David and Goliath

We take cognitive shortcuts every day: we assume all kinds of things about people or situations just based on the way they look. How our brains fail us in our perceptions and value judgments is what Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath is all about. Gladwell takes us through a variety of situations, from the titular story to classroom sizes to policing tactics and everything in between, to show us how our preconceived notions, particularly of weakness or strength, often fail us.

My interest in psychology has always tended towards mental illness and treatment, but cognitive psychology is fascinating in its own right. Our brains take in so much information constantly that we simply have to derive shortcuts in order to be at all efficient in processing it. Most of the time, these shortcuts work...but not all the time. My favorite portion of the book might actually be the opening section about the title pair. Gladwell walks us through how what we think of a young man with a slingshot against an enormous armored warrior is very different than how that same scenario would have played out in its own time and context. But our brains hear “young man with slingshot” and “enormous armored warrior” and create a whole picture, and while that will usually be close enough to the truth, it won't always be. It wasn't for David.

This was my first experience with Malcolm Gladwell's books, but before I read it I burned through the first season of his podcast “Revisionist History” on recommendation from my husband (which I also recommend to all of you, it's great). This sort of thing seems like it's his wheelhouse: cognition and perception and their quirks. He's got a distinctive and enjoyable authorial voice: I could “hear” him and his cadences in my head as I was reading the words on the page, which was odd but neat. If you like reading about how you might not know what you think you know, I'd recommend this book. It's a quick, interesting, and enjoyable read!

Interesting distinctions around our assumptions around what makes for an advantage. And Gladwell does his usual entertaining job with his storytelling. I enjoyed this book, but was ultimately disappointed with a very poor wrap-up which left me feeling like he either ran out of puff at the end, or otherwise didn't understand the core patterns that linked all of the chapters together.

Malcom Gladwell gets a lot of flak, about not getting the facts “straight”. Which I think is not really what he's trying to do. He's not a researcher as much as an essayist. So whether or not he got the science right is not very important to me as a reader. Although it would be a waste if certain falsehoods become a publicly accepted fact.

Regarding it as an essay I enjoyed reading Gladwell's optimistic style of combining certain stories to create a common thread. I didn't care much for the gimmick of starting a story very positively and asking a rhetoric question like: “He should be proud of what he achieved right? Everything is great now”. And then appending: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

On the whole I enjoyed the premise of the book. Giants can be defeated. And being smaller or weaker does not have to be the end of it. It can also mean that you can be more creative and still outwit someone.
It might sound super obvious, but it is nice to be reminded of it. People will never voluntarily choose a path of more resistance like dyslexia, or worse. But adversity does cultivate cunning and creativity.