Rapid Cognition or Intuition?

This post has been prompted by Malcolm Gladwell's recent short book "Blink". He argues there is such a thing as Rapid Cognition, and differentiates it from Intuition.

We see rapid cognition most often in competitive sport. In football a striker does not have long to ponder on a shot, in fact he must act within a second and dupe those around him who are seeking to crowd out his space. We see it in conversation when someone from nowhere makes a very telling and witty remark, thereby crushing a whole line of argument. In a crowded world, where things are often seen fleetingly, it is important to recognise the value of "rapid cognition". In fact recognition is another word for rapid cognition. When we recognise something we imply we have thought about what it is. We display our knowledge of a thing by first recognisising and identifying it.

The three biological terms of fight, freeze and flight are manifested behaviours of threatened animals. They are decisions taken rapidly and need to be right!

Trapped an animal has no option but to fight. However, aware it is in a dangerous situation an animal will freeze. It will do nothing to reveal its position. Finally, it might come to a conclusion that its best chance of survival is to get away quickly, to flee, and live for another day.

So we see recognition of danger and rapid cognition as to what action to take are both heightened, and come to fruition within a moment. In a blink, in fact.

Just doing something - a meta post.

It can be difficult collecting your thoughts, especially when the ground seems to move from under your feet. After a long time lag I felt I needed to make a post to check all was well on "briansblogonstuffthathappens". But were there changes!!

Every once in a while you look at your blog and no ideas are flowing. Yet for some unfathomable and intuitive reason one feels the need to make a change - and adjustment - to check the blog is still functioning.
So, just to change my picture (the new picture is shown left), I find the whole blog technology has moved on. But it is access to my account via Google email addresses that has been the problem. An emergent centralising tendency by Google, the new owners of Blogger.

Blogger has been bought by Google, I can only access my blog by a google account, png is the new favoured graphic file format for pics on the web and I have other blogs accessed via a different gmail account!!

At what point does steady change become turbulence on the web?