Speaker 1: Today. It's great to have Annie Murphy Paul in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and he writes about how the findings of cognitive science
Speaker 1: and psychology can help us to think and act more intelligently.
Speaker 1: Any contributes to The New York Times Magazine, The New
Speaker 1: York Times Book Reviews, Sleet and Oh, The Oprah Magazine,
Speaker 1: among many other publications. She's also the author of a
Speaker 1: number of books, including The Cold of Personality, Origins, and
Speaker 1: most recently, The Extended Mind, The Power of Thinking Outside
Speaker 1: the Brain. Annie, thanks for coming on the Psychology Podcast
Speaker 1: again after being our very first guest ever. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Scott. I'm so happy to be back, you know,
Speaker 1: seven years later, seven years Wow, and look at all
Speaker 1: the people you've talked to in those seven years. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, look how many books you've done
Speaker 1: since then. I have not been as prolific as you.
Speaker 1: That is sure, That is for sure. Oh come on, now,
Speaker 1: I love your work, as you know, I'm a big fan,
Speaker 1: and this latest book is no exception. You know, in
Speaker 1: this new book you invite the reader to quote think
Speaker 1: outside the Brain. Can you can you tell our listeners
Speaker 1: a little bit what that what that means? To you
Speaker 1: to think outside the brain. Sure, yes, Well, I borrowed
Speaker 1: the idea of the extended mind from two philosophers, Andy
Speaker 1: Clark and David Chalmers, and their idea, which I think
Speaker 1: I hopefully expanded upon and elaborated on, is that we
Speaker 1: don't just think with our brains. We think with the
Speaker 1: world around us. And in my book I explore in
Speaker 1: the in sort of more minute detail what that means.
Speaker 1: We think with our bodies, you know, our bodies below
Speaker 1: the neck, so because of course the brain is part
Speaker 1: of the body, but we think with the rest of
Speaker 1: our bodies. We think with the spaces in which we
Speaker 1: learn and work, and we think with the mind of
Speaker 1: other people. And to conceive of thinking in this way
Speaker 1: is it's a departure from how we're used to thinking
Speaker 1: about thinking, which is, you know, everything goes on inside
Speaker 1: the head. And all of our efforts that cultivating intelligence
Speaker 1: and effective thinking seemed to be directed at improving how
Speaker 1: the brain functions. And I wanted to nudge people to
Speaker 1: think about, well, what are those other resources that we
Speaker 1: pull into our thinking processes, and how can we do
Speaker 1: that more skillfully? Yeah, you make the case that we
Speaker 1: pay too little attention to the body and discussions about intelligence.
Speaker 1: I mean just the whole language of you know, that
Speaker 1: person's brainy, right, that person I don't know, hows a
Speaker 1: smart arm. But why is that misguided? Tell us why
Speaker 1: that's misguided? You should talk about you know how it's
Speaker 1: not just the brain and right, Well, that idea that
Speaker 1: the body has nothing to contribute to intelligence. I think
Speaker 1: that's rooted in a metaphor that really animates much of
Speaker 1: our thinking about thinking, and that is the computer. Sorry,
Speaker 1: the brain as computer metaphor. We think of the brain
Speaker 1: as being like a computer, like a processor of information,
Speaker 1: and that's actually not how human intelligence works. You know,
Speaker 1: we evolved, We evolved in a setting that made use
Speaker 1: of our entire body all the time. Our movements, our gestures,
Speaker 1: the internal signals that rise up from within our body,
Speaker 1: all of these contribute to our thinking all the time.
Speaker 1: But again, we're used to thinking of thinking as happening
Speaker 1: only in the brain, and so we have a blind
Speaker 1: spot in a sense for all the ways that the
Speaker 1: body and its capabilities contribute to intelligent thought. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: talk a lot in your book about introception. Very exciting
Speaker 1: feel it's tied up with this merging research on embodied cognition,
Speaker 1: which for your book for sure, Can you tell us
Speaker 1: a little about what introception is and maybe even individual
Speaker 1: differences in that, because I'm very interested individual differences aspect. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So introception is a kind of fancy technical word for
Speaker 1: gut feelings, you know, those feelings that arise within your
Speaker 1: body that give you a sense of something, of knowing something,
Speaker 1: but the notion doesn't seem to come from your brain.
