The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

thinkers ought to get moving in a “quest for a different light.” As he observes, “Libraries are always too dark,” and books written among the stacks manifest

The less heralded scientific story of the past several decades has been researchers’ growing awareness of the brain’s limits. The human brain is limited in its ability to pay attention, limited in its capacity to remember, limited in its facility with abstract concepts, and limited in its power to persist at a challenging task.

The gap between what our biological brains are capable of, and what modern life demands, is large and getting larger each day.

Set beside the brain-as-computer and brain-as-muscle metaphors, it’s apparent that the brain as magpie is a very different kind of analogy,

I think this author oversimplifies models of the brain to encourage consider the importance of external services. Cognition may involve both processing power AND stored information that can change in both quantity and quality (model complexity). It is possible a function of processing power may be an individual difference that influences the speed of accumulation and modification of the stored content. Why is this focus on rejecting simplified models necessary? More complex models of cognition have existed for decades. I also see the mindset concept mostly focused on motivation using a simplified interpretation of neuroplasticity. Ignore the first section.

And last: the capacity to think well—that is, to be intelligent—is not a fixed property of the individual but rather a shifting state that is dependent on access to extra-neural resources and the knowledge of how to use them.

I disagree with this perspective. The connections among and complexity of stored models and information and how the individual connects these components with inputs. Ahrens does a better job.

In recent years, IQ scores have stopped rising, or have even begun to drop, in countries like Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, and Britain. Some researchers suggest that we have now pushed our mental equipment as far as it can go.

The best way—and, at least for now, the only way—for us to get smarter is to get better at thinking outside the brain.

“Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?”

Think of what we call a CPU and RAM. Extended storage can be external and important, but the work of thinking and learning must be done in the combination of RAM and the CPU. What if the human COU has reached practical limits.

That’s where this book comes in: it aims to operationalize the extended mind,

When selecting instructional videos for ourselves or for our children or our students, we should look for those in which the teacher’s hands are visible and active.

if we ourselves are called upon to teach online—or even just to communicate via Zoom or another video-conferencing platform—we should make sure that others can see our moving hands.

This would support the importance of picture within picture.

study participants were able to recall 56 percent more information when it was presented to them on multiple monitors rather than on a single

The screen’s small size means that the map we construct of our conceptual terrain has to be held inside our head rather than fully laid out on the screen itself.

Rather than investing in a lightning-quick processor, he suggests, we should spend our money on a larger monitor—or on multiple monitors, to be set up next to one another and used at the same time.

PART III Thinking with Our Relationships

theoretical computer science. Yet year after year, the rate at which students failed the course was stunning: as high as 60 percent. The problem seemed related to the course’s highly abstract content; sitting passively in lectures,

Then a group of computer science professors hit upon a solution, one that harked back to Germany’s historical strength.

Potsdam professor Christoph Kreitz, the faculty members reimagined the class as an apprenticeship,

The course was reorganized around making the internal thought processes of computer scientists “visible” to students—as visible as a carpenter fitting a ...

This is what’s known as a cognitive apprenticeship, a term coined ...

Collins noted a crucial difference between traditional apprenticeships and modern schooling: in the former, “learners can see the processes of work,” while in the latter, “the processes of thinking are often invisible to both the students and the teacher.” Collins and his coauthors identified four features of apprenticeship that could be adapted to the demands of knowledge work: modeling, or demonstrating the task while explaining it aloud; scaffolding,

or structuring an opportunity for the learner to try the task herself; fading, or gradually withdrawing guidance as the learner becomes more proficient; and coaching, or helping the learner through difficulties along the way.

Christoph Kreitz and his colleagues incorporated these features of traditional apprenticeships into their course redesign, reducing the amount of time students spent in lectures and increasing the leng...

engaging in internal thought processes. As Allan Collins observed, these processes are largely inaccessible to both novice and expert: the novice doesn’t yet know the material well enough, while the expert knows it so well that it has become second nature.

This reality means that if we are to extend our thinking with others’ expertise, we must find better ways of effecting an accurate transfer of knowledge from one mind to another.

The conventional approach to cognition has persuaded us that the only route to more intelligent thinking lies in cultivating our own brain.

First on the list: by copying others, imitators allow other individuals to act as filters, efficiently sorting through available options.

Second: imitators can draw from a wide variety of solutions instead of being tied to just one.

The third advantage of imitation: copiers can evade mistakes by steering clear of the errors made by others who went before them, while innovators have no such guide to potential pitfalls.

Far better than being first, Tellis and Golder concluded, is being what some have called a “fast second”: an agile imitator.

The researchers found that sailors often engaged in “covering,” or copying, the moves made by their rivals—especially when their boat was in the lead. It might seem surprising that sailors at the front of the pack would imitate those who are trailing, but Ross notes that such emulation makes sense: as long as the leaders do as their rivals behind them do, their lead will remain locked in place.

Last, and perhaps most important, imitators save time, effort, and resources that would otherwise be invested in originating their own solutions.

Engaging in effective imitation is like being able to think with other people’s brains—like getting a direct download of others’ knowledge and experience.

it requires cracking a sophisticated code—solving what social scientists call the “correspondence problem,” or the challenge of adapting an imitated solution to the particulars of a new situation. Tackling the correspondence problem involves breaking down an observed solution into its constituent parts, and then reassembling those parts in a different way; it demands a willingness to look past superficial features to the deeper reason why the original solution succeeded, and an ability to apply that underlying principle in a novel setting. It’s paradoxical but true: imitating well demands a considerable degree of creativity.

the first of three steps required to solve the all-important correspondence problem.

Step one, according to Shenkar: specify one’s own problem and identify an analogous problem that has been solved successfully.

Step two: rigorously analyze why the solution...

Soon they were on to the third and most challenging step: identify how one’s own circumstances differ, then figure out how to adapt the original solution to the new setting.

There is evidence that we are born with a predisposition to imitate.

Washington psychologist Andrew Meltzoff showed that babies who were days or even hours old responded to his opening his mouth or sticking out his tongue by forming the same facial expressions in return.