What do you think?
Rate this book
The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain
A bold new book reveals how we can tap the intelligence that exists beyond our brains—in our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships
Use your head.
That’s what we tell ourselves when facing a tricky problem or a difficult project. But a growing body of research indicates that we’ve got it exactly backwards. What we need to do, says acclaimed science writer Annie Murphy Paul, is think outside the brain. A host of “extra-neural” resources—the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of those around us— can help us focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively.
The Extended Mind outlines the research behind this exciting new vision of human ability, exploring the findings of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and examining the practices of educators, managers, and leaders who are already reaping the benefits of thinking outside the brain. She excavates the untold history of how artists, scientists, and authors—from Jackson Pollock to Jonas Salk to Robert Caro—have used mental extensions to solve problems, make discoveries, and create new works. In the tradition of Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind or Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, The Extended Mind offers a dramatic new view of how our minds work, full of practical advice on how we can all think better.
Use your head.
That’s what we tell ourselves when facing a tricky problem or a difficult project. But a growing body of research indicates that we’ve got it exactly backwards. What we need to do, says acclaimed science writer Annie Murphy Paul, is think outside the brain. A host of “extra-neural” resources—the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of those around us— can help us focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively.
The Extended Mind outlines the research behind this exciting new vision of human ability, exploring the findings of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and examining the practices of educators, managers, and leaders who are already reaping the benefits of thinking outside the brain. She excavates the untold history of how artists, scientists, and authors—from Jackson Pollock to Jonas Salk to Robert Caro—have used mental extensions to solve problems, make discoveries, and create new works. In the tradition of Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind or Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, The Extended Mind offers a dramatic new view of how our minds work, full of practical advice on how we can all think better.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 8, 2021
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 356 reviews
May 23, 2021
The brain is not a telephone switchboard, and it is not a computer. It is a kingdom unto itself, ruled by the prefrontal cortex. The PFC contains the giant lobes above the eyes, behind the forehead. It takes 21 years for it to fully grow out, and when it does, it takes control. The result is we only see what it wants us to see, and make connections that it allows us to make. It is what takes away our childhood wonder and excitement, and filters out (what it considers) irrelevant and unfocused factors. Humans uniquely spend their adult lives trying to overcome their own PFC’s harsh administration, mostly with alcohol.
Into this intriguing scenario, Annie Murphy Paul has written a book called The Extended Mind. Without her saying so explicitly, it is about the tricks and tips humans need and continue to refine to overcome the capacity limits set by the PFC. As it goes on, it becomes the model for why readers need a PFC to filter out the irrelevant and the unfocused.
It starts out well enough, with discussion of how using the hands in speaking adds information and ideas that speech alone does not convey. The same goes for writing things down and sketching. Adding perspectives adds to creativity and analysis. Errors and solutions appear in models where the mind alone could not imagine them.
Breaking up a long sit with a walk outdoors does wonders for resetting the PFC and inspiring new thoughts. Paul quotes famous scientists and writers who say things like all their best thinking takes place during a walk. Radiologists notice far more in X-rays when they examine them while moving around, and even on a treadmill. They can also accurately analyze far more of them while running in place. Many times as many, and far more accurately too. Sadly, observation and creativity are otherwise a child’s domain.
Also sadly, only 26% of children today play outdoors, missing out on the golden years of thinking and observing without being restricted by the PFC. Their parents are too busy, or they fear kidnappers, or just plain old injury. Far better to keep the kids indoors and have them watch television or computers. It goes against half a million years of evolution.
The high point of the book, at least for me, came very early on, where Paul writes about dementia and Alzheimer’s victims. She says the endless so-called mind exercises, graphic novels, word games and photo albums are pointless; they do nothing to stimulate the brain back to a healthy state. It simply continues to deteriorate. What they (and everyone) needs is real physical exercise. That is what causes the brain to stay functional or even rejuvenate. The walk outdoors is far more than a change of pace; it is the solution. A workout in the morning leaves people energized, awake and with more capacity to think things through. Exercising after work is not unhealthy, but a waste of the good and the potential it can deliver if done earlier.
She goes on about how students need to move around to absorb lessons. The whole institution of sitting quietly all day, facing the front and not fidgeting is completely wrong. It is the most inefficient way to educate. And it shows. In study after study. Recess does more for the mind that all the classes that precede it every day.
The other extreme is the noise. Studying while wearing earbuds and with the tv on simply does not work. The brain is not capable of separately absorbing those three streams of data in parallel. Worse, it is highly attuned to the human voice. People talking on tv, and singers singing their lyrics all detract from whatever the reader is meant to be absorbing, which rates a much lower priority in the brain than speech does. It is being called the Attention Draining Effect and it results in far less progress than would be otherwise achieved.
There is also an early chapter on how the brain itself tries to circumvent the PFC, pushing signals out elsewhere. Paul focuses on professional stock traders, who use their gut instinct to make split second buy and sell decisions. The stomach speaks to the mind with cramps. The hands speak with sweat. Heeding these signals, she says, can extend the mind beyond just the brain, which is not only overloaded but also restricted by the PFC. (It also leads to the discovery there are two kinds of people in the world: those who hear their every heartbeat, and those who don’t.) She implies that paying attention to these sorts of communications is a path to success, when that is so obviously untrue (or we’d all be trillionaires by the age of 30). You have only to know that for four years, President Donald Trump ignored all intelligence reports and relied totally on his “gut”, which he explained, was never wrong. And how many traders have taken down entire billion-dollar companies and even national economies by relying on their gut reaction? This was my first disagreement with The Extended Mind, but far from the last.
The book itself degenerates into a seemingly endless list of trivial facts and studies on how scientists can trick the brain into absorbing more data. Most of the book is about that, a kind of self-help manual. Worse, Paul overexplains everything, going on endlessly in totally skippable paragraphs where nothing new is transmitted, but the same point is hammered in again. Studies show that making students teach others forces them to understand the topic better themselves. Privacy screens allow workers in open office setups to be more productive. Surveillance cameras inhibit. Figuring things out in the mind is less thorough than also using the eyes and the hands. Personal meetings transmit more data than electronic contact.
I like to think we know all this. That’s my gut reaction.
But then the silliness starts. People who dine together in restaurants or even just in a conference room sign contracts that are 12% more profitable than those who simply negotiate a deal. Profitable for whom? How would anyone know? What was the Control? The people who sign the deals don’t do the actual work to make the profits; the number of factors involved is infinite. Signing a deal that comes out of dinner means not signing a similar deal with no dinner with that same partner, so there’s nothing to compare.
But when Paul gets into groupthink at the end, her arguments go totally off the rails. She cites a scientific paper authored by 5,154 scientists and academics as proof that groupthink can move mountains. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is an unfortunately common trick to win the game of Publish Or Perish. Getting one’s name on a published paper is a neverending goal. Those 5,154 scientists did not all run the same experiment. They did not all devise the same study or discover the same theory. They did not each contribute their own two or three words to the text of the paper. Five thousand people did not hold a three day conference to interpret the data and decide the findings together.
The actual authors allowed the rest to co-author the paper for two very good reasons: there is safety in numbers, and they will want the favor returned when another of them actually researches and writes a paper of their own. It happens all year long and it’s just a game to keep their name in lights (and sometimes their jobs if it is school policy). It has nothing whatever to do with the amazing power of groupthink to overcome the limitations of one brain alone. It was infuriating to read this as if it were evidence of neuroscience in bloom.
Then there’s the problem of what Paul missed. She never goes into the explanation of the prefrontal cortex as rigid censor and director, which is remarkable because she talks endlessly about the effects.
She never shows how alcohol, psychedelics and other mind-altering drugs target the PFC, disconnect it and thereby restore the ability to make infinite connections in the mind. How innumerable studies show that even just alcohol leads to far more creativity and innovation than working alone in an office. Drinking extends the brain far more than cubicle dividers or a walk in the park.
Some of the tips on learning more and better might inspire some readers. But The Extended Mind is not definitive and not a revelation.
David Wineberg
Into this intriguing scenario, Annie Murphy Paul has written a book called The Extended Mind. Without her saying so explicitly, it is about the tricks and tips humans need and continue to refine to overcome the capacity limits set by the PFC. As it goes on, it becomes the model for why readers need a PFC to filter out the irrelevant and the unfocused.
It starts out well enough, with discussion of how using the hands in speaking adds information and ideas that speech alone does not convey. The same goes for writing things down and sketching. Adding perspectives adds to creativity and analysis. Errors and solutions appear in models where the mind alone could not imagine them.
Breaking up a long sit with a walk outdoors does wonders for resetting the PFC and inspiring new thoughts. Paul quotes famous scientists and writers who say things like all their best thinking takes place during a walk. Radiologists notice far more in X-rays when they examine them while moving around, and even on a treadmill. They can also accurately analyze far more of them while running in place. Many times as many, and far more accurately too. Sadly, observation and creativity are otherwise a child’s domain.
Also sadly, only 26% of children today play outdoors, missing out on the golden years of thinking and observing without being restricted by the PFC. Their parents are too busy, or they fear kidnappers, or just plain old injury. Far better to keep the kids indoors and have them watch television or computers. It goes against half a million years of evolution.
The high point of the book, at least for me, came very early on, where Paul writes about dementia and Alzheimer’s victims. She says the endless so-called mind exercises, graphic novels, word games and photo albums are pointless; they do nothing to stimulate the brain back to a healthy state. It simply continues to deteriorate. What they (and everyone) needs is real physical exercise. That is what causes the brain to stay functional or even rejuvenate. The walk outdoors is far more than a change of pace; it is the solution. A workout in the morning leaves people energized, awake and with more capacity to think things through. Exercising after work is not unhealthy, but a waste of the good and the potential it can deliver if done earlier.
She goes on about how students need to move around to absorb lessons. The whole institution of sitting quietly all day, facing the front and not fidgeting is completely wrong. It is the most inefficient way to educate. And it shows. In study after study. Recess does more for the mind that all the classes that precede it every day.
The other extreme is the noise. Studying while wearing earbuds and with the tv on simply does not work. The brain is not capable of separately absorbing those three streams of data in parallel. Worse, it is highly attuned to the human voice. People talking on tv, and singers singing their lyrics all detract from whatever the reader is meant to be absorbing, which rates a much lower priority in the brain than speech does. It is being called the Attention Draining Effect and it results in far less progress than would be otherwise achieved.
There is also an early chapter on how the brain itself tries to circumvent the PFC, pushing signals out elsewhere. Paul focuses on professional stock traders, who use their gut instinct to make split second buy and sell decisions. The stomach speaks to the mind with cramps. The hands speak with sweat. Heeding these signals, she says, can extend the mind beyond just the brain, which is not only overloaded but also restricted by the PFC. (It also leads to the discovery there are two kinds of people in the world: those who hear their every heartbeat, and those who don’t.) She implies that paying attention to these sorts of communications is a path to success, when that is so obviously untrue (or we’d all be trillionaires by the age of 30). You have only to know that for four years, President Donald Trump ignored all intelligence reports and relied totally on his “gut”, which he explained, was never wrong. And how many traders have taken down entire billion-dollar companies and even national economies by relying on their gut reaction? This was my first disagreement with The Extended Mind, but far from the last.
The book itself degenerates into a seemingly endless list of trivial facts and studies on how scientists can trick the brain into absorbing more data. Most of the book is about that, a kind of self-help manual. Worse, Paul overexplains everything, going on endlessly in totally skippable paragraphs where nothing new is transmitted, but the same point is hammered in again. Studies show that making students teach others forces them to understand the topic better themselves. Privacy screens allow workers in open office setups to be more productive. Surveillance cameras inhibit. Figuring things out in the mind is less thorough than also using the eyes and the hands. Personal meetings transmit more data than electronic contact.