Speaker 1: It actually feels like it's coming from within your body.
Speaker 1: And in fact, just like we have all these sensors
Speaker 1: that take in information from the world outside, we have
Speaker 1: sensors located all throughout the inside of our body that
Speaker 1: send the brain this continuous flow of information about how
Speaker 1: the body is doing, whether balance, a state of balance
Speaker 1: is being maintained, what actions need to be taken to
Speaker 1: maintain a state of balance, And in terms of individual
Speaker 1: d differences, it does seem to be the case that
Speaker 1: people are really widely distributed across the spectrum in terms
Speaker 1: of how sensitive they are to their internal signals, how
Speaker 1: attuned they are to those signals. You know, the sort
Speaker 1: of standard test of introceptive sensitivity is the heartbeat detection test,
Speaker 1: so it's like, and how that works is that people
Speaker 1: are asked to name the moment when their heart is beating.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is that some people immediately take to
Speaker 1: this task and say, oh, yeah, I know when my
Speaker 1: heart is beating, and other people are like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about, Like, I have no idea when my
Speaker 1: heart is beating. And it's the same, you know, the
Speaker 1: heartbeat detection tests. The heartbeat is a kind of proxy
Speaker 1: or stand in for the whole range of introceptive sensations
Speaker 1: that we feel, and across all those many introceptive sensations,
Speaker 1: people are different in terms of how sensitive they are
Speaker 1: to those sensations. And it's not entirely clear why those
Speaker 1: individual differences exist. It may be partly genetic and maybe
Speaker 1: partly the kinds of messages that people got growing up
Speaker 1: from their caregivers about how legitimate it was to pay
Speaker 1: attention to those internal signals and take them seriously. You know,
Speaker 1: some people were told, you know, you're not hungry, it's
Speaker 1: not dinner time yet, or you know, or we're kind
Speaker 1: of encouraged to put those internal signals aside. And I
Speaker 1: think more generally in our society, there's not we don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of patients for or affinity for those
Speaker 1: internal signals and really taking them seriously. So I think
Speaker 1: all of us, no matter where we stand on that
Speaker 1: spectrum of introceptive attunement, can probably benefit from from becoming
Speaker 1: more sensitive to those internal signals and cues. Yeah, is
Speaker 1: mindful meditation does that alter interceptive ability? It seems to.
Speaker 1: It seems to have that effect. In particular, the activity
Speaker 1: that is often a part of mindfulness meditation known as
Speaker 1: the body scan, where you pay objective, non judgmental, accepting,
Speaker 1: open minded attention to whatever sensations rise up from your body,
Speaker 1: and you might even kind of go part by part,
Speaker 1: you know, like first feeling what's there to be felt
Speaker 1: in your feet and in your legs and in your
Speaker 1: hips and in your stomach, and then all the way
Speaker 1: up through the body, and just being very aware of
Speaker 1: what those feelings are, which you know, in the hurry
Speaker 1: and bustle of every day we often don't check in
Speaker 1: with our bodies in that way, but it's a very
Speaker 1: easy way to kind of just as I say, check
Speaker 1: in with yourself and see what you are feeling on
Speaker 1: the inside. Nice. Yeah, that's also good for getting going
Speaker 1: to bed at night. I like to do a body
Speaker 1: scan helps me relax at the end of the long day.
Speaker 1: There are profound implications in individual differences in this. You know,
Speaker 1: people a lot of mental disorders and other things like
Speaker 1: like psychopathy. Like psychopaths have an altered interception the feedback
Speaker 1: they're getting they're not in touch with and they're also
Speaker 1: it kind of limits them from being able to learn
Speaker 1: from their mistakes as a result. I had not heard that. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting, Scott, I had. I had read about
Speaker 1: introception being implicated in faulty interception being implicated in things
Speaker 1: like eating disorders and addiction, where so met much of
Speaker 1: those so so much of those behaviors are bound up
Speaker 1: in responding to bodily cues, and if you can't feel them,
Speaker 1: or if you feel them excessively, as is the case
Speaker 1: in say, panic disorder, interception can be really the kind
Speaker 1: of locus of some of those mental conditions. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also there's and this is really like frontlines of science
Speaker 1: I'm about to say, but there's an emerging model of
Speaker 1: OCD as purely an alteration of introception. So kind of
Speaker 1: reconceptualizing all of O c D from that vantage point
Speaker 1: and and what that does, you know, like the OCD
Speaker 1: symptoms result kind of rethinking why exactly those symptoms are
Speaker 1: resulting and why people get so locked on certain things
Speaker 1: they're not able to get in touch with what it
Speaker 1: actually is and why it's driving their behaviors. Yeah, so interesting.
