These two metaphors—brain as computer and brain as muscle—share some key assumptions. To wit: the mind is a discrete thing that is sealed in the skull; this discrete thing determines how well people are able to think; this thing has stable properties that can easily be measured, compared, and ranked. Such assumptions feel comfortably familiar; indeed, they weren’t particularly novel even at the moment they were first proposed. For centuries, brains had been likened to machines—to whichever appliance of the time appeared most advanced: a hydraulic pump, a mechanical clock, a steam engine, a
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