Making Ourselves Smarter
If you’re looking for an interesting read, Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind is a great place to start.
The first helpful part of Paul’s argument in the book is identifying that our common cultural models of the brain as a computer or a muscle are limiting. She writes:
“These two metaphors—brain as computer and brain as muscle—share some key assumptions. To wit: the mind is a discrete thing that is sealed in the skull; this discrete thing determines how well people are able to think; this thing has stable properties that can easily be measured, compared, and ranked.”
In contrast to those concepts, she presents research that shows that our brain power is maximized or limited based on the context in which it operates. Of course, the brain is like a computer or muscle in that we can make it better by exercising it and by adding more information to its memory over time.
But the culmination of those actions take time. If we want to think better about things today, we should curate where we think, with whom we think, and what else we’re doing at the same time.
As I read the book, I kept thinking of an in-person strategy retreat that I recently facilitated. The dynamics of the extended mind were on full display. I felt this immediately and saw it in the group.
It’s one thing to think about the strategy by ourselves or over Zoom. It’s another experience to talk it out next to someone, while writing on a whiteboard to provide visual representations of our thinking, and to leverage the fullness of our gestures and other body movements to explain our understanding.
Those interactions led to a much richer conversation and new insights.
So what does the research say about how we can make ourselves smarter?
Paul helpfully synthesizes the research into a set of eight principles for extending our minds.
1) “[W]henever possible, we should offload information, externalize it, move it out of our heads and into the world.”
2. “[W]henever 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. Humans evolved to handle the concrete, not to contemplate the abstract.”
Most simply, we should write things down! It makes it more real for us.
3. “[W]henever possible, we should seek to productively alter our own state when engaging in mental labor.”
To be more productive, we can alter the background music (less lyrics, smoother beats) or the environment around us (more nature), for example.
4. “[W]henever possible, we should take measures to re-embody the information we think about. The pursuit of knowledge has frequently sought to disengage thinking from the body, to elevate ideas to a cerebral sphere separate from our grubby animal anatomy. Research on the extended mind counsels the opposite approach: we should be seeking to draw the body back into the thinking process.”
We think better when our mind and our body work together. For example, it’s easier to remember lines for a play if we act it out at the same time.
5. “[W]henever possible, we should take measures to re-spatialize the information we think about.”
We can spatialize via gestures, sketching ideas, mapmaking—generally creating a physical representation of information.
6. “[W]henever possible, we should take measures to re-socialize the information we think about.”
We can do this by conversing with others, debating, and teaching.
7. “[W]henever possible, we should manage our thinking by generating cognitive loops.”
That is, we shouldn’t be afraid of the winding road to the answer, shifting between modes of thinking, and taking a break. Those more reliably lead to insight than the straightforward path of “think harder.”
8. “[W]henever possible, we should manage our thinking by creating cognitively congenial situations.”
That last one is important. Paul explains:
“We often regard the brain as an organ of awesome and almost unfathomable power. But we’re also apt to treat it with high-handed imperiousness, expecting it to do our bidding as if it were a docile servant. Pay attention to this, we tell it; remember that; buckle down now and get the job done. Alas, we often find that the brain is an unreliable and even impertinent attendant: fickle in its focus, porous in its memory, and inconstant in its efforts. The problem lies in our attempt to command it. We’ll elicit improved performance from the brain when we approach it with the aim not of issuing orders but of creating situations that draw out the desired result.”
Something Fun
If you want to taunt your younger sibling by explaining how you’re smarter and how you taught them everything they know, Paul provides this great line:
“Consider this finding: firstborn children have an IQ that is on average 2.3 points higher than that of their younger brothers and sisters. After disconfirming several potential explanations, such as better nutrition or differential parental treatment, researchers concluded that firstborn children’s higher IQs stem from a simple fact of family life: older siblings engage in teaching younger ones.”