Speaker 1: So maybe those compulsive behaviors are are a response to
Speaker 1: or a try in a way to try to address
Speaker 1: those internal events. Interesting. Interesting, So state like stay tuned
Speaker 1: for more on that. Research on that. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a very emerging science. You know, you
Speaker 1: the word We should talk about intelligence for a second.
Speaker 1: How do you define intelligence? You know, because you use
Speaker 1: that word in your book and you talk about you
Speaker 1: could see how an intelligence researcher in the field of
Speaker 1: psychology might beg to differ that some of the things
Speaker 1: you're describing as intelligence as intelligence. But no one, as
Speaker 1: we both know and agree, no one has like the
Speaker 1: stake on what that word means and what counts. No
Speaker 1: research or owns the definition of it. So I'd love
Speaker 1: to ask Andy Murphy Paul's definition. I probably have a
Speaker 1: pretty broad definition, all things considered. I would say intelligence
Speaker 1: is the ability to think effectively in the world to
Speaker 1: learn and remember, to solve problems, and to come up
Speaker 1: with new ideas, you know. So for me, it's really
Speaker 1: rooted and grounded and how effectively you can act in
Speaker 1: the world. It's less of a you know, brain and
Speaker 1: a jar kind of you know, what's your IQ, and
Speaker 1: more like what can you do with that intelligence you
Speaker 1: have in terms of advancing your own goals? And that's
Speaker 1: you know, the cornerstone of my mentor in grad school.
Speaker 1: Robert Sternberg's new book, which I think you wrote about
Speaker 1: in the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, the Bust
Speaker 1: and Globe, I think I think it was Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Boston wrote about that a little bit about adaptive intell
Speaker 1: So if you think about it as really adapt we
Speaker 1: can certainly bring in lots of the things we're talking about,
Speaker 1: because you make the point that the spaces around us
Speaker 1: expand our minds and can increase our expertise and knowledge
Speaker 1: and intelligence. What are some of the environmental conditions that
Speaker 1: you've identified, Yeah, Well, one of them is spending time outdoors,
Speaker 1: which was a really interesting strand of research that at
Speaker 1: first I was a little skeptical about, to be honest,
Speaker 1: because the idea that you know, going outside makes you
Speaker 1: feel good or makes you think better seemed like sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, tree hugging, nature loving nonsense. But the more
Speaker 1: I am dug into that research, the more I appreciated
Speaker 1: the the mechanism by which psychologists think that those effects occur,
Speaker 1: which is, you know that we evolve to process the
Speaker 1: kind of information that is present in natural settings, and
Speaker 1: we process that information, that stimuli in a really effortless way,
Speaker 1: in a way that you know, we find very pleasant,
Speaker 1: that we find very restorative in the sense that it
Speaker 1: doesn't demand, doesn't make the demands on our cognition, it
Speaker 1: doesn't draw down our mental resources the way you know,
Speaker 1: a highly stressful urban setting, or even like focusing very
Speaker 1: intently on symbols and concepts as we do in our
Speaker 1: work and our learning. Those those things are really demanding
Speaker 1: of the brain. But being out in nature, as many
Speaker 1: of us know from personal experience, you know, it's it's restorative,
Speaker 1: it's relaxing. It engages our attention in a way that
Speaker 1: is pleasant and diverting. But it's sort of diffuse. It's
Speaker 1: not like we have to focus really intently on anything.
