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- There are many stories in the book. Which one impacted you
the most?
- The book is based on the ‘default to truth’ theory. Do you
agree with it? Can you think of examples of when you ‘default to
untruth’?
- Gladwell wrote, "We fall out of truth-default mode only when
the case against our initial assumption becomes definitive." Do
you have good examples from your life when the truth-default
scales tipped over for you?
- The bail judgment AI system has been shown to perform 25%
better than human judges. Do you think we should reduce human
judgment and increase the AI system’s role in our judicial
system?
- The "Holy Fool" is a truth-teller because he is an outcast &
blurts out inconvenient truths or questions things the rest of
us take for granted. Have you encountered a "Holy Fool"? What
inconvenient truths did they blurt out?
- After you read this book, what would you do differently when
talking to the next stranger?
- Has the book changed the way you see yourself?
- The author wrote, "alcohol’s principal effect is to narrow
our emotional and mental fields of vision. It makes the
immediate aspects of the experience have a disproportionate
influence on behavior and emotion." Has this book changed your
views about alcohol and its place in our culture? What do you
think should be done to minimize the damage that alcohol will
cause in the future?
- How do you make sense of the statistic that 77 out of 114
soldiers falsely identified their interrogators in a photo
lineup? If torture changes the mind so much, how can we reliably
get critical information from the captured enemies?
- 515 people who tried to jump from the SF Golden Gate bridge
had been unexpectedly restrained. Just 25 of them persisted in
killing themselves some other way. Do you agree that suicide is
coupled? Why is it tough for us to accept the idea that a
behavior can be so tightly coupled to a place?
- Firearm suicides make two-thirds of all gun deaths and half
of the suicides in the US. The US firearm suicide rate is
10
times that of other high-income countries.
Do you think that US suicide is coupled to the firearm, or is it
the other way around, that firearm suicide is coupled to the
USA? What can we do about this?
- How has reading the book affected your
views on the victimization of unarmed black people (Sandra Bland
& Ferguson) to women & children being sexually assaulted at
colleges (Brock Turner & Sandusky)? Do you agree with Gladwell
that these are mere "communication" issues between strangers?
- Gladwell is saying that the riots in Ferguson, Mo., are not
about race, but about "a particular style of policing that had
been practiced in the city for years." Police officers approach
civilians on the flimsiest of pretexts, looking for a needle in
a haystack, resulting in obliteration of trust between police
and community. What’s your take on this issue?
- What problems does the author identify in our society that
hasn’t been discussed?
* Some questions from Augusteo.
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