Most problems, of course, are not new, so we can rely on what Gentner calls “surface” analogies from our own experience. “Most of the time, if you’re reminded of things that are similar on the surface, they’re going to be relationally similar as well,” she explained. Remember how you fixed the clogged bathtub drain in the old apartment? That will probably come to mind when the kitchen sink is clogged in the new one. But the idea that surface analogies that pop to mind work for novel problems is a “kind world” hypothesis, Gentner told me. Like kind learning environments, a kind world is based
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