Notes on What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

My third Malcolm Gladwell in a row (and last for now)! I enjoyed his latest What the Dog Saw, which is a collection of many of his published New Yorker articles, all in one book. The book discussed psychology, children, war, politics, dogs (of course), and many other subjects and sub-cultures. I liked how he was able to integrate himself into different communities, get a "flavor" for them and share that flavor with his readers succinctly, taking away broader lessons. There were some connections between this book and Outliers for sure, and it was nice to read them in succession to be able to catch those.

Overall, the book reveals a lot of non-intuitive results and poses some interesting questions. I felt after reading some of the stories that I wished they could be expanded on much more than he did, but on the flip side, it was nice to get a bit of subject matter variety in one work.

I recommend this book for people who want to understand dogs and geniuses, as I thought those two subjects were handled superbly.

Below are my notes and takeaways on each sub-article.

Preface

• Other minds discovery for kids: that other minds are different than yours
  
• Curiosity about the interior of others' heads
  
• Obsessives and minor geniuses
  
• Serious problems
  
• Predictions we make about ppl
  
• Dog whisperers
  
• Anthology of his New Yorker articles
  
• We filter rank and judge all the time but that blocks interestingness
  
• Assume everything is interesting or will lead to a story
  
• Find ppl in the middle who do the real work and who aren't self conscious
  
• Self consciousness is enemy of interestingness
  

Part 1 minor geniuses

Pitchmen for kitchen appliances

• Product development = marketing
  
• Tv infomercials for gadgets
  
• Developed all gadgets at home
  
• Pitchman real actor
  
• Secret is the turn: entertainment to business ask for money
  
• Standard vaudeville gimmicks
  
• Vegematic perfect combo of tv and gadget
  
• Product designed to be the star
  
• Design of product key to its demonstration and enticeability
  
• Set it and forget it
  
• QVC million dollars sales in one hour
  

Ketchup conundrum

• Many mustards
  
• Only one ketchup
  
• Gray poupon brand strong
  
• Build a better ketchup
  
• Worlds best brand
  
• Sensory segmentation with food
  
• Power of multiple varieties
  
• Food of the masses
  
• Universal
  
• Heinz pushes all 5 senses
  
• Sweet sour salty bitter umami
  
• New ketchups weren't improvements
  
• Ketchup is ketchup
  
• Special and different from spaghetti sauce where varieties matter
  

Blowing up

• Nassim Taleb story
  
• Expert traders might all just be luck
  
• Didn't want strategy that could blow up
  
• Don't believe financial markets are like physical that follow bell curve
  
• No statistical orderliness
  
• Only buys options
  
• Never bets on market move
  
• Buys puts and calls on hundreds of stocks out of money
  
• All cash in t-bills
  
• No matter how much info u know u can't know if ur proposition is true; only if false
  
• Traditional investing aims to make a little but could lose a lot
  
• Taleb aims to lose a little but could make a lot
  
• They just bleed to death but can't blow up
  
• Lose money 364/365 days
  
• No feedback daily so really hard for humans
  
• Set of tricks and protocols
  
• So he can't cause changes
  
• Techniques of self control
  
• More courage and heroism in defying human impulse than taking heroic risks
  

True colors

• Blond hair is her choice
  
• Jewish girl to acquire higher class through hair
  
• Disapproving mother in law
  
• Claroll at home color
  
• Ad writer for hair color
  
• Hair ad slogans represented feminism
  
• Does she or doesn't she
  
• Immigrants had to be fakers and remake themselves to fit in
  
• Does she or doesn't she about deeper identity
  
• Because I'm worth it slogan for l'aureal
  
• Blondness periodic table depending on color and attitude, specified by famous actresses
  
• Hair dye is politics, assimilation, self-esteem
  
• Give meaning to modern consumer through slogans
  
• Advertising motivational research
  
• Surveys based on psych, Freud, rorsharck
  
• Use techniques of healing for selling
  
• Divorcing women changing hair
  

John rock

• In love with church and inventor of birth control pill
  
• Always stick to your conscience
  
• Duplicated natural hormones already in woman's body
  
•  Struggle convincing church it's natural
  
• Shift from 100 to 400 menses per life because in older societies had more pregnancies and breastfeedings
  
• More ovulation increase cancer risk and pill decreases back to natural level
  
• Pill as rhythm method extended which church supports
  
• But monthly week of pain not necessary and there just to please church
  
• Japanese women have six times less breast cancer but only in Japan
  
• Lower fat diet
  
• Lower weight
  
• Later puberty and first period
  
• Gnrh pills could fake body to be a bit menopausal and drastically Lower breast cancer risk
  
• Pike researcher at balance pharmaceuticals startup in Santa Monica
  
• Talk about pill as cancer reducer not contraceptive to get church to approve; saving lives
  
