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Blind Spots Quotes

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Blind Spots Quotes

“People who actively work to be open and objective are impressive. They are also easy to spot. They surprise people with their positions on different issues. They don't hop on bandwagons without compelling evidence. And they possess the courage to challenge assumptions and swim against the current.”

HealthHealth CareMedical TreatmentBlind SpotsMedical ResearchMedical ScienceMedical EthicsMedical HistoryMedical Malpractice
Book:Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health
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“If we become attuned to these fallacies, then every time we hear them - every time we hear a person attacked, an emotional appeal made, an idea rejected because it isn't perfect, or a phrase like ''we have only two choices'' - our antennae will go up. This doesn't mean that we should necessarily reject what the person is saying but that we should reason more carefully about the issue before deciding what we believe should be done.”

PsychologySelf HelpCritical ThinkingBlind Spots
Book:Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things
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“We all have blind spots – those areas for improvement and growth. As painful as it can be to admit we’re doing things we never wanted to do and saying things we never wanted to say, it is this acknowledgement that enables us to take the first step toward change. Be gentle with yourself. Be real with yourself. Take baby steps.”

ChangeBlind SpotsPersonal ChangeBaby StepsAdmitting Blind SpotsAreas For GrowthAreas For Improvement
Author:Rhonda Louise Robbins
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“The goddess of sex that most men had fantasized about since their teenage years wasn’t to be found in some red-light district of town or in an illicit magazine but was actually standing right next to them at work, at the library, at the coffee shop. And they were too blind to see it!”

Sex AppealBlind SpotsHidden TreasureDon T Judge A Book By Its CoverPlot TwistWhat Men WantLibrianSex Goddess
Book:The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen
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“Consider the recent financial crisis and its link to faulty reward systems. President Bill Clinton's objective of increasing homeownership by rewarding potential home buyers and lenders is one example. The Clinton administration "went to ridiculous lengths" to increase homeownership in the United State, promoting "paper-thin down payments" and pushing lenders to give mortgage loans to unqualified buyers according to Business Week editor Peter Coy.”

EthicsEconomicsBlind SpotsHousing Bubble
Author:Max H. Bazerman
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“The quality of our thinking is largely influenced by the mental models in our heads. While we want accurate models, we also want a wide variety of models to uncover what’s really happening. The key here is variety. Most of us study something specific and don’t get exposure to the big ideas of other disciplines. We don’t develop the multidisciplinary mindset that we need to accurately see a problem. And because we don’t have the right models to understand the situation, we overuse the models we do have and use them even when they don’t belong. You’ve likely experienced this first hand. An engineer will often think in terms of systems by default. A psychologist will think in terms of incentives. A business person might think in terms of opportunity cost and risk-reward. Through their disciplines, each of these people sees part of the situation, the part of the world that makes sense to them. None of them, however, see the entire situation unless they are thinking in a multidisciplinary way. In short, they have blind spots. Big blind spots. And they’re not aware of their blind spots. [...] Relying on only a few models is like having a 400-horsepower brain that’s only generating 50 horsepower of output. To increase your mental efficiency and reach your 400-horsepower potential, you need to use a latticework of mental models. Exactly the same sort of pattern that graces backyards everywhere, a lattice is a series of points that connect to and reinforce each other. The Great Models can be understood in the same way—models influence and interact with each other to create a structure that can be used to evaluate and understand ideas. [...] Without a latticework of the Great Models our decisions become harder, slower, and less creative. But by using a mental models approach, we can complement our specializations by being curious about how the rest of the world works. A quick glance at the Nobel Prize winners list show that many of them, obviously extreme specialists in something, had multidisciplinary interests that supported their achievements. [...] The more high-quality mental models you have in your mental toolbox, the more likely you will have the ones needed to understand the problem. And understanding is everything. The better you understand, the better the potential actions you can take. The better the potential actions, the fewer problems you’ll encounter down the road. Better models make better decisions.”

Decision MakingRationalityRational ThinkingSpecializationBlind SpotsCrossfunctional ManagementModel ThinkingMultidisciplinarity
Book:The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts
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“Now, of course, architecture is a blind spot of our life in America today. How many millions of students go to the university to be educated? They come away conditioned, not enlightened, and they know nothing of architecture, although they have a department somewhere around -- probably in the basement.”

KnowsTodayAmericaCoursesMillionsOur LivesStudentsBlindUniversityArchitectureEducatedSpotsDepartmentEnlightenedBasementsAmerica TodayBlind Spots
Author:Frank Lloyd Wright
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“The Relativity theory, the copernican upheaval, or any great scientific convulsion, leaves a new landscape. There is a period of stunned dreariness; then people begin, antlike, the building of a new human world. They soon forget the last disturbance. But from these shocks they derive a slightly augmented vocabulary, a new blind spot in their vision, a few new blepharospasms or tics, and perhaps a revised method of computing time.”

PeopleWorldHumansLastsForgetVisionBuildingTheoryPeriodsMethodBlindSpotsLandscapeShockVocabularyRelativityDisturbanceComputingStunnedUpheavalBlind SpotsTics
Book:The Art of Being Ruled
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“We know it (meat eating) is indisputably the number one cause of global warming. So what does it mean exactly to be an environmentalist on a daily basis if you are not thinking about the number one cause of global warming or one of the top two or three causes of all other environmental problems? Does it mean you are necessarily someone who doesn't care about the environment? Obviously not, but it might mean you have a blind spot for something big.”