I like to think we know all this. That’s my gut reaction.
But then the silliness starts. People who dine together in restaurants or even just in a conference room sign contracts that are 12% more profitable than those who simply negotiate a deal. Profitable for whom? How would anyone know? What was the Control? The people who sign the deals don’t do the actual work to make the profits; the number of factors involved is infinite. Signing a deal that comes out of dinner means not signing a similar deal with no dinner with that same partner, so there’s nothing to compare.
But when Paul gets into groupthink at the end, her arguments go totally off the rails. She cites a scientific paper authored by 5,154 scientists and academics as proof that groupthink can move mountains. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is an unfortunately common trick to win the game of Publish Or Perish. Getting one’s name on a published paper is a neverending goal. Those 5,154 scientists did not all run the same experiment. They did not all devise the same study or discover the same theory. They did not each contribute their own two or three words to the text of the paper. Five thousand people did not hold a three day conference to interpret the data and decide the findings together.
The actual authors allowed the rest to co-author the paper for two very good reasons: there is safety in numbers, and they will want the favor returned when another of them actually researches and writes a paper of their own. It happens all year long and it’s just a game to keep their name in lights (and sometimes their jobs if it is school policy). It has nothing whatever to do with the amazing power of groupthink to overcome the limitations of one brain alone. It was infuriating to read this as if it were evidence of neuroscience in bloom.
Then there’s the problem of what Paul missed. She never goes into the explanation of the prefrontal cortex as rigid censor and director, which is remarkable because she talks endlessly about the effects.
She never shows how alcohol, psychedelics and other mind-altering drugs target the PFC, disconnect it and thereby restore the ability to make infinite connections in the mind. How innumerable studies show that even just alcohol leads to far more creativity and innovation than working alone in an office. Drinking extends the brain far more than cubicle dividers or a walk in the park.
Some of the tips on learning more and better might inspire some readers. But The Extended Mind is not definitive and not a revelation.
David Wineberg
July 8, 2022
The Extended Mind is an exploration of the idea of extended mind proposed by Andy Clark, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at the University of Edinburgh. The author quotes: “where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” According to this idea, we are not evolved to do thinking just inside our individual brain. The book has 9 chapters and can be divided into three parts.
Part One – thinking with our bodies is what I find fascinating. Chapter 1, thinking with our sensations, is the importance of intuition and how to sharpen it. It discusses the usefulness of introspection, and how mindfulness meditation (especially body scan) can help you to enhance your intuition. The author also talks about why relabelling your anxiety/nervousness as excitement is a useful way of dealing with such anxieties.
Chapter 2 is thinking with movements. It turns out staying still while thinking/talking is a bad idea, especially for ADHD patients. Chapter 3 is thinking with gestures. Gesturing is a normal part of thinking. Girls are taught to regulate their body and hand movement more at a young age. A study of young kids shows the gender discrepancy in the results of certain games is associated with girls gesturing less.
Part Two is thinking with our surroundings. Chapter 4, thinking with natural spaces, is a no-brainer to me. Nature makes me happy. I have known for a long time that I can think better when my eyes can see trees and flowers. After chapter 4, my interests started to wane. Part Three, thinking with our relationships, has nothing new to me.
The writing is bland, even by the standards of non-fiction.
Part One – thinking with our bodies is what I find fascinating. Chapter 1, thinking with our sensations, is the importance of intuition and how to sharpen it. It discusses the usefulness of introspection, and how mindfulness meditation (especially body scan) can help you to enhance your intuition. The author also talks about why relabelling your anxiety/nervousness as excitement is a useful way of dealing with such anxieties.
Chapter 2 is thinking with movements. It turns out staying still while thinking/talking is a bad idea, especially for ADHD patients. Chapter 3 is thinking with gestures. Gesturing is a normal part of thinking. Girls are taught to regulate their body and hand movement more at a young age. A study of young kids shows the gender discrepancy in the results of certain games is associated with girls gesturing less.
Part Two is thinking with our surroundings. Chapter 4, thinking with natural spaces, is a no-brainer to me. Nature makes me happy. I have known for a long time that I can think better when my eyes can see trees and flowers. After chapter 4, my interests started to wane. Part Three, thinking with our relationships, has nothing new to me.
The writing is bland, even by the standards of non-fiction.
September 29, 2021
There’s good material here, but I didn’t care for the writing; I found it awkward and even misleading at times. Her point is that the mind relies on the local environment, tools, social connections, etc — things outside of the brain. Fine. But in the first section, where she’s discussing what most people would call gut instinct, she rightly says that it’s wise to pay attention to it - and then writes as if people get “the chills” or whatever purely from their body. But of course, you get bodily reactions because of the brain itself (maybe a part disconnected from your self-awareness, but still…). So really, paying attention to your gut reactions isn’t a matter of a brain “listening” to the body, as the author writes, but is more in truth a part of the brain listening to another part of the brain, via paying attention to bodily reactions. A small thing, but acting as if the body “is aware” of things like a threatening sight is absurd, and she goes upon that track for quite a while. Who knows, maybe there’s an optic nerve that goes straight to sweat glands, but I’m doubting it. Anyway, there is a lot of interesting stuff in the book, but in my opinion the writing is a little more “fast and loose” than I expect from good science writing.
December 29, 2020
This book is surprisingly interesting and captivating! It’s broken down into three parts. The parts are: Thinking with our bodies; thinking with our surroundings; and thinking with our relationships. Each part is further divided into interesting and relatable subjects. The Extended Mind offers unique perspectives, well-rounded research, and reliable data. But more than that, the author offers surprising and useful educative tidbits that lead to aha moments! I found myself engrossed in the book and before I knew it had finished a third of the book in just one sitting. This book is equal parts enlightening, thought-provoking and inspirational.
June 11, 2021
Brilliant! Check out my interview releasing soon with Annie - just search Create Out Loud wherever you listen to your podcasts. She's amazing and this book is gold!
September 8, 2021
This is book does a good job of pulling together many different techniques you can use offload your brain, so to speak. I’ve worked with teams of professionals and students doing innovation, problem-solving, and research most of my career. Many of these techniques are things I’ve used or learned through practice, so it was good to see some research that backs up these methods. A lot of these are covered in the active-learning pedagogy. And the discussion of teams was really nothing new. But overall I'd recommend it.
I remember when I had an office, I always kept little fidgets or toys on my table. When I talked to people in my office it was always interesting to see who played with them and who completely ignored them. To me it was a good test to me of their creative thinking. This books explains why that is true.
She concludes with a set of 9 principles in groups of three. She calls this nested set of principles a curriculum of the extended mind.The principles are below. I'll follow up with shorter version. This book does suffer from stilted writing sometimes.
Excerpts from the book:
"The first set of principles lays out some habits of mind we would do well to adopt, starting with this one: whenever possible we should offload information, externalize it, move it out of our heads and into the world.
.. The second principle: whenever possible we should endeavor to transform information into an artifact, to make data into something real -- and then proceed to interact with it, labeling it, mapping it, feeling it, tweaking it, showing it to others.
..The third principle: whenever possible, we should seek to productively alter our own state when engaging in mental labor.
The second set of principles offers a higher level view of how mental extension works, in accordance with an understanding of what the brain evolved to do. The fourth principle: whenever possible we should take measures to re-embody the information we think about.
The fifth principle emphasizes another human strength: whenever possible, we should take measures to re-spatialize the information we think about.
The six principle rounds out the roster of our innate aptitudes: whenever possible we should take measures to re-socialize information we think about.
The final set of principles of mental extension steps back for a still wider view, taking up a rather profound question: what kind of creatures are we? The seventh principle: whenever possible we should manage our thinking by generating cognitive loops.
The eight principle: whenever possible we should manage our thinking by creating cognitively congenial situations.
The final principle doubles back on itself with a self-referential observation. What kind of creatures are we? The kind who extend eagerly and energetically when given the chance. The ninth principle: whenever possible, we should manage our thinking by embedding extensions in our everyday environments. "
Fred’s take on the 9:
Write it down
Make a prototype, even just a drawing or framework/canvas.
Take a walk and get some sun.
Act it out.
Map/draw it out.
Talk about it and show it to other people.
Do it again, iterate it.
Explain it in front of your peers.
Create your “innovation” place (office, classroom, lab, etc)
I remember when I had an office, I always kept little fidgets or toys on my table. When I talked to people in my office it was always interesting to see who played with them and who completely ignored them. To me it was a good test to me of their creative thinking. This books explains why that is true.
She concludes with a set of 9 principles in groups of three. She calls this nested set of principles a curriculum of the extended mind.The principles are below. I'll follow up with shorter version. This book does suffer from stilted writing sometimes.
Excerpts from the book:
"The first set of principles lays out some habits of mind we would do well to adopt, starting with this one: whenever possible we should offload information, externalize it, move it out of our heads and into the world.
.. The second principle: whenever possible we should endeavor to transform information into an artifact, to make data into something real -- and then proceed to interact with it, labeling it, mapping it, feeling it, tweaking it, showing it to others.
..The third principle: whenever possible, we should seek to productively alter our own state when engaging in mental labor.
The second set of principles offers a higher level view of how mental extension works, in accordance with an understanding of what the brain evolved to do. The fourth principle: whenever possible we should take measures to re-embody the information we think about.
The fifth principle emphasizes another human strength: whenever possible, we should take measures to re-spatialize the information we think about.
The six principle rounds out the roster of our innate aptitudes: whenever possible we should take measures to re-socialize information we think about.
The final set of principles of mental extension steps back for a still wider view, taking up a rather profound question: what kind of creatures are we? The seventh principle: whenever possible we should manage our thinking by generating cognitive loops.
The eight principle: whenever possible we should manage our thinking by creating cognitively congenial situations.
The final principle doubles back on itself with a self-referential observation. What kind of creatures are we? The kind who extend eagerly and energetically when given the chance. The ninth principle: whenever possible, we should manage our thinking by embedding extensions in our everyday environments. "
Fred’s take on the 9:
Write it down
Make a prototype, even just a drawing or framework/canvas.
Take a walk and get some sun.
Act it out.
Map/draw it out.
Talk about it and show it to other people.
Do it again, iterate it.
Explain it in front of your peers.
Create your “innovation” place (office, classroom, lab, etc)
August 23, 2022
Not rubbish, but not mind-blowing. For example, having a big computer screen is better than having a small one. Wow! Writing down ideas can be useful. Wow! But if you haven't bothered implementing such things before because you didn't think it was worth the trouble, then this sort of tip can be very useful. So, if this book had just been formatted as a menu of potentially useful life hacks, I'd probably have given it 5*. But it has much bigger ambitions.
What's troubling is the lack of solid evidence follow-through for the bold claims made at the beginning of the book about how this is a general theme that will improve many aspects of your life. The first story is about stock traders who can sense their own heart rates and how they do better making money than the brokers who can't do this. Maybe that's generally true, maybe not. Assuming it is, what does it prove? Maybe the traders who are experienced with a track record of success are more relaxed and have confidence that comes from competence, and that leads to a more regular/predictable heart rate. The critical test would be to take lousy traders with bad pulse awareness, train them to have objectively better pulse awareness, and then show that they make more money than a control group given training in trading discipline. But we don't get that kind of info in the book.
There's also a bizarre insistence on talking about the Brain as something distinct from the Body, which seems to confuse more than clarify with respect to the science.
