the interrupters, and Maier's experiment with the ropes show is that people are ignorant of the things that affect their actions, yet they rarely feel ignorant. We need to accept our ignorance and say "I don't know" more often."


chapter 2: "The storytelling problem"

in Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell


(you won't know what "the locked door" and "storytelling problem" means, unless you've read the book)

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