• Rock became less religious
  

What the dog saw

• Cesar
  
• Make monster dog become sweet
  
• Interviews parents about dog and its behavior and parents' own upbringing
  
• Need to practice exercise, discipline, and affection
  
• Runs dog psychology center in downtown la
  
• Takes packs of dogs for walks
  
• Integrates problem dogs into pack
  
• Then returns to owner
  
• Prison yard of dogs
  
• Dog explorer show on tv
  
• Has presence like teacher
  
• Throws dogs balls
  
• Begins and ends game and demands it stop with whistle
  
• Dog whisperer show
  
• Dogs are students of human movement unlike other animals
  
• Dogs really interested in humans
  
• Your head slant and breathing affect how dog sees you
  
• How relaxed face is, arms
  
• Book: The Other End of the Leash
  
• Owner fear and face causes dogs to attack
  
• Intention of the movement
  
• Movement phrasing
  
• Creates authenticity when done right
  
• Cesar needed to learn to be ppl whisperer
  

Part 2: theories and predictions

Open secrets: Enron

• Skilling
  
• Received huge criminal sentence
  
• Puzzles vs mysteries
  
• Puzzles have key, just try to find it
  
• Mysteries require interpretation
  
• In mystery, doesn't always help to add more intelligence data
  
• Enron scandal not a puzzle but a mystery
  
• Mark to market accounting: real income vs fake unrealized
  
• As journalists and analysts looked at financials, stock fell
  
• Watergate was classic puzzle
  
• Heavy reliance on special purpose vehicles, shadowy side deals
  
• Didn't communicate essence of transactions to readers of statements
  
• All spe's were disclosed but thousands of pages long
  
• 120k pages long
  
• Puzzle grows simpler with each piece of info
  
• Mystery gets more complex with more info and layers
  
• Book: Conspiracy of Fools
  
• Officers didn't understand the deals themselves
  
• Disclosure paradigm is an anachronism
  
• Nazi secret weapon propaganda and puzzle
  
• Complex issues require mystery paradigm
  
• Psa screening inconclusive
  
• Diagnosis transformation from puzzle to mystery with probabilities
  
• Intelligence in soviet time was puzzle questions; now inundated with info and more a mystery of conflicting data
  
• Puzzles transmitter dependent
  
• Mysteries receiver dependent
  
• Huge gap between reported and taxable income at Enron hard to understand to most
  
• Mysteries spread blame more
  

Million dollar problem

• Homelessness
  
• Alcoholics
  
• 1 million in cost per homeless in medical
  
• Not normal distribution
  
• Power law distribution
  
• Extreme concentration of trouble officers
  
• Middle doesn't need help
  
• Homelessness power law distro not normal
  
• 62m spent annually in ny to shelter homeless
  
• Same guys over and over like lapd problem
  
• A few bad cases
  
• Built free apartments for and followed worst homeless cases
  
• Costs much less than if they were on street
  
• Emissions similar power law problem
  
• A small number of cars way higher emotions than almost all
  
• Some really old cars on road
  
• Better to do mobile smog testing of vehicles using stedman infrared
  
• But against our idea that pollution is a problem we all contribute to
  
• Policing not policy problem
  
• Small boring solution to big problem doesn't feel good; want sweeping reforms
  
• Solving power law problems violates our moral and political philosophy
  
• Special treatment of some; decisions of unfairness just for efficiency
  
• Some homeless need someone to be in charge of him
  

Picture problem

• Air force jets killing missile launch sites
  
• $4M camera
  
• Idea that photo can't lie
  
• Actual number of definite kills due to camera was 0
  
• Mammograms complex
  
• Skilled pair of fingers very effective at exam
  
• Modern bombs are now precise
  
• Now the problem is the precision of info needed
  
• Dcis diagnosis unclear when see it in mammogram
  
• We see more that we don't know how to interpret
  
• Mammo decreases cancer risk by 10%
  

Something borrowed

• Plagiarism
  
• Someone had stolen lewis's essence for a new play
  
• Copyright violations by play
  
• Borrowing as compliment
  
• Lots of music borrows and remakes
  
• Copyrights and patents balance between property rights and public benefits from disclosure and progress and availability/access
  
• Lots of patterns of influence in music
  
• Difference between ideas and things; copying idea doesn't take from me but saves u the work to create
  
• Borrowing that's transformative vs derivative
  
• Play writer borrowed from his article
  
• Borrowing someone's life not ok
  

Connecting dots: intelligence reform

• Syrian attack on Israel
  
• Sept 11
  
• Book: the sell
  
• Couldn't see the pattern
  
• We revise data after attack
  
• Problem of noise in intelligence gathering
  
• Creeping determinism where we rewrite our past probabilities
  
• Create clashes in group to prevent groupthink
  
• False alarms from sensitivity lower sensitivity after
  

The art of failure: choking and panic

• Tennis players failing under pressure
  
• Talented ppl fail sometimes
  
• Implicit learning and muscle memory
  
• In conditions of stress, explicit system takes over and u lose ur unconscious touch
  