What's troubling is the lack of solid evidence follow-through for the bold claims made at the beginning of the book about how this is a general theme that will improve many aspects of your life. The first story is about stock traders who can sense their own heart rates and how they do better making money than the brokers who can't do this. Maybe that's generally true, maybe not. Assuming it is, what does it prove? Maybe the traders who are experienced with a track record of success are more relaxed and have confidence that comes from competence, and that leads to a more regular/predictable heart rate. The critical test would be to take lousy traders with bad pulse awareness, train them to have objectively better pulse awareness, and then show that they make more money than a control group given training in trading discipline. But we don't get that kind of info in the book.
There's also a bizarre insistence on talking about the Brain as something distinct from the Body, which seems to confuse more than clarify with respect to the science.
Read
May 7, 2022A fascinating look at how we use our bodies, nature, and the people around us to think. I was especially taken by how powerful using gestures can be, as someone who can be a hand talker and was always taught not to do that. Turns out...that's not only useful for remembering something but it's also extremely helpful for teaching others.
July 11, 2021
The thesis of this book is that the human mind extends beyond the brain to encompass movement, words, the space around us and relationships with other people, all of which can enhance our ability to think, be productive and achieve good results. When you consider this hypothesis, it seems intuitively obvious that it is correct; however, the way it plays out is often different from our expectations. Sometimes things that are commonly considered distractions, such as fiddling around with objects, not sitting still and taking breaks, can significantly enhance learning. Sometimes meetings and group efforts that seem to be complete wastes of time can produce better results than individual efforts. But to me the fascinating thing is that there are other situations that would seem to play into this theory that turn out to have the opposite effect; for example, open plan office spaces seem to create bad distractions not good ones, so that in open plan configurations productivity suffers. It goes to show that you can't just assume that setting up situations that increase human interactions will always have positive effects.
Even if there was nothing else in this book, I learned two things that made it a worthwhile read: (i) there is a theory called the "cooperative eye hypothesis" which says that humans, unlike most animals, evolved visible whites in their eyes so that we can better track each other's eye movement as a way to learn and enhance cooperation, and (ii) while it is no surprise that having meals together as a group can enhance group productivity or that family style meals are better in this way than individually served restaurant meals, I would not have guessed that the effect is enhanced when the food is spicy.
Even if there was nothing else in this book, I learned two things that made it a worthwhile read: (i) there is a theory called the "cooperative eye hypothesis" which says that humans, unlike most animals, evolved visible whites in their eyes so that we can better track each other's eye movement as a way to learn and enhance cooperation, and (ii) while it is no surprise that having meals together as a group can enhance group productivity or that family style meals are better in this way than individually served restaurant meals, I would not have guessed that the effect is enhanced when the food is spicy.
April 14, 2022
Foarte faină!
December 29, 2021
Annoyingly obvious points patronizingly presented.
I was looking forward to reading this book because Paul seemed to be challenging the dominant approach to the Brain as an isolated computer separated from the rest of our Being. I thought she might try to explain the interactions of various elements of the body’s nervous system in communicating with parts of the brain to guide our thoughts and actions in navigating our journey through Reality.
Instead all we got was a how-to, self-help book filled with cute, often interesting, stories of how folks in various scenarios came to realize that they could use their heads more efficiently if they remembered that their Brains were attached to a Human Being, who often found itself in a Natural Physical World along with other Human Beings.
Like so much of the Self-Help Culture, personified by TED Talkers and TikTok Influencers, the Author has been so moved by the Applause and Likes she has received, that she has produced a Book of “Principles” that the Old Folks would have called Common Sense.
Because some of her lessons contained nice stories, I’m giving it Three Stars, but I would warn any potential reader interested in a Theory of Mind to think twice before Extending a hand to pick it up.
I was looking forward to reading this book because Paul seemed to be challenging the dominant approach to the Brain as an isolated computer separated from the rest of our Being. I thought she might try to explain the interactions of various elements of the body’s nervous system in communicating with parts of the brain to guide our thoughts and actions in navigating our journey through Reality.
Instead all we got was a how-to, self-help book filled with cute, often interesting, stories of how folks in various scenarios came to realize that they could use their heads more efficiently if they remembered that their Brains were attached to a Human Being, who often found itself in a Natural Physical World along with other Human Beings.
Like so much of the Self-Help Culture, personified by TED Talkers and TikTok Influencers, the Author has been so moved by the Applause and Likes she has received, that she has produced a Book of “Principles” that the Old Folks would have called Common Sense.
Because some of her lessons contained nice stories, I’m giving it Three Stars, but I would warn any potential reader interested in a Theory of Mind to think twice before Extending a hand to pick it up.
June 11, 2021
Written for the laypeople rather than neuroscientists, this book goes through all the current neuroscience on how we use our brain, and instead of focusing solely on the brain, looks at how our other forms of knowledge - from our body, from our environment, from other people - come into play.
For me, this was a book that confirmed some of what I already do (but didn't realise the importance of); and gave me other methods of thinking outside the brain.
It's a book to take your time with, to spend time reading, thinking and practicing, rather than reading straight through. And I think it's a book you will come back to again and again, for further or deeper insights,.
Highly recommended.
For me, this was a book that confirmed some of what I already do (but didn't realise the importance of); and gave me other methods of thinking outside the brain.
It's a book to take your time with, to spend time reading, thinking and practicing, rather than reading straight through. And I think it's a book you will come back to again and again, for further or deeper insights,.
Highly recommended.
Read
September 17, 2021Whether you’re an extended mind convert or not, if you take away only one thing, let it be this: Your mind is not some lone ranger inside your skull, disconnected from the rest of the world. It extends far beyond your brain, through your body, through the environment and the objects around you and through other people.
From high frequency traders picking up on subtle bodily cues to guide their decisions; to famous artists and scientists using their environments to get creative and solve problems; to physics students developing truly independent and novel ways of thinking through interacting with other students: The human mind does its best work when it extends out of the brain and into the world.
---
Our bodies store subconscious knowledge, and by tuning into our sensations, we can tap into this intelligence.
Imagine a Wall Street trading floor full of people, swarming around like bees in a field of monitors, frantically shouting sales orders into multiple telephones. It’s loud and intense. It’s a challenging environment for a human brain.
In the middle of this mayhem is a man named John Coates. He’s been a trader for many years, and during this time he’s noticed something: the traders raking in the most cash don’t seem to be the analysis hounds or the data crunchers. The best traders aren’t the ones with the best educations or even the best ideas. The most successful traders seem to be the ones who know how, in key moments, to listen to their gut.
Coates, who came to Wall Street with a PhD in mathematics from Cambridge – and who definitely knows a thing or two about data crunching and complex data analysis – has noticed the same thing with his own trades. Often, what on paper seems like a perfect trade – well-reasoned, logically solid and perfectly executed – fails miserably. It doesn't make any sense. At other times – and this is even stranger – he will have a sudden feeling, a momentary glitch in his consciousness, showing him – in his own somewhat mystical words – “another path into the future.” When he follows this gut feeling, sometimes even against his better judgement, he’s often rewarded. It’s as if his body is somehow one step ahead of him, and all he needs to do is to listen.
Eventually, Coates became so fascinated by this phenomenon that he decided to leave Wall Street and return to Cambridge to become a physiologist and neuroscientist. Since then, he’s done research that suggests that his observation on the Wall Street trading floor was correct – that being in tune with your own body can make you smarter.
Here’s the science in a nutshell: Our senses are always active and they take in an ocean of data that never enters our consciousness. But that doesn’t mean this data is lost. It’s not. It’s processed subconsciously by our brain. And when our subconscious mind notices patterns in this data, our body alerts us through sensations generated in our organs, bones, and muscles. If we’re attuned to these signals, recognizing such a pattern around us might come with a slight speeding of the heart, or a twitch in the stomach.
This physical, subconscious process is called embodied cognition, and our receptivity to it is called interoception.
In 2016, Coates found that traders’ success closely correlated with their ability to accurately detect the beats of their own hearts. In other words, traders with greater sensitivity to signals coming from their own bodies made more money than their less sensitive colleagues. On the trading floor, where opportunities vanish in a split second, access to this embodied cognition gave them an edge.
Interoception isn’t just valuable when trading stocks though. It can give you an edge in a lot of areas. And here’s the good news: it’s a skill that you can easily practice and become better at. One simple and surprisingly effective way to do so is through an exercise called a mindfulness body scan.
The idea is simple. You sit down somewhere quiet, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Then you slowly move your awareness over your body, focusing on one body part at a time, all the way from your toes to the top of your head, noticing any sensations or feelings along the way. At the end, as a little bonus, you’ll find a guided mindfulness body scan, in case you’d like to try it out.
---
Gesture is our first language, and we can use it to explore, form and convey complex notions.
Christian Heath, a communications researcher, collects tapes of people interacting. He’s filmed and studied hundreds of interactions, and he’s come to pay special attention to a particular body part: the hands.
In one interaction, a doctor has prescribed a patient an anti-inflammatory drug. To explain the medication, he gestures downward three times. The patient nods, signaling that she understands even before the word “inflammation” has passed the doctor’s lips.
The patient in turn wants to tell the doctor that she’s overwhelmed with bills and she begins moving both hands in circles, but before she can say that the bills have her going “round and round” the doctor begins nodding in sympathy.
Heath and others doing similar research have come to a simple and powerful conclusion: in thought and communication, hands precede words.
This concept, known as gestural foreshadowing, makes a lot of sense. After all, long before you learned to speak, you conveyed your needs and feelings through gestures. If you have kids, you’ll know all about this. According to linguists, your distant ancestors’ first language was likely a language of the hands.
So, here’s some more practical advice on how to tap into your extended mind. Next time you’re speaking to someone, let yourself really gesture. Don’t hold back. As your hands fly about, you’ll likely notice that they will either mime the meaning you seek to express, or they’ll act as markers of emphasis, pointing, underlining, highlighting.
You’ll also notice that your gestures often arrive at an idea before your conscious mind has found the right word for it. This is gestural foreshadowing in action.
Which brings us to the most interesting part, which is this: by scouting ahead within your thoughts, your hands actually unburden your brain of some of its cognitive work, allowing your thoughts to move along even faster. In other words, through gesturing, you can speed up your thinking.
Of course, there are other benefits to using gestures too. They help make the abstract physical and more comprehensible to your audience, who, like you, also speak hands and are ready to receive your message in both words and gestures.
Embodied cognition. This is the subconscious ability of your brain to pick up patterns in the information coming from your senses, interpret that information and then generate signals in your body that you might experience as physical sensations.
Next, interoception. This is quite simply the activity of listening to these signals. It’s that gut feeling that gives some traders an edge on the trading floor.
Then there’s this nifty concept: you can give your cognition a boost by moving your body. Remember those radiologists on the treadmills who outperformed their seated colleagues? Exactly.
And last, we learned about gestural foreshadowing, which is just another way of saying that when we communicate with others, our hands have often already delivered the message before the words exit our mouth. The important point is that gestures not only improve communication; they can even ease your cognitive load and make you think faster.
OK, that was it for the mind and the body. Now it’s time to follow the extended mind one step further and out into the world. We’ll start in 1940s New York.
---
Natural landscapes have a unique power to refresh and open our minds.
In the early 1940s, Jackson Pollock couldn’t get his abstract paintings into the galleries of New York City. Worse, he struggled with depressive exhaustion and alcohol abuse. In 1945, he and his wife, the artist Lee Krasner, made an important decision. They left Manhattan for a rundown farmhouse on Long Island.
