The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

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. But contrary to its reputation as a lazy cop-out, imitating well is not easy. It rarely entails automatic or mindless duplication. Rather, 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.