• Stress wipes out short term memory
  
• Panic causes perceptual narrowing
  
• Choking about thinking too much
  
• Panic about thinking too little
  
• Choking is forgetting instinct
  
• Panic is reversion to instinct
  
• How failure happens affects our understanding of why it happens
  
• Kennedy air crash: failed under pressure
  
• Book: Inside the Sky
  
• Inability to sense experientially what plane doing
  
• Panicking is conventional failure
  
• Kennedy panicked
  
• Choking is paradoxical failure
  
• Stereotype threat of ethnic students doing worse on tests
  
• Choking is second guessing
  
• Stereotype threat creates choking not panic
  

Blow up: who can be blamed for challenger: no one and we need to get used to it

• Rituals of disaster
  
• Desire not to give up
  
• Disasters inherent in complex tech systems
  
• Challenger wasnt anomaly; because everyone did exactly what they were supposed to do
  
• Assume that risks are manageable but wrong
  
• Three mile island near disaster
  
• Not just about human error
  
• 5 malfunctions each trivial but combined and interacted to make big problem
  
• "normal accident"
  
• Combos of minor normal failures of tech system
  
• Culture of NASA in challenger
  
• Another view: how humans handle risk
  
• Risk homeostasis theory
  
• Book: Target Risk
  
• Changes that appear to make org safer don't
  
• Humans compensate for lower risk in one are with more in another area
  
• Abs brakes made drivers riskier
  
• More pedestrians killed at marked crossings
  
• More poisonings after child proof pill bottles came out
  

Part 3 personality, character, intelligence

Late bloomers: why we equate genius with precocity

• Ben fountain writer success not breakthrough
  
• Took 18 years
  
• Quit job
  
• Had 30 rejections for 1 published
  
• Poets peak young
  
• Study found no relation in poetry publication and youth
  
• Picasso young bloomer but cesanne late bloomer
  
• Writer collected articles he loved and interested in
  
• Traveled to Haiti because was interested
  
• Learned visual language from visual dictionaries and architecture books
  
• Late bloomers experimenters and researchers, trial and error 
  
• Early bloomers conceptual, visionary
  
• experimental artists improve skills over time, learn from each piece
  
• Searching vs finding
  
• Mark twain experimenter and revised huck Finn for 10 years
  
• Conceptual vs experimental
  
• Late bloomer resembles a failure for a while
  
• We prematurely judge late bloomers and thwart many
  
• Need support and patrons
  
• Late bloomers depend on others
  
• Late bloomer stories love story
  

Most likely to succeed: how we hire when we can't tell

• Drafting football players
  
• Teaching profession hard to predict how one will do
  
• Value add calculation of test score improvement
  
• Difference between good and bad huge
  
• Test scores and teaching creds not related to performance
  
• Financial advisors do well at hiring
  
• Lower standards and judge after they try
  
• Apprenticeship camp
  

Dangerous minds: criminal profiling made easy

• Psychoanalyze criminals and bomb notes
  
• Profiler goes from deeds to man description, not opposite prediction
  
• Organized vs unorganized killers
  
• Crime scene reveals personality
  
• Profiles too general and use cold reading tricks
  

Talent myth: is it overrated

• McKinsey study
  
• Book: War for Talent
  
• Talent mindset
  
• CEOs of best companies obsessed with hiring stars
  
• McKinsey billings motivation
  
• Enron hired McKinsey a ton
  
• Enron was ultimate talent company
  
• What if Enron failed because of its mindset
  
• Differentiation and affirmation of employees annually
  
• A's promoted, c's fired
  
• Rank and yank
  
• Practical tacit knowledge unrelated to iq
  
• Ranking fighter pilots easier than managers
  
• Use criteria as specific as possible
  
• Talent separated from performance
  
• Catering to keep employees happy
  
• Enron was place where stars did whatever wanted
  
• Good businesses determined by attractiveness to employees not customers or profits
  
• Pet projects
  
• Greedy vs narcissistic corporation
  
• Some hold fixed view of intelligence vs malleable
  
• If celebrated only for talent instead of malleability then more likely to lie when self image threatened and less likely to work on self improvement
  
• Organizations make ppl smart not other way around
  
• P&g, southwest, Walmart use different management principles than Enron
  

The new boy network: what job interviews really tell us

• Quick instinct u get after first few minutes of interview
  
• Snap judgments
  
• Can rate teachers on 2 second silent video 
  
• Humans don't need to know someone to believe u know someone
  
• Power of first impressions
  
• Same judgment after 1 semester with teacher as after 2 sec
  
• First impression leads to confirmation bias
  
• How we behave more affected by situation than traits
  
• Don't draw broad conclusions
  
• Ask specific situational questions that reveal one small detail
  
• Not classic questions with right answers
  
• Structured interview only one with value
  

Troublemakers: pit bulls teach us about crime

• Bred for aggression
  
• Generalizations
  
• Profile terrorists hard
  
• Testing study found pit bulls less aggressive
  
• Just some bad examples
  
• Category problem
  
• Pit bulls not more dangerous but more numerous
  
• Bad owners create bad dogs

---