From their new home, Pollock would look out on green fields and marshes, the light falling through the trees. He’d taste the salt air sweeping in from Long Island Sound. Then, he’d retreat into a barn that he’d converted into a studio. There, he tapped into something larger than himself and created paintings unlike any that had ever been seen before, paintings that were at once serene and wild.
The restorative power of nature, and trees in particular, is the kind of common wisdom that’s also backed up by an increasing amount of empirical evidence. A view of trees from a hospital room, for example, has been shown to reduce patients’ need for painkillers. A walk through a wooded park, as opposed to a walk down an urban street, correlates with a decline in negative thoughts among people with depression.
But nature’s effect goes beyond relieving distress. As it turns out, being in nature can also give your cognition a boost. Researchers from the University of Chicago found that study participants who took a stroll through an arboretum scored 20 percent higher on a working memory test than participants who made a circuit through city streets.
So, why is that?
Well, nature’s effect on our cognition may have something to do with its simultaneously busy and soothing visual field. It confronts the eye with a complex interplay of layers and light, and yet that complexity tends to form patterns. Think of fern leaves, ripples in water, or mountains in a range. Shapes within nature repeat, growing or diminishing in scale.
Another study found that exposure to these natural occurring, repeating patterns, also known as fractals, sharpens our ability to navigate and judge distance.
Which brings us back to Pollock and his paintings. Perhaps the breakthrough he experienced after moving to Long Island came down to experiencing the enlivening effect of nature’s patterns. Inspired and liberated by the natural environment around him, he filled his landscape-sized canvases with fractals of splattered paint.
But there’s something else that may have caused this change in Pollock. Gazing out on Long Island Sound, gazing at this vast, wild piece of water, he may have felt a particular emotion – a feeling of awe.
Awe opens the mind. Think of that particular brand of astonishment you feel when looking at, say, a big mountain or a deep canyon. It’s a feeling akin to joy – but it’s tinged with fear. It’s a sensation of insignificance and possibility all mingled up, all mixed together, and this feeling of awe seems to have a mind-opening effect. According to research by Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, feelings of awe correlate with a drop in our dependence on preconceived notions.
But that doesn’t mean that nature is good for all kinds of thought. Sometimes you need a refuge.
---
When struggling with abstract concepts, transform ideas into objects.
The American journalist Robert Caro is in the middle of something big. Over the last four decades, he has completed four volumes of his biography of US President Lyndon Baines Johnson. You know, Lyndon B. Johnson, the guy who signed the Civil Rights Act into law – this guy:
At present, Caro is about 3,500 pages into the biography. His books are full of scrupulously researched detail, and yet it all goes down as smooth as a scotch and soda made with Cutty Sark whiskey – Lyndon Johnson’s favorite drink. Point is, though: Caro’s process involves reams of research and thousands of hours of interviews. And Caro, who is 85 years old, is still hard at work on volume five. So how the heck does he keep track of everything – let alone weave it into a compelling story?
Well, to chart a course through this ocean of material, Caro pins notes to a corkboard that spans an entire wall of his office. He steps back and views it as a whole. He re-pins new trajectories and steps back, repeating the process until the impenetrable wall of data becomes a map. Only when he has a starting point, a path, and a destination, he begins to write.
Caro’s process comes with at least three beneficial strategies of the extended mind.
First, he’s offloading. In other words, he’s transferring important information from his brain into his environment. He’s putting it up on that corkboard, and lightening his brain’s cognitive burden in the process. Second, by being able to step back from the board, he enjoys something called detachment gain. Detachment gain is just a technical term for that insight, that little bit of wisdom that we can sometimes get when we have some distance from our own thoughts. Third, he is taking advantage of interactivity. By turning ideas into physical objects, into notes on a corkboard, he can think not only with his brain, but with his eyes and his hands as well.
By his own account, Caro couldn’t write his epic biographies without a map across his wall. In its raw form, the research he compiles is simply too immense and daunting. Until he has it on the map, it simply overwhelms him.
As we’ve already discussed, the talents of the human mind tend to line up with thinking that once helped us survive. Until very recently – evolutionarily speaking – the ability to manipulate objects and navigate through our surroundings put more food on the table than being able to juggle concepts. In other words, our spatial reasoning trumps our capacity for abstraction.
So, you shouldn’t feel any shame in relying on things to do your best thinking. Caro, after all, is frequently lauded as a genius.
From high frequency traders picking up on subtle bodily cues to guide their decisions; to famous artists and scientists using their environments to get creative and solve problems; to physics students developing truly independent and novel ways of thinking through interacting with other students: The human mind does its best work when it extends out of the brain and into the world.
---
Our bodies store subconscious knowledge, and by tuning into our sensations, we can tap into this intelligence.
Imagine a Wall Street trading floor full of people, swarming around like bees in a field of monitors, frantically shouting sales orders into multiple telephones. It’s loud and intense. It’s a challenging environment for a human brain.
In the middle of this mayhem is a man named John Coates. He’s been a trader for many years, and during this time he’s noticed something: the traders raking in the most cash don’t seem to be the analysis hounds or the data crunchers. The best traders aren’t the ones with the best educations or even the best ideas. The most successful traders seem to be the ones who know how, in key moments, to listen to their gut.
Coates, who came to Wall Street with a PhD in mathematics from Cambridge – and who definitely knows a thing or two about data crunching and complex data analysis – has noticed the same thing with his own trades. Often, what on paper seems like a perfect trade – well-reasoned, logically solid and perfectly executed – fails miserably. It doesn't make any sense. At other times – and this is even stranger – he will have a sudden feeling, a momentary glitch in his consciousness, showing him – in his own somewhat mystical words – “another path into the future.” When he follows this gut feeling, sometimes even against his better judgement, he’s often rewarded. It’s as if his body is somehow one step ahead of him, and all he needs to do is to listen.
Eventually, Coates became so fascinated by this phenomenon that he decided to leave Wall Street and return to Cambridge to become a physiologist and neuroscientist. Since then, he’s done research that suggests that his observation on the Wall Street trading floor was correct – that being in tune with your own body can make you smarter.
Here’s the science in a nutshell: Our senses are always active and they take in an ocean of data that never enters our consciousness. But that doesn’t mean this data is lost. It’s not. It’s processed subconsciously by our brain. And when our subconscious mind notices patterns in this data, our body alerts us through sensations generated in our organs, bones, and muscles. If we’re attuned to these signals, recognizing such a pattern around us might come with a slight speeding of the heart, or a twitch in the stomach.
This physical, subconscious process is called embodied cognition, and our receptivity to it is called interoception.
In 2016, Coates found that traders’ success closely correlated with their ability to accurately detect the beats of their own hearts. In other words, traders with greater sensitivity to signals coming from their own bodies made more money than their less sensitive colleagues. On the trading floor, where opportunities vanish in a split second, access to this embodied cognition gave them an edge.
Interoception isn’t just valuable when trading stocks though. It can give you an edge in a lot of areas. And here’s the good news: it’s a skill that you can easily practice and become better at. One simple and surprisingly effective way to do so is through an exercise called a mindfulness body scan.
The idea is simple. You sit down somewhere quiet, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Then you slowly move your awareness over your body, focusing on one body part at a time, all the way from your toes to the top of your head, noticing any sensations or feelings along the way. At the end, as a little bonus, you’ll find a guided mindfulness body scan, in case you’d like to try it out.
---
Gesture is our first language, and we can use it to explore, form and convey complex notions.
Christian Heath, a communications researcher, collects tapes of people interacting. He’s filmed and studied hundreds of interactions, and he’s come to pay special attention to a particular body part: the hands.
In one interaction, a doctor has prescribed a patient an anti-inflammatory drug. To explain the medication, he gestures downward three times. The patient nods, signaling that she understands even before the word “inflammation” has passed the doctor’s lips.
The patient in turn wants to tell the doctor that she’s overwhelmed with bills and she begins moving both hands in circles, but before she can say that the bills have her going “round and round” the doctor begins nodding in sympathy.
Heath and others doing similar research have come to a simple and powerful conclusion: in thought and communication, hands precede words.
This concept, known as gestural foreshadowing, makes a lot of sense. After all, long before you learned to speak, you conveyed your needs and feelings through gestures. If you have kids, you’ll know all about this. According to linguists, your distant ancestors’ first language was likely a language of the hands.
So, here’s some more practical advice on how to tap into your extended mind. Next time you’re speaking to someone, let yourself really gesture. Don’t hold back. As your hands fly about, you’ll likely notice that they will either mime the meaning you seek to express, or they’ll act as markers of emphasis, pointing, underlining, highlighting.
You’ll also notice that your gestures often arrive at an idea before your conscious mind has found the right word for it. This is gestural foreshadowing in action.
Which brings us to the most interesting part, which is this: by scouting ahead within your thoughts, your hands actually unburden your brain of some of its cognitive work, allowing your thoughts to move along even faster. In other words, through gesturing, you can speed up your thinking.
Of course, there are other benefits to using gestures too. They help make the abstract physical and more comprehensible to your audience, who, like you, also speak hands and are ready to receive your message in both words and gestures.
Embodied cognition. This is the subconscious ability of your brain to pick up patterns in the information coming from your senses, interpret that information and then generate signals in your body that you might experience as physical sensations.
Next, interoception. This is quite simply the activity of listening to these signals. It’s that gut feeling that gives some traders an edge on the trading floor.
Then there’s this nifty concept: you can give your cognition a boost by moving your body. Remember those radiologists on the treadmills who outperformed their seated colleagues? Exactly.
And last, we learned about gestural foreshadowing, which is just another way of saying that when we communicate with others, our hands have often already delivered the message before the words exit our mouth. The important point is that gestures not only improve communication; they can even ease your cognitive load and make you think faster.
OK, that was it for the mind and the body. Now it’s time to follow the extended mind one step further and out into the world. We’ll start in 1940s New York.
---
Natural landscapes have a unique power to refresh and open our minds.
In the early 1940s, Jackson Pollock couldn’t get his abstract paintings into the galleries of New York City. Worse, he struggled with depressive exhaustion and alcohol abuse. In 1945, he and his wife, the artist Lee Krasner, made an important decision. They left Manhattan for a rundown farmhouse on Long Island.
From their new home, Pollock would look out on green fields and marshes, the light falling through the trees. He’d taste the salt air sweeping in from Long Island Sound. Then, he’d retreat into a barn that he’d converted into a studio. There, he tapped into something larger than himself and created paintings unlike any that had ever been seen before, paintings that were at once serene and wild.
The restorative power of nature, and trees in particular, is the kind of common wisdom that’s also backed up by an increasing amount of empirical evidence. A view of trees from a hospital room, for example, has been shown to reduce patients’ need for painkillers. A walk through a wooded park, as opposed to a walk down an urban street, correlates with a decline in negative thoughts among people with depression.
But nature’s effect goes beyond relieving distress. As it turns out, being in nature can also give your cognition a boost. Researchers from the University of Chicago found that study participants who took a stroll through an arboretum scored 20 percent higher on a working memory test than participants who made a circuit through city streets.
So, why is that?
Well, nature’s effect on our cognition may have something to do with its simultaneously busy and soothing visual field. It confronts the eye with a complex interplay of layers and light, and yet that complexity tends to form patterns. Think of fern leaves, ripples in water, or mountains in a range. Shapes within nature repeat, growing or diminishing in scale.
Another study found that exposure to these natural occurring, repeating patterns, also known as fractals, sharpens our ability to navigate and judge distance.
Which brings us back to Pollock and his paintings. Perhaps the breakthrough he experienced after moving to Long Island came down to experiencing the enlivening effect of nature’s patterns. Inspired and liberated by the natural environment around him, he filled his landscape-sized canvases with fractals of splattered paint.