Speaker 1: And so after we spent some time in nature. It's
Speaker 1: like refilling the tank, you know, of our of our
Speaker 1: attentional resources, and then we can we can go back
Speaker 1: to return to our work, our learning sort of refreshed
Speaker 1: and better able to focus. Yeah. Yeah, it's intense living
Speaker 1: in a big city, all sorts of things, you know,
Speaker 1: like cognitively, what are what are you know? You talk
Speaker 1: about cognitive loops in West World where he goes we
Speaker 1: all have can you talk a little about sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how much I can say about West World,
Speaker 1: but but in terms of cognitive loops, yeah, I again
Speaker 1: borrowed that idea from Andy Clark, the philosopher who likes
Speaker 1: to say that humans are intrinsically loopy creatures, meaning that
Speaker 1: again we're different from computers in that a computer, if
Speaker 1: it's solving a problem or processing some information, it doesn't
Speaker 1: print out you know, the information, like mark it up
Speaker 1: with a pen, like take a couple of days and
Speaker 1: come back to it, you know, show it to some
Speaker 1: colleagues and get their comments, and then you know that
Speaker 1: all those things are creating loops where you're you're looping
Speaker 1: the information in through your own brain and then out
Speaker 1: into the world, into space, into the minds of other people,
Speaker 1: maybe through your body, through through the movements of your body.
Speaker 1: And there's something about those creating those loops that enhances
Speaker 1: human intelligence. And that's not how computers work again, but
Speaker 1: that's how human brains appear to work. And so when
Speaker 1: we are trying to enhance our own thinking, I think
Speaker 1: it can be really helpful to think in terms of
Speaker 1: creating those productive and enriching loops, rather than keeping it
Speaker 1: all in our head where that information can't be improved
Speaker 1: and enriched and made better by those successive loops. Cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In that nineteen ninety five essay by Clark and Chalmers
Speaker 1: entitled The Andish to Andy Clark and David Chalmers called
Speaker 1: The Extended Mind, they asked the question, where does the
Speaker 1: mind stop and the rest of the world begin. Now,
Speaker 1: that's a very interesting philosophical question and with obviously huge
Speaker 1: psychological implications. Do you see any boundaries at all? I mean,
Speaker 1: are there? It's it seems intuitive to me, like intuitively
Speaker 1: to me, that there are moments where my mind is
Speaker 1: just to myself. I want it to be when I'm fantasized.
Speaker 1: I don't love that out of my head. Now, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying so like it. There surely are
Speaker 1: moments when we're thinking and it is just contained to
Speaker 1: our body, isn't that right? Hmmm? Right? Or no? Is
Speaker 1: is the does the mind ever stop at the at
Speaker 1: the at the skull? Is that? Is that the question? Like?
Speaker 1: Or does it always extend? It? Is there always mind? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think I would say there always is an extended mind.
Speaker 1: I've never been asked that question, so I'm really thinking
Speaker 1: about it. But for one thing, the fact that we
Speaker 1: have language, the fact that we have structures of thought
Speaker 1: and conventions of thought, those are all relics or artifacts
Speaker 1: of our interactions with other people. Right, So in a sense,
Speaker 1: we have no thoughts without other people, without our social
Speaker 1: experience of a lifetime. So I think from the very
Speaker 1: beginning our minds are extended. I don't know that there's
Speaker 1: any way around that, because of their influence, like the
Speaker 1: influence of the environment on the thoughts we're thinking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we're always doing our thinking in a particular body.
Speaker 1: We're always doing our thinking in a particular place, We're
Speaker 1: always doing it in some kind of social context, even
Speaker 1: when we're alone. So yeah, I don't think. I don't
Speaker 1: think I thought is ever not extended, you know, As
Speaker 1: you know, I'm very interested in like genius and giftedness.
Speaker 1: Giftedness and and kids that can do amazing calculations in
Speaker 1: their head and are capable of learning far beyond their years.
Speaker 1: There's a certain certain part where they can clean the credit,
Speaker 1: you know, for their brain that their their unique brain
Speaker 1: they have. And then there's another hand of a lot
Speaker 1: of the some of the rich resources a lot of
Speaker 1: them may have had, and and aspects that you table.
Speaker 1: So it seems like there's there's a mix, Like I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think you want to you're going in
Speaker 1: so far as to suggest that you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: no brain processes that are you know, I don't get
Speaker 1: that from you, right, Yeah, No, No, I would never
Speaker 1: want to say that that the brain is not central
Speaker 1: to thinking. I just I'd like to think of it
Speaker 1: in terms of redefining the brain's role not as the
Speaker 1: place where it all happens, but rather a more dynamic
Speaker 1: kind of role of like I like to compare it
Speaker 1: to an orchestra conductor, like to someone to the entity
Speaker 1: that's coordinating all these resources and bringing them all together.