IfsThinkingKnowsMeanDoeTwoProblemBigsMightCareThreeCausesNumbersEnvironmentEatingBasesBlindEnvironmentalClimate ChangeSpotsMeatGlobal WarmingEnvironmentalistEnvironmental ProblemsBlind SpotsMeat EatingCauses Of Global Warming
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
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“The blind spot for the in the Southern Progressive Movement - as for that matter in the national [progressive] movement - was the Negro, for the whole movement in the South coincided paradoxically with the crest of the wave of racism. Still more important to the association of the two movements was the fact that their leaders were often identical. In fact, the typical Progressive reformer rode to power in the South on a disenfranchising or white-supremacy movement.”

StillsTwoImportantMatterPhilosophyWholeFactsPoliticalWhiteLeaderMovementRacismBlindSouthWaveSpotsClassicProgressiveSouthernAssociationTypicalWhite SupremacyPolitical PhilosophyIdenticalSupremacyReformersBlind SpotsProgressive Movement
Author:C. Vann Woodward
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“... one of the blind spots of most Negroes is their failure to realize that small overtures from whites have a large significance... I now realize that this feeling inevitably takes possession of one in the bitter struggle for equality. Indeed, I share it. Yet I wonder how we can expect total acceptance to step full grown from the womb of prejudice, with no embryo or infancy or childhood stages.”

FeelingsRealizingWonderStepsStruggleShareChildhoodStageAcceptancePrejudiceRelationBlindPossessionToleranceBitterSpotsSignificanceWombRace RelationsInfancyEmbryosBlind Spots
Author:Sarah-Patton Boyle
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“The American middle class, it seems to me, is looking to politicians now to satisfy a pretty basic - and urgent - level of need. Yet people in the upper middle class - with their excellent health benefits, schools, salaries, retirement plans, nannies and private afterschool programs - have journeyed so far from that level of need that, it often seems to me, they literally cannot hear what resonates with the middle class. That creates a problematic blind spot for those who write, edit or produce what comes to be known about our politicians and their policies.”

PeopleNeedsWritingSeemsSchoolLevelsKnownClassPlansMiddlePolicyProducePoliticianBenefitsProgramBlindSpotsExcellentMiddle ClassRetirementUrgentSalaryEditsNanniesBlind SpotsHealth BenefitsUpper Middle Class
Author:Judith Warner
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“The brain "fills in" the missing information from the blind spot. Notice what you see in the location of the dot when it's in your blind spot. When the dot disappears, you do not perceive a hole of whiteness or blackness in its place; instead your brain invents a patch of the background pattern. Your brain, with no information from that particular spot in visual space, fills in with the patterns around it. You're not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.”

SpaceBrainMissingInformationParticularBlindPatternsDisappearBackgroundsHolesSpotsPerceiveVisualsLocationPatchesDotsBlacknessWhitenessBlind Spots
Author:David Eagleman
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“For me, on every project, I realize that I've boxed myself into a corner, or that the play necessitates some sort of theatrical convention that I realize I hate while I'm making it. So then the next play is always a rebellion. Or like, the thing I didn't even realize I was doing last time I will make sure I don't do this time. But there's always some other blind spot. And then that blind spot inspires the play that comes after.”

PlayLastsHateNextRealizingInspireProjectsI HateBlindCornersSpotsRebellionConventionsLast TimeTheatricalBlind SpotsNext Play
Author:Annie Baker
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“Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything---evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing---it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing.”

PeopleWorldHumansLooksTermPsychologyEconomicsBlindMedicineSpotsErasBiologySurprisingConsideringEcologyEvolutionary PsychologyComputingSnapshotsEvolutionary BiologyBlind Spots
Book:Prey
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“The beautiful thing about driving was that it stole just enough of his attention - car parked on the side, maybe a cop, slow to speed limit, time to pass this sixteen-wheeler, turn signal, check rearview, crane neck to check blind spot and yes, okay, left lane.”

EnoughBeautifulTurnsLeftSidesAttentionCarLimitsOkayBlindSpeedDrivingChecksSpotsNecksCopBeautiful ThingsSignalsLanesSixteenCranesBlind SpotsSpeed Limits
Book:An Abundance of Katherines
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“Sanity, as the project of keeping ourselves recognizably human, therefore has to limit the range of human experience. To keep faith with recognition we have to stay recognizable. Sanity, in other words, becomes a pressing preoccupation as soon as we recognize the importance of recognition. When we define ourselves by what we can recognize, by what we can comprehend- rather than, say, by what we can describe- we are continually under threat from what we are unwilling and/or unable to see. We are tyrannized by our blind spots, and by whatever it is about ourselves that we find unacceptable.”

HumansLimitsProjectsImportanceBlindThreatSpotsRecognitionRangeSanityHuman ExperienceUnwillingPreoccupationKeep The FaithBlind Spots
Book:Going sane
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