But there’s something else that may have caused this change in Pollock. Gazing out on Long Island Sound, gazing at this vast, wild piece of water, he may have felt a particular emotion – a feeling of awe.
Awe opens the mind. Think of that particular brand of astonishment you feel when looking at, say, a big mountain or a deep canyon. It’s a feeling akin to joy – but it’s tinged with fear. It’s a sensation of insignificance and possibility all mingled up, all mixed together, and this feeling of awe seems to have a mind-opening effect. According to research by Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, feelings of awe correlate with a drop in our dependence on preconceived notions.
But that doesn’t mean that nature is good for all kinds of thought. Sometimes you need a refuge.
---
When struggling with abstract concepts, transform ideas into objects.
The American journalist Robert Caro is in the middle of something big. Over the last four decades, he has completed four volumes of his biography of US President Lyndon Baines Johnson. You know, Lyndon B. Johnson, the guy who signed the Civil Rights Act into law – this guy:
At present, Caro is about 3,500 pages into the biography. His books are full of scrupulously researched detail, and yet it all goes down as smooth as a scotch and soda made with Cutty Sark whiskey – Lyndon Johnson’s favorite drink. Point is, though: Caro’s process involves reams of research and thousands of hours of interviews. And Caro, who is 85 years old, is still hard at work on volume five. So how the heck does he keep track of everything – let alone weave it into a compelling story?
Well, to chart a course through this ocean of material, Caro pins notes to a corkboard that spans an entire wall of his office. He steps back and views it as a whole. He re-pins new trajectories and steps back, repeating the process until the impenetrable wall of data becomes a map. Only when he has a starting point, a path, and a destination, he begins to write.
Caro’s process comes with at least three beneficial strategies of the extended mind.
First, he’s offloading. In other words, he’s transferring important information from his brain into his environment. He’s putting it up on that corkboard, and lightening his brain’s cognitive burden in the process. Second, by being able to step back from the board, he enjoys something called detachment gain. Detachment gain is just a technical term for that insight, that little bit of wisdom that we can sometimes get when we have some distance from our own thoughts. Third, he is taking advantage of interactivity. By turning ideas into physical objects, into notes on a corkboard, he can think not only with his brain, but with his eyes and his hands as well.
By his own account, Caro couldn’t write his epic biographies without a map across his wall. In its raw form, the research he compiles is simply too immense and daunting. Until he has it on the map, it simply overwhelms him.
As we’ve already discussed, the talents of the human mind tend to line up with thinking that once helped us survive. Until very recently – evolutionarily speaking – the ability to manipulate objects and navigate through our surroundings put more food on the table than being able to juggle concepts. In other words, our spatial reasoning trumps our capacity for abstraction.
So, you shouldn’t feel any shame in relying on things to do your best thinking. Caro, after all, is frequently lauded as a genius.
May 10, 2022
There is a commonly held belief that humans only use about 10% of their brains. There is no scientific basis to this belief and most studies show that most of our brain is in use one way or another whether we are waking or sleeping. The problem is that as children we are constantly learning and expanding the neuron connections in our brain, but as adults we fall into predictable patterns and the neurons become hard-wired, making learning and growth much, much harder. And for those unlucky enough to have difficult childhoods, that hard-wiring can be a heavy burden that affects lifelong learning.
This book, The Extended Mind, shows that many of us use less than 1% of our brain's potential, given that we now have the ability to expand its reach beyond the skull and body. Annie Murphy Paul is a science writer and author of three books. Her research in this book covers “extra-neural” resources—the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of those around us—can help us focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively.
What? You can use external resources to enrich and empower your brain? Yes, that three pounds of mostly water between our ears has evolved quickly over the last few centuries to expand its powers and reach way beyond the human body. This concept is revolutionary in a time when we still understand so little about how the mind works. The author points to nine major ways we can expand our brain beyond basic cognitive thinking, and they are fascinating.
1- Interoception is the ability to read signals from the body itself to guide conscious decisions. If your heart starts racing in a particular situation, your body is telling you to be careful and watch for danger. This is the knowledge that's buried deep down in our subconscious- gut feelings that tell us things our conscious mind can't process. Sometimes these messages are wrong, but the more in tune we are with our body, the more accurately we can read them. The author recommends mindfulness meditation and a "body scan" to uncover hidden data that's below our conscious comprehension.
2- Movement of our bodies greatly heightens our senses and increases our brain's abilities. Embodied cognition is the way some people learn by doing. Kinesthetic learning works better than visual or auditory learning for many people because as the body moves, it triggers links in the memory that helps the knowledge stick more than if a sedentary person experiences the same information. Novel movements and experiences increase learning even more. There have been numerous studies that show when children are allowed to move about during the day, they learn better than seated quietly at desks. Also, when movement itself is incorporated into a lesson, it becomes much more likely to be retained. Actors use movement to recall their lines in a play or production. This goes against many beliefs that our brains work best when our bodies are still and paying attention.
3- Gestures and body language can be very persuasive to the human brain. Babies depend entirely on gestures to understand their world, and that ability never goes away. Studies have shown that in educational talks and videos that use prolific hand gestures, students recall the information substantially better. Using the hands to express size, shape, or movement helps the brain to create helpful mental images rather than trying to process abstract words. There is a famous rule, the 7-38-55 rule that states that human communication is 55% non-verbal, 38% vocal, and only 7% the actual words that are spoken. Being the logical creatures that we are, we assume that the content itself is the most important, when the way it's delivered matters much more.
4- Natural Spaces have a profound effect on the brain. Everybody who has ever experienced a day in the park, on a lake, or by the beach can attest to the healing and restorative powers of natural spaces. Civilization, data, and constant information flow can be very draining and taxing to the working memory of the brain. Because nature is more predictable, it allows passive attention most of the time, which is less demanding and more restorative. There is a term called biophilic design that looks at how incorporating natural images and items into human architecture and living or work spaces can greatly improve thinking, mood, and general happiness.
5- Built spaces can make a huge difference for the productivity of the brain. The author recommends walls over open floor plans, because shutting out distractions is what protects the brain and its thinking power the most. Noise, clutter, and interruptions are the enemy of deep thought today, and the more a person can control their work and living environment, the better their brain will perform.
In the push towards efficiency, some workplaces have tried to remove individuality and control, thinking that personal distractions like photos of family on the desk are unnecessary. On the contrary, personal items in the workspace increases confidence and gives the person more ownership, raising productivity and job satisfaction. For our brain to work best, it needs to feel safe and at home in its immediate environment.
6- The space of ideas is a way to bring partially formed ideas out into the open and work on them as they evolve. This was my favorite part of the book. Think of a 3-D model of a building- architects wouldn't think of starting a building without a physical model so that they can see the finished product and improve upon it before construction begins. The same goes for creative artists and storyboards, where an entire book or movie can be laid out on a large wall to see how it flows and visualized as it goes through its process. We all have mental map of how we'd like things to turn out, but using the physical space around us to play with our ideas could be the most powerful tool at our disposal. Even just drawing sketches or playing with words or numbers on a piece of paper gives the brain something external to latch onto while it tries to create something new.
7- Expert knowledge uses the brains of others who have already encountered a problem and following their lead to save time and effort. Relying on experts- either online resources or respected human beings, helps our brain to take huge shortcuts towards solutions that could otherwise take years. Of course experts can be wrong, or there might not be much expertise in new or emerging problems, but on balance using the prior works of an expert not only avoids costly mistakes, it acts as a powerful motivating force knowing that someone else faced a similar problem and found a solution.
8- Peers can be critical in the learning process. Many types of learning are social, and can only be found through people teaching each other. One of the best ways to learn something deeply is to teach it to somebody else. Another way to experience deep learning is through stories, which generic textbooks try to avoid. Stories told by a peer who has experiences that we don't can be very powerful. Teens and young people are especially wired to learn from their peers, making it even more important for them to find strong, supportive, and intelligent peer groups.
9- Groups and groupthink offer yet another way to supplement the brain. By specializing and distributing information,members of a group can accomplish much more than they could on their own. Humans are social animals, and our ability to synchronize and collaborate with others multiplies our knowledge base exponentially. Groups can also be very damaging when they stifle individual creativity or demonize those not in the group, but most of our basic institutions- government, business, education, science, and the arts relies on organized groups to build from the past and plan for the future.
This book invites the reader to think differently about the brain and its powers. The temptation in our individualistic society is to see the brain as a static, finite organ, reflective of its owner and his or her character. Those who succeed in life must have good brains, while those who fail have defective ones. But it's much more complicated than that. Our brains are dependent on so much more than the limited inputs and processing capability that each of us has at birth.
We depend on our environment, our peers and leaders, and our general health to be able to fully utilize the full reach of our brain's potential. In addition to the nine factors above, I would add quality education and parenting, mental health, good wi-fi, libraries, access to affordable healthcare, and freedom from fear of crime or poverty as factors that influence our ability to think clearly and creatively. Our lives are an unfathomably complex mixture of inputs from everywhere, and we depend on our brains to make sense of it all.
Tools from this book like controlling your environment, offloading content into notepads and models, and reaching out to others are all ways that we can help our brain make the most sense of this confusing and rapidly changing world. Protect your brain by extending it and sharing its ideas with others.
This book, The Extended Mind, shows that many of us use less than 1% of our brain's potential, given that we now have the ability to expand its reach beyond the skull and body. Annie Murphy Paul is a science writer and author of three books. Her research in this book covers “extra-neural” resources—the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of those around us—can help us focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively.
What? You can use external resources to enrich and empower your brain? Yes, that three pounds of mostly water between our ears has evolved quickly over the last few centuries to expand its powers and reach way beyond the human body. This concept is revolutionary in a time when we still understand so little about how the mind works. The author points to nine major ways we can expand our brain beyond basic cognitive thinking, and they are fascinating.
1- Interoception is the ability to read signals from the body itself to guide conscious decisions. If your heart starts racing in a particular situation, your body is telling you to be careful and watch for danger. This is the knowledge that's buried deep down in our subconscious- gut feelings that tell us things our conscious mind can't process. Sometimes these messages are wrong, but the more in tune we are with our body, the more accurately we can read them. The author recommends mindfulness meditation and a "body scan" to uncover hidden data that's below our conscious comprehension.
2- Movement of our bodies greatly heightens our senses and increases our brain's abilities. Embodied cognition is the way some people learn by doing. Kinesthetic learning works better than visual or auditory learning for many people because as the body moves, it triggers links in the memory that helps the knowledge stick more than if a sedentary person experiences the same information. Novel movements and experiences increase learning even more. There have been numerous studies that show when children are allowed to move about during the day, they learn better than seated quietly at desks. Also, when movement itself is incorporated into a lesson, it becomes much more likely to be retained. Actors use movement to recall their lines in a play or production. This goes against many beliefs that our brains work best when our bodies are still and paying attention.
3- Gestures and body language can be very persuasive to the human brain. Babies depend entirely on gestures to understand their world, and that ability never goes away. Studies have shown that in educational talks and videos that use prolific hand gestures, students recall the information substantially better. Using the hands to express size, shape, or movement helps the brain to create helpful mental images rather than trying to process abstract words. There is a famous rule, the 7-38-55 rule that states that human communication is 55% non-verbal, 38% vocal, and only 7% the actual words that are spoken. Being the logical creatures that we are, we assume that the content itself is the most important, when the way it's delivered matters much more.