Speaker 1: And when we think about thinking in that way, to me,
Speaker 1: it opens up all these options because now it's not
Speaker 1: a matter of just sitting there working your brain until
Speaker 1: the task is done. You have all these other resources
Speaker 1: to draw and you know, maybe you need to go
Speaker 1: for a walk, or maybe you need to have a
Speaker 1: conversation with a friend, or maybe you need to act out.
Speaker 1: You know what, you're the problem you're trying to solve
Speaker 1: with your body and with your gestures. So to me,
Speaker 1: it's a very optimistic vision of our potential and how
Speaker 1: we can expand our potential. Definitely optimistic, definitely and optimistic.
Speaker 1: And also, as you point out, it can give is
Speaker 1: compassion for people in suboptimal conditions. So it's not always
Speaker 1: optimistic in the sense you know, you know, some people
Speaker 1: are in certain environments where their extended mind is is direct.
Speaker 1: As my father would say, you know, well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and that's why I think there's there is another blind
Speaker 1: spot here when we're talking about judging people on what
Speaker 1: presumably or ostensibly their brains are able to produce, and
Speaker 1: judging their their outcomes as if their brains are are
Speaker 1: the end of the story. But because the raw materials
Speaker 1: that we have to think with are such an important
Speaker 1: aspect of our ability to think intelligently. It matters the
Speaker 1: quality of the raw materials that we have access to
Speaker 1: and whether we know how to use them skillfully. So
Speaker 1: once you bring that aspect into awareness, it seems crazy
Speaker 1: to me to to judge people on their ability to
Speaker 1: think intelligently, as if all that matters is inside their brains,
Speaker 1: and not to look at the wide angle lens of like.
Speaker 1: But you know what, are they free to move their bodies.
Speaker 1: Are they in a place that is quiet and orderly
Speaker 1: and supportive of intelligent thinking? They do? They have a
Speaker 1: network of mentors and peers and teachers who can help
Speaker 1: them think. You know, all those things matter hugely to
Speaker 1: how intelligently we're able to think, and those things are
Speaker 1: not in any way equitably distributed. Great point, and they're
Speaker 1: also you know, just that doesn't look like what an
Speaker 1: IQ test is at all. I mean, I can know
Speaker 1: individualistic is right, possibly right. When you're supposed to sit
Speaker 1: there without moving and you're in a strange place without
Speaker 1: any of your usual cues around, and you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to talk to your neighbor who's taking the IQ test
Speaker 1: alongside you, I mean, it's it's an incredibly brain bound,
Speaker 1: as Andy Clark would say, brain bound approach to intelligence,
Speaker 1: and it misses the to me, the vast, you know,
Speaker 1: repository of human intelligence that we draw in all the
Speaker 1: time in ordinary real life situations. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: COVID is relevant to this discussion as well, because there
Speaker 1: must have been implications of living during the pandemic for
Speaker 1: our brain, our brain bound way of thinking. We realized
Speaker 1: just how extended the mind really is during this time.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Oh? I really think so. Yes. I
Speaker 1: mean we I think during the during the period when
Speaker 1: things were really shut down, we were all kind of
Speaker 1: brains in front of screens for months at a time,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think a couple of insights came
Speaker 1: out of that. For me. One was that, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're going to take seriously this model of grit
Speaker 1: or the growth mindset, wherein you know, the ideas if
Speaker 1: you just work your brain harder and harder, if you
Speaker 1: give it more exercise the way you know, you exercise
Speaker 1: the muscle, it get stronger. A lot of us were
Speaker 1: working our brains a whole lot during the pandemic because
Speaker 1: we had no commute, we had no chats with coworkers,
Speaker 1: We were just you know, working, working, working, And it's
Speaker 1: not as if we many of us did not feel
Speaker 1: that our brains were at their best or were at
Speaker 1: like in fine form, you know, because there were a
Speaker 1: lot of other things that we were now being deprived of,
Speaker 1: that we were being cut off from because of the pandemic.
Speaker 1: We may not have been moving as much. A lot
Speaker 1: of us just sort of sat in front of our
Speaker 1: computers day after day. We weren't visiting new and stimulating places,
Speaker 1: we weren't interacting with people in person. So, you know,
Speaker 1: one professor said to me that he felt cut off
Speaker