"Any typos or errors in this article are due to inattentional blindness and thus a demonstration of the content of this book"
About a month ago, the editor for the Chinese edition of the book "The Invisible Gorilla" wanted me to write a promotion foreword for this book. Since the editor was one of my former students, it was quite difficult to say no. So, I did just that. The edited version of my article can be found here.
It is a weird experience. When the editor called me about this project, I suddenly recalled a lot of detail about the first time I encountered the work by the authors in a conference 14 years ago. I was even able to remember where I sat in the conference room and the dining table for the lunch afterward. Since this book does mention flash memory, I decided to start my essay with that. Maybe I-Ping, Suling, Chia-Hui, and Jing-ling who had that lunch with me, can check whether my memory was consistent with theirs.
In that foreword, I did not say anything critical about the book because (1) I understood that this was supposed to be a promotion material and (2) I was reading the English version of the book for the Chinese version was not available to me before the deadline. Now, the book is published. To balance my overly positive article, I think that I should mention some negative points here. First of all, sometimes, the authors may stretch their reasoning too far. While this book is for general public and thus some exaggeration to make the book more interesting is almost necessary, too wild a speculation can actually reduce the credibility of the book. Second, the quality of the last two chapters (and to some degree, the third chapter) is significantly worse than the other part of the book. For the same material, there are better books on the market. So, if you have limited time, just read the first four chapters (or the first two, if you are really busy). This difference in quality may reflect the research focus of the authors. Third, obviously, the translator has little background in Psychology or cognitive science. I only received the Chinese version a couple days ago and can find several things just not right after a few minutes of browsing. So,if you can, get the English version.
After I submitted my articles. I talked to the editor about some corrections made to that articles and how bad I was in making typos (anyone who read this far should notice that already). Suddenly, a flash idea came to my mind. What happened next is that I should thank the editor for allowing me to put the sentence "Any typos or errors in this article are due to inattentional blindness and thus a demonstration of the content of this book" at the end of my article.