4- Natural Spaces have a profound effect on the brain. Everybody who has ever experienced a day in the park, on a lake, or by the beach can attest to the healing and restorative powers of natural spaces. Civilization, data, and constant information flow can be very draining and taxing to the working memory of the brain. Because nature is more predictable, it allows passive attention most of the time, which is less demanding and more restorative. There is a term called biophilic design that looks at how incorporating natural images and items into human architecture and living or work spaces can greatly improve thinking, mood, and general happiness.
5- Built spaces can make a huge difference for the productivity of the brain. The author recommends walls over open floor plans, because shutting out distractions is what protects the brain and its thinking power the most. Noise, clutter, and interruptions are the enemy of deep thought today, and the more a person can control their work and living environment, the better their brain will perform.
In the push towards efficiency, some workplaces have tried to remove individuality and control, thinking that personal distractions like photos of family on the desk are unnecessary. On the contrary, personal items in the workspace increases confidence and gives the person more ownership, raising productivity and job satisfaction. For our brain to work best, it needs to feel safe and at home in its immediate environment.
6- The space of ideas is a way to bring partially formed ideas out into the open and work on them as they evolve. This was my favorite part of the book. Think of a 3-D model of a building- architects wouldn't think of starting a building without a physical model so that they can see the finished product and improve upon it before construction begins. The same goes for creative artists and storyboards, where an entire book or movie can be laid out on a large wall to see how it flows and visualized as it goes through its process. We all have mental map of how we'd like things to turn out, but using the physical space around us to play with our ideas could be the most powerful tool at our disposal. Even just drawing sketches or playing with words or numbers on a piece of paper gives the brain something external to latch onto while it tries to create something new.
7- Expert knowledge uses the brains of others who have already encountered a problem and following their lead to save time and effort. Relying on experts- either online resources or respected human beings, helps our brain to take huge shortcuts towards solutions that could otherwise take years. Of course experts can be wrong, or there might not be much expertise in new or emerging problems, but on balance using the prior works of an expert not only avoids costly mistakes, it acts as a powerful motivating force knowing that someone else faced a similar problem and found a solution.
8- Peers can be critical in the learning process. Many types of learning are social, and can only be found through people teaching each other. One of the best ways to learn something deeply is to teach it to somebody else. Another way to experience deep learning is through stories, which generic textbooks try to avoid. Stories told by a peer who has experiences that we don't can be very powerful. Teens and young people are especially wired to learn from their peers, making it even more important for them to find strong, supportive, and intelligent peer groups.
9- Groups and groupthink offer yet another way to supplement the brain. By specializing and distributing information,members of a group can accomplish much more than they could on their own. Humans are social animals, and our ability to synchronize and collaborate with others multiplies our knowledge base exponentially. Groups can also be very damaging when they stifle individual creativity or demonize those not in the group, but most of our basic institutions- government, business, education, science, and the arts relies on organized groups to build from the past and plan for the future.
This book invites the reader to think differently about the brain and its powers. The temptation in our individualistic society is to see the brain as a static, finite organ, reflective of its owner and his or her character. Those who succeed in life must have good brains, while those who fail have defective ones. But it's much more complicated than that. Our brains are dependent on so much more than the limited inputs and processing capability that each of us has at birth.
We depend on our environment, our peers and leaders, and our general health to be able to fully utilize the full reach of our brain's potential. In addition to the nine factors above, I would add quality education and parenting, mental health, good wi-fi, libraries, access to affordable healthcare, and freedom from fear of crime or poverty as factors that influence our ability to think clearly and creatively. Our lives are an unfathomably complex mixture of inputs from everywhere, and we depend on our brains to make sense of it all.
Tools from this book like controlling your environment, offloading content into notepads and models, and reaching out to others are all ways that we can help our brain make the most sense of this confusing and rapidly changing world. Protect your brain by extending it and sharing its ideas with others.
July 14, 2022
The extended mind is a fascinating idea. Unfortunately this is not the book to explore it. It uses the Gladwell format, complete with heart warming anecdotes at the start of each chapter, and then skims lightly over a collection of topics loosely connected to a theme. The topics themselves are the usual collection of pop science things. The concept of the extended mind is more an organizing principle than a jumping off point for deeper discussion.
November 30, 2021
DNF 10%. Yet another journalist trying to act as a scientist and failing.
September 12, 2021
Tinha imensa vontade de ler “The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain” (2021) uma vez que o assunto me interessa muito, contudo depois de ler o prólogo, seguido de uma introdução que se limitava a repetir o prólogo adicionando-lhe pequenas histórias, senti uma enorme desilusão, percebendo que não era para mim. Annie Murphy Paul pode ser uma boa jornalista de ciência, mas para escrever um livro sobre ciência tem de se oferecer mais do que jornalismo. Paul demonstra grande ligeireza na abordagem de assuntos complexos, mas pior do que isso, pretende por meio das meras leituras que realizou, apresentar toda uma nova teorização sobre o funcionamento da cognição.
Paul diz-nos que: “Thinking outside the brain means skillfully engaging entities external to our heads—the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of the other people around us—drawing them into our own mental processes. By reaching beyond the brain to recruit these “extra-neural” resources, we are able to focus more intently.”
O que não tem qualquer problema. Os problemas começam desde logo quando vem dizer que a ideia é uma originalidade de Andy Clark e David Chalmers, apresentada num paper de 1995, intitulado “The Extended Mind”. O problema é que não é, de todo. McLuhan apresentou estas mesmas ideias em 1964, no livro “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, ideias que foram depois amplamente trabalhadas por muitos autores, nomeadamente Derrick de Kerckhove, entre outros.
Apresentar a historieta de que Andy Clark em 1997 se esqueceu do seu portátil no comboio e que tal teve como efeito " repentino e algo vicioso de dano cerebral (esperançosamente transitório)" que ficou "atordoado, confuso, e visivelmente enfraquecido — como se um ciborgue tivesse sofrido um ligeiro derrame”. É engraçado, mas não diz nada de novo. Não diz nada, que não sintamos quando nos falta a nossa caneta predileta para escrever, ou o nosso bloco de folhas, ou o habitual processador de texto, ou ainda o lugar concreto da biblioteca, ou as prateleiras que todos os dias revisitamos, etc. etc.
Paul evoca um conjunto de grandes campos da psicologia — embodied cognition, situated cognition, distributed cognition — que sendo altamente relevantes, nomeadamente no trabalho que faço de design de interação, contém ainda imensos problemas do ponto de vista científico, dada a enorme variabilidade que comportam. Por isso, escrever um livro dizendo que quer “unificar todas estas teorias intrigantes” é tão audaz como tonto. Não restam dúvidas quando à frente diz: “Psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists are now able to provide a clear picture of how extra-neural inputs shape the way we think”. Não, peço desculpa, mas não é verdade. Existe ainda muito caminho a fazer antes de chegarmos aí.
Como se não bastasse, depois embrulha ainda tudo isto com discussões sobre as metáforas do cérebro computador e do cérebro musculo, evocando teorias e mais teorias, como se tudo junto funcionasse na mais perfeita harmonia. Mas não funciona. As teorias são interessantes, e apresentam caminhos de compreensão do modo de funcionamento do nosso cérebro, mas não se pode pegar naquelas que nos interessam, e começar a montar um puzzle explicativo, apenas porque do ponto de vista lógico-narrativo fazem sentido.
A ciência não é mera conversa reflexiva, nem é mera leitura de artigos ou livros, menos ainda é mera conjetura de seleções de factos e conceitos. A ciência faz-se experimentando. Lançando ideias, teses e hipóteses, e pondo-as à prova, testando e validando. O que Paul nos apresenta é uma narrativa que parece fazer lógica, mas não passa de uma narrativa, não é ciência.
Publicado em: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
Paul diz-nos que: “Thinking outside the brain means skillfully engaging entities external to our heads—the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of the other people around us—drawing them into our own mental processes. By reaching beyond the brain to recruit these “extra-neural” resources, we are able to focus more intently.”
O que não tem qualquer problema. Os problemas começam desde logo quando vem dizer que a ideia é uma originalidade de Andy Clark e David Chalmers, apresentada num paper de 1995, intitulado “The Extended Mind”. O problema é que não é, de todo. McLuhan apresentou estas mesmas ideias em 1964, no livro “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, ideias que foram depois amplamente trabalhadas por muitos autores, nomeadamente Derrick de Kerckhove, entre outros.
Apresentar a historieta de que Andy Clark em 1997 se esqueceu do seu portátil no comboio e que tal teve como efeito " repentino e algo vicioso de dano cerebral (esperançosamente transitório)" que ficou "atordoado, confuso, e visivelmente enfraquecido — como se um ciborgue tivesse sofrido um ligeiro derrame”. É engraçado, mas não diz nada de novo. Não diz nada, que não sintamos quando nos falta a nossa caneta predileta para escrever, ou o nosso bloco de folhas, ou o habitual processador de texto, ou ainda o lugar concreto da biblioteca, ou as prateleiras que todos os dias revisitamos, etc. etc.
Paul evoca um conjunto de grandes campos da psicologia — embodied cognition, situated cognition, distributed cognition — que sendo altamente relevantes, nomeadamente no trabalho que faço de design de interação, contém ainda imensos problemas do ponto de vista científico, dada a enorme variabilidade que comportam. Por isso, escrever um livro dizendo que quer “unificar todas estas teorias intrigantes” é tão audaz como tonto. Não restam dúvidas quando à frente diz: “Psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists are now able to provide a clear picture of how extra-neural inputs shape the way we think”. Não, peço desculpa, mas não é verdade. Existe ainda muito caminho a fazer antes de chegarmos aí.
Como se não bastasse, depois embrulha ainda tudo isto com discussões sobre as metáforas do cérebro computador e do cérebro musculo, evocando teorias e mais teorias, como se tudo junto funcionasse na mais perfeita harmonia. Mas não funciona. As teorias são interessantes, e apresentam caminhos de compreensão do modo de funcionamento do nosso cérebro, mas não se pode pegar naquelas que nos interessam, e começar a montar um puzzle explicativo, apenas porque do ponto de vista lógico-narrativo fazem sentido.
A ciência não é mera conversa reflexiva, nem é mera leitura de artigos ou livros, menos ainda é mera conjetura de seleções de factos e conceitos. A ciência faz-se experimentando. Lançando ideias, teses e hipóteses, e pondo-as à prova, testando e validando. O que Paul nos apresenta é uma narrativa que parece fazer lógica, mas não passa de uma narrativa, não é ciência.
Publicado em: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
January 14, 2023
My high expectations for this book were not realized. There were two main problems:
1. Paul makes many unsubstantiated leaps. For example, the book is about thinking but when we get to her argument that being in nature helps us think better, her actual argument is: Being in nature makes us feel less stressed. And when we’re less stressed we do better thinking. Um, yes. But that doesn’t mean that nature helps us think better. These disconnections happen over and over throughout the book.
2. Paul has a ‘gee whiz’ attitude in her writing. She writes as if no school, no business has ever conceived of some of the things she urges. But this is patently untrue. It’s also untrue that many of the ideas she discusses originated with people in the last couple of decades. I was personally involved in socially distributed learning in the early 80s and our work was based on Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development which she doesn’t seem to know exists, although it was the foundational precursor of all cognitive apprenticeship work since that time.
The book is a 3 because it addresses all of the various ways thought is influenced and changed beyond the boundaries of the individual brain. For scholarship and accuracy, it’s 2.5.
1. Paul makes many unsubstantiated leaps. For example, the book is about thinking but when we get to her argument that being in nature helps us think better, her actual argument is: Being in nature makes us feel less stressed. And when we’re less stressed we do better thinking. Um, yes. But that doesn’t mean that nature helps us think better. These disconnections happen over and over throughout the book.
