How We Decide.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

HOW WE DECIDE by Jonah Lehrer.

Published in 2009 this book is an anthology of research and mini-biographies of extraordinary people and how they think. The subjects are extraordinary because of how they snatched success from the jaws of doom or how they talked themselves into failure. The book also details how we form our opinions and decisions about common and significant things.

Its 300 pages and I read it in 2 days.

Two of the subjects impressed me: One is an airline pilot with 300 passengers, a damaged airplane with no electrical or hydraulic controls, and a destroyed engine. The manufacturer has no idea how to save the airplane from crashing. The jet did crash but the outcome was much better than anyone expected because of what the pilot did and didnt do.

The 2nd subject is a forest ranger and his team trapped by a ferocious forest fire. Everyone perished but the ranger, who was hardly injured at all. One of the others lived long enough to confirm that what the ranger did to survive seemed so bizarre and nutz it was immediately rejected by everyone....but it worked.

Champion poker players, golfers, quarterbacks, opera divas, serial killers, wall street wizards, and more are examined.

The book might help you prevail over a serious writing problem.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

That must be the ranger who set the area around himself on fire to deprive the bigger fire of fuel. The trick worked and he lived while everyone else perished or was seriously injured. That was back in the 40's or 50's, and I don't recall the name of the fire (the Man Gulch fire?) but Normal MacLean ("A River Runs Through It") wrote an excellent book about it. Some of the cleanest prose you'll ever read.

Of course, the people with brilliant ideas that didn't work--the pilots who don't land safely, the rangers who died in fires--probably aren't covered in there.

It's amazing how slowly you think in an emergency, but how the answers sometimes come to us.

When one of my daughters was around 11, we were down at a bonfire on the beach. An older kid made a torch with some rags tied to a stick with polypropylene rope. Of course, the rope caught on fire and melted and a bit of the burning plastic fell on my daughter's head.

We heard her scream; her hair was on fire. The water was like 20-30 yards away, through soft sand. Without thinking I grabbed the bit of her hair the plastic was stuck too and shoved it in my mouth. The lack of oxygen doused the fire and my saliva kept me from getting burned.

I never would have thought of that in my right mind. I had a lucid moment in curtain of panic and just did it.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

That must be the ranger who set the area around himself on fire to deprive the bigger fire of fuel. The trick worked and he lived while everyone else perished or was seriously injured. That was back in the 40's or 50's, and I don't recall the name of the fire (the Man Gulch fire?) but Normal MacLean ("A River Runs Through It") wrote an excellent book about it. Some of the cleanest prose you'll ever read.

Of course, the people with brilliant ideas that didn't work--the pilots who don't land safely, the rangers who died in fires--probably aren't covered in there.

It's amazing how slowly you think in an emergency, but how the answers sometimes come to us.

When one of my daughters was around 11, we were down at a bonfire on the beach. An older kid made a torch with some rags tied to a stick with polypropylene rope. Of course, the rope caught on fire and melted and a bit of the burning plastic fell on my daughter's head.

We heard her scream; her hair was on fire. The water was like 20-30 yards away, through soft sand. Without thinking I grabbed the bit of her hair the plastic was stuck too and shoved it in my mouth. The lack of oxygen doused the fire and my saliva kept me from getting burned.

I never would have thought of that in my right mind. I had a lucid moment in curtain of panic and just did it.

He includes people who went from great to mediocre as a result of their thinking.