2. Paul has a ‘gee whiz’ attitude in her writing. She writes as if no school, no business has ever conceived of some of the things she urges. But this is patently untrue. It’s also untrue that many of the ideas she discusses originated with people in the last couple of decades. I was personally involved in socially distributed learning in the early 80s and our work was based on Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development which she doesn’t seem to know exists, although it was the foundational precursor of all cognitive apprenticeship work since that time.
The book is a 3 because it addresses all of the various ways thought is influenced and changed beyond the boundaries of the individual brain. For scholarship and accuracy, it’s 2.5.
October 1, 2021
The best pop psychology book I’ve read this year, highly recommend
March 10, 2022
There really are a host of extra-neural resources available to help us think better. This book opened my mind to the intelligence that exists in my body, gut, and the built and cultural environments around me. Evolved my mental model of the world.
September 25, 2021
Fascinating
October 23, 2021
What's more fun than relevant, applied research, especially when relevant to education and cognition? Unfortunately, when a journalist writes about science, she is not always so discerning regarding what constitutes studies that are valid with solid methodologies and sampling, and worse, she can draw conclusions that are not supported by the data. This includes not just Annie Murphy Paul, but Daniel Pink (remember him pontificating: "the MFA is the new MBA?;" nope, still has a negative return on investment and see this from
Wall Street Journal
) and the dreaded Malcolm Gladwell, master of the straw man fallacy and popularizer of the absurd "10,000 hours to mastery" idiocy that has become part of the vernacular.
The primary takeaway here is that we extend the capacity of our mind by offloading facts and information through our bodies (we remember what we do more than what we hear or see), surroundings (whiteboards and cork boards help us to see ideas and the connections among them), and relationships (we learn socially and group synergy matters).
I'm going to open this review with the final chapter, since it is the most relevant to the current push for diversity, inclusion and equity in organizations. The research is clear that the best way of fostering group cohesion is "moving, talking and working together so closely that their brains and bodies fall into a joint rhythm" (228). That's why military groups march in formation; it creates group synchrony, so does learning together (individualized online learning in private meets goals for personal development, obviously not social), training together, candidly sharing feelings (egads, spare me; there is far too much of that that is counterproductive, frankly; do the damn work), and engaging in rituals together. Sharing the same meal family style, particularly if it has spicy heat (arousal) is also quite effective. Add to that "ambient belonging" and "psychologically inclusive design" images and objects in the environment and website that are representative of diversity to create a sense of inclusion (135). In contrast, diversity training is actually divisive and counter-productive, with extensive longitudinal data back to the 1940s to prove it. I'm happy to share my annotated bibliography with anyone interested.
Since we're starting at the end, the conclusion of The Extended Mind is so egregiously out of bounds, it's breathtaking. Annie Murphy Paul has the audacity to write on the very last page:
"Defenders of the status quo have long argued that social and economic inequality merely reflects a kind of organic inequality, determined by nature, in the talents and abilities with which individuals are born. That argument appears less plausible when viewed through the lens of the extended mind. If our ability to think intelligently is shaped so profoundly by the availability of extra-neural resources, how then can we continue to justify their extraordinarily inequitable distribution?" (252).
Psychologists and neuroscientists have tried unsuccessfully to disprove the heritability of cognitive ability, but we know beyond any doubt through reams and reams of studies globally and longitudinally that cognitive ability, like height, body type, eye color, and susceptibility to certain diseases, is heritable and affected by many additional factors: conditions in utero, length of gestation, alcohol and other substances, physical and mental illness, abuse, nutrition, pollution, motivation, interest, etc. To contest that is willful ignorance.
Why do we worship this one trait to such a degree that we refuse to admit the truth that some people are simply more intelligent than others? Instead, we should value the other qualities that people do possess. Paul reveals her membership in what Fredrik de Boer calls "the cult of smart," and its dogma of equity, that we must all share the same outcomes, all with perfect 1600 SAT scores and 120 IQs, which can never happen unless the tests are completely invalid. For some, her inane and absurd statement would call into question everything she has written on the previous 251 pages.
Being that the case, two more statements are likely to be true: first, the acuity, ability and volition to access the "extra-neural" resources are likely to be limited as well. "Some people are able to think more intelligently because they are better able to extend their minds" (17). Second, the availability of those "extra-neural" resources are also "inequitably distributed," particularly in terms of relationships. Cue Raj Chetty's work on zip codes as destiny and his Equality of Opportunity Project .
To wit: If a group of high cognitive ability gather together on a project, the result is likely to be superior to that of a group of low cognitive ability. This is the rationale for the current practice of mainstreaming students into heterogeneous groupings; it is for the benefit of those of lower ability, though it certainly holds back those of higher ability. Ideologue educators defend the practice by stating that it [marginally] benefits the academically advanced students to tutor the others in that it reinforces the material and fosters empathy. It rarely works that way in practice, since the "smart" kids become bored and frustrated. Moreover, it begs the question of the purpose of education. To what degree is it to form an empathetic community of learners and to what degree is it to realize one's individual potential and to master the material? Those are the two camps; the former is winning (there's a great deal of emphasis since 2000 on socio-emotional learning [SEL]), but the latter will have its day again, I'm sure, once the pendulum swings back. I'm not sure I'll live to see that day the way things are going.
Back to the book.
Part I: Thinking With Our Bodies
We know from decades of research that physical exercise improves thinking. In every school I've worked with, I have presented research to students, staff, and families that just 10 minutes of vigorous exercise can improve student performance on standardized testing by stimulating blood flow to the prefrontal cortex. Not a single school has even considered implementing some means of making this happen. Teachers teach as they were taught, not in alignment with research.
To be effective, a break from work cannot be more of the same, surfing the web, checking our phones; rather, it must be a burst of physical activity. This is why recess is so important for all students, not just K-8, but high school students, too. Everyone needs physical exertion, not resting the body, to refresh. Physical activity while thinking has been helpful to superior thinkers from Thoreau to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
We remember what we do much more than what we hear. "Students who incorporated movement into their learning strategy remembered 76% of the material, while those who engaged in 'deliberate memorization' recalled only 37%" (56). If students can act out a scenario like chemical bonds, say, they will remember it more. An educator friend from the top socioeconomic quintile insists that it is a form of aggression to gesture while conversing. Balderdash. Researchers found that "high income parents gesture more" and with "greater variety" than low-income parents (73).
Part II: Thinking With Our Surroundings
Self-evident: "Time spent in nature relieves stress, restores mental equilibrium, and enhances the ability to focus and sustain attention" (102). Less so, but glad it's true: "A 20 minute walk in a park improved children's concentration and impulse control as much as a dose of an ADHD drug like Ritalin" (96); "Drivers who travel along tree-lined roads...recover more quickly from stressful experiences and handle emerging stresses with more calm, than do people who drive along roads crowded with billboards, buildings, and parking lots" (95); "Patients who occupied rooms with a view of trees required fewer painkillers, experienced fewer complications, and had shorter hospital stays than patients whose rooms looked out on a brick wall," among other positives (102).
We need nature for creativity and awe. We need privacy and sociability. Open office spaces can actually decrease interaction. We need to feel a space as our own for productivity. Having a whiteboard or place to pin ideas allows us to offload ideas, so we don't have to have them in our heads. It allows us to map and connect facts and ideas, too.
Part III: Thinking With Our Relationships
Imitation was a part of education for millennia as a "rigorous practice of striving for excellence by emulating the masters" (167). Now, we regard it differently and more is the pity, for there was great wisdom there. When I taught preschoolers, it was streng verboten to create a model for a craft project, but the case is made in this chapter for the imperative of "exposure to inspiring examples," not merely for K-16, but law students, too. See Ron Berger's work.
This was a significant point: "the very individuals who are most expert are often least able to share what they know" because they no longer need to think about what they do. This "automatization" prevents them from being able to teach others "how they do what they do," (181). Much of that comes from thinking with peers. The efficacy is underscored of story, students teaching other students to learn material themselves, and arguing, which enhances our ability to think things through, "produces deeper learning, sounder decisions, and more innovative solutions" (203).
Interesting chapter, this chapter 8.
If you enjoy John Tesh's weekly radio show, "Intelligence for Your Life," and its tidbits of research relevant to your life, you'll enjoy this book. It's replete with loads of titillating factoids to bring up at the cocktail party once the pandemic is over, and may lead you to incorporate some of its ideas into your daily life and professional practice.
The primary takeaway here is that we extend the capacity of our mind by offloading facts and information through our bodies (we remember what we do more than what we hear or see), surroundings (whiteboards and cork boards help us to see ideas and the connections among them), and relationships (we learn socially and group synergy matters).
I'm going to open this review with the final chapter, since it is the most relevant to the current push for diversity, inclusion and equity in organizations. The research is clear that the best way of fostering group cohesion is "moving, talking and working together so closely that their brains and bodies fall into a joint rhythm" (228). That's why military groups march in formation; it creates group synchrony, so does learning together (individualized online learning in private meets goals for personal development, obviously not social), training together, candidly sharing feelings (egads, spare me; there is far too much of that that is counterproductive, frankly; do the damn work), and engaging in rituals together. Sharing the same meal family style, particularly if it has spicy heat (arousal) is also quite effective. Add to that "ambient belonging" and "psychologically inclusive design" images and objects in the environment and website that are representative of diversity to create a sense of inclusion (135). In contrast, diversity training is actually divisive and counter-productive, with extensive longitudinal data back to the 1940s to prove it. I'm happy to share my annotated bibliography with anyone interested.
Since we're starting at the end, the conclusion of The Extended Mind is so egregiously out of bounds, it's breathtaking. Annie Murphy Paul has the audacity to write on the very last page:
"Defenders of the status quo have long argued that social and economic inequality merely reflects a kind of organic inequality, determined by nature, in the talents and abilities with which individuals are born. That argument appears less plausible when viewed through the lens of the extended mind. If our ability to think intelligently is shaped so profoundly by the availability of extra-neural resources, how then can we continue to justify their extraordinarily inequitable distribution?" (252).
Psychologists and neuroscientists have tried unsuccessfully to disprove the heritability of cognitive ability, but we know beyond any doubt through reams and reams of studies globally and longitudinally that cognitive ability, like height, body type, eye color, and susceptibility to certain diseases, is heritable and affected by many additional factors: conditions in utero, length of gestation, alcohol and other substances, physical and mental illness, abuse, nutrition, pollution, motivation, interest, etc. To contest that is willful ignorance.
Why do we worship this one trait to such a degree that we refuse to admit the truth that some people are simply more intelligent than others? Instead, we should value the other qualities that people do possess. Paul reveals her membership in what Fredrik de Boer calls "the cult of smart," and its dogma of equity, that we must all share the same outcomes, all with perfect 1600 SAT scores and 120 IQs, which can never happen unless the tests are completely invalid. For some, her inane and absurd statement would call into question everything she has written on the previous 251 pages.
Being that the case, two more statements are likely to be true: first, the acuity, ability and volition to access the "extra-neural" resources are likely to be limited as well. "Some people are able to think more intelligently because they are better able to extend their minds" (17). Second, the availability of those "extra-neural" resources are also "inequitably distributed," particularly in terms of relationships. Cue Raj Chetty's work on zip codes as destiny and his Equality of Opportunity Project .
To wit: If a group of high cognitive ability gather together on a project, the result is likely to be superior to that of a group of low cognitive ability. This is the rationale for the current practice of mainstreaming students into heterogeneous groupings; it is for the benefit of those of lower ability, though it certainly holds back those of higher ability. Ideologue educators defend the practice by stating that it [marginally] benefits the academically advanced students to tutor the others in that it reinforces the material and fosters empathy. It rarely works that way in practice, since the "smart" kids become bored and frustrated. Moreover, it begs the question of the purpose of education. To what degree is it to form an empathetic community of learners and to what degree is it to realize one's individual potential and to master the material? Those are the two camps; the former is winning (there's a great deal of emphasis since 2000 on socio-emotional learning [SEL]), but the latter will have its day again, I'm sure, once the pendulum swings back. I'm not sure I'll live to see that day the way things are going.
Back to the book.
Part I: Thinking With Our Bodies
We know from decades of research that physical exercise improves thinking. In every school I've worked with, I have presented research to students, staff, and families that just 10 minutes of vigorous exercise can improve student performance on standardized testing by stimulating blood flow to the prefrontal cortex. Not a single school has even considered implementing some means of making this happen. Teachers teach as they were taught, not in alignment with research.
To be effective, a break from work cannot be more of the same, surfing the web, checking our phones; rather, it must be a burst of physical activity. This is why recess is so important for all students, not just K-8, but high school students, too. Everyone needs physical exertion, not resting the body, to refresh. Physical activity while thinking has been helpful to superior thinkers from Thoreau to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
We remember what we do much more than what we hear. "Students who incorporated movement into their learning strategy remembered 76% of the material, while those who engaged in 'deliberate memorization' recalled only 37%" (56). If students can act out a scenario like chemical bonds, say, they will remember it more. An educator friend from the top socioeconomic quintile insists that it is a form of aggression to gesture while conversing. Balderdash. Researchers found that "high income parents gesture more" and with "greater variety" than low-income parents (73).
Part II: Thinking With Our Surroundings
Self-evident: "Time spent in nature relieves stress, restores mental equilibrium, and enhances the ability to focus and sustain attention" (102). Less so, but glad it's true: "A 20 minute walk in a park improved children's concentration and impulse control as much as a dose of an ADHD drug like Ritalin" (96); "Drivers who travel along tree-lined roads...recover more quickly from stressful experiences and handle emerging stresses with more calm, than do people who drive along roads crowded with billboards, buildings, and parking lots" (95); "Patients who occupied rooms with a view of trees required fewer painkillers, experienced fewer complications, and had shorter hospital stays than patients whose rooms looked out on a brick wall," among other positives (102).
We need nature for creativity and awe. We need privacy and sociability. Open office spaces can actually decrease interaction. We need to feel a space as our own for productivity. Having a whiteboard or place to pin ideas allows us to offload ideas, so we don't have to have them in our heads. It allows us to map and connect facts and ideas, too.
Part III: Thinking With Our Relationships
Imitation was a part of education for millennia as a "rigorous practice of striving for excellence by emulating the masters" (167). Now, we regard it differently and more is the pity, for there was great wisdom there. When I taught preschoolers, it was streng verboten to create a model for a craft project, but the case is made in this chapter for the imperative of "exposure to inspiring examples," not merely for K-16, but law students, too. See Ron Berger's work.
This was a significant point: "the very individuals who are most expert are often least able to share what they know" because they no longer need to think about what they do. This "automatization" prevents them from being able to teach others "how they do what they do," (181). Much of that comes from thinking with peers. The efficacy is underscored of story, students teaching other students to learn material themselves, and arguing, which enhances our ability to think things through, "produces deeper learning, sounder decisions, and more innovative solutions" (203).
Interesting chapter, this chapter 8.
If you enjoy John Tesh's weekly radio show, "Intelligence for Your Life," and its tidbits of research relevant to your life, you'll enjoy this book. It's replete with loads of titillating factoids to bring up at the cocktail party once the pandemic is over, and may lead you to incorporate some of its ideas into your daily life and professional practice.
July 6, 2022
Theres a weird feeling when something that I theoretically know is "new" feels super old. This book is like that. The idea of this book is that there are non-brain/social/external factors that impact the way we think. This is obvious! But also as the book goes through it shows how some of the leading books in recent years (Thinking Fast and Slow, Grit, etc) are actually operating in a mind-centric paradigm. Theres a weird chapter towards the end which claims that scientists were rejecting the impact of crowd sourcing when its literally one of the founding philosophies of democracy! But at the same time its obvious that much of the literature, especially in the 19th/20th century, was about controlling the masses.
As with all good pop pysch books theres the risk that this is all made up due to the reproducibility crisis. And theres some outlandish claims. But overall I think its well presented. I think it'd be super interesting to start a meeting with a group stretching exercise or do one of the other exercises that are mostly done by kids.
Overall good, not mind blowing.
As with all good pop pysch books theres the risk that this is all made up due to the reproducibility crisis. And theres some outlandish claims. But overall I think its well presented. I think it'd be super interesting to start a meeting with a group stretching exercise or do one of the other exercises that are mostly done by kids.
Overall good, not mind blowing.
August 27, 2022
This is an ambitious project, attempting to summarize and synthesize a host of behavioral psychology and educational psychology research with the Andy Clark’s philosophical of intelligence as something essentially social and embodied.
The strength of the book is its clarity of organization and presentation. And the conclusion, which attempts to synthesize the 9 sections into immediately applicable habits and strategies, is extremely helpful. The weakness is related to the strength. There is a lot of summary of research findings that I found myself skimming over quickly. The concepts are not difficult to grasp, even if proving them in a research setting is. What would have made the book better is more examples and stories from real life of how the principles could be put into practice. It also would have been helpful to hear how the author used the principles (other than her first example) in the process of writing the book.
That said, I would recommend this book for anyone engaged in teaching in any capacity, anyone leading or managing a team, and anyone looking to reinvigorate their own creative processes.
The strength of the book is its clarity of organization and presentation. And the conclusion, which attempts to synthesize the 9 sections into immediately applicable habits and strategies, is extremely helpful. The weakness is related to the strength. There is a lot of summary of research findings that I found myself skimming over quickly. The concepts are not difficult to grasp, even if proving them in a research setting is. What would have made the book better is more examples and stories from real life of how the principles could be put into practice. It also would have been helpful to hear how the author used the principles (other than her first example) in the process of writing the book.
That said, I would recommend this book for anyone engaged in teaching in any capacity, anyone leading or managing a team, and anyone looking to reinvigorate their own creative processes.
August 21, 2022
It seems self-evident that our environment and tools influence our though process, yet that is not an established scientific conclusion. The author explores the many ways that our environment and the tools that we use affect our mental processes. We make better decisions when we have an external tool to capture (and remind us) the important facts. This is a good summary of the current state of scientific knowledge on our mental processes. The author concludes by combining all these concepts into three useful methods: 1) Offload data, 2) Organize in chunks (my word) and, 3) Change perspective. The author proposes several other methods, but I think they are just different aspects of these three. On one hand, there is nothing new in this book. However, the author combines the findings of many recent 'discoveries' and presents a concise summary of thousands of years of advice on how to think.
February 19, 2023
A really good introduction to how cognition happens outside the individual’s brain for mainstream audiences. It also serves as a self help book, giving the reader practical tips based on the theories the author describes and their application in real world settings (historically and potentially).
There is a social justice lens introduced in the final page(s), which felt a little shoe horned in. I wish it had been present throughout the book more explicitly to make its inclusion at the end feel less forced. Relatedly, although I overall enjoyed the book, the author uncritically includes the Hart & Riesley (1992) study which many have critiqued for being racially biased in its design. There are other “silver bullet” claims the author makes that focus on individual acts rather than seeing inequities as systemic and at the institutional level.
There is a social justice lens introduced in the final page(s), which felt a little shoe horned in. I wish it had been present throughout the book more explicitly to make its inclusion at the end feel less forced. Relatedly, although I overall enjoyed the book, the author uncritically includes the Hart & Riesley (1992) study which many have critiqued for being racially biased in its design. There are other “silver bullet” claims the author makes that focus on individual acts rather than seeing inequities as systemic and at the institutional level.
February 2, 2024
Great read.
When I first found this book I was cautiously interested in it's assertion that our intelligence extends beyond the brain. But as I read so many of its points illustrated realities from my own life: how using your physical space to understand things like adding negative numbers can enhance your learning; how green spaces rejuvenates you, allowing for a 'clean mind' to calmly reevaluate a challenging question; and how establishing a sense of belonging in a space generates a more productive mental state.
Author Annie Murphy Paul summarizes it well - "We are loopy creatures—and we are also situationally sensitive ones, responsive to the immediate conditions and circumstances in which we find ourselves." Combine this with the sensations we feel internally, and we quickly see how intelligence is a function of several factors, some innately controllable and others completely out of our sphere of influence. Therefore it is important to recognize for ourselves how all these factors can be impacting our ability to think.
When I first found this book I was cautiously interested in it's assertion that our intelligence extends beyond the brain. But as I read so many of its points illustrated realities from my own life: how using your physical space to understand things like adding negative numbers can enhance your learning; how green spaces rejuvenates you, allowing for a 'clean mind' to calmly reevaluate a challenging question; and how establishing a sense of belonging in a space generates a more productive mental state.
Author Annie Murphy Paul summarizes it well - "We are loopy creatures—and we are also situationally sensitive ones, responsive to the immediate conditions and circumstances in which we find ourselves." Combine this with the sensations we feel internally, and we quickly see how intelligence is a function of several factors, some innately controllable and others completely out of our sphere of influence. Therefore it is important to recognize for ourselves how all these factors can be impacting our ability to think.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Want to read
October 26, 2021Did not finish this one.. it's a really interesting topic, one as a designer and artist that I identify with strongly.
Unfortunately, the packaging is what holds this book back; the subtitle says it all "The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain." It's a little bit of a reflection of the sadder reality today that in order to sell books on "deep" topics, they need to be commodified into self-improvement guides rather than a more in-depth dive into the idea itself. The introduction was intriguing, but but soon after the book turns into a constant stream of tangential references that amount to a collection of facts with applications thereafter that can "optimize" your thinking.
I'll probably just head for the original study by Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers.
Unfortunately, the packaging is what holds this book back; the subtitle says it all "The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain." It's a little bit of a reflection of the sadder reality today that in order to sell books on "deep" topics, they need to be commodified into self-improvement guides rather than a more in-depth dive into the idea itself. The introduction was intriguing, but but soon after the book turns into a constant stream of tangential references that amount to a collection of facts with applications thereafter that can "optimize" your thinking.
I'll probably just head for the original study by Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers.
September 19, 2021
I won a copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways and am voluntarily leaving a review.
The Extended Mind paints a picture through research of a new way to think—really several new ways to think built into one system of principles. It’s fascinating stuff, and the conclusion gives a pretty fundamental breakdown of how to bring this into your life. It’s easier said than done for most—our systems of thought and how we train ourselves to think are still very much one person does the work in their heads whenever possible—but the possibilities laid out through this are really worth exploring as much as is possible.
The Extended Mind paints a picture through research of a new way to think—really several new ways to think built into one system of principles. It’s fascinating stuff, and the conclusion gives a pretty fundamental breakdown of how to bring this into your life. It’s easier said than done for most—our systems of thought and how we train ourselves to think are still very much one person does the work in their heads whenever possible—but the possibilities laid out through this are really worth exploring as much as is possible.
January 25, 2023
This book took me a while to read because I was annotating and highlighting constantly. I recommend Annie Murphy Paul's incredibly well researched and synthesized work to anyone who is interested in cognition, learning, communication, and the impact of our environment, habits, and bodies/movement on the way we process information and construct ideas. I was constantly sharing studies and anecdotes with my family, friends, and colleagues because I knew that they would blow their minds too (and have immediate relevancy). This is definitely worth a listen or a read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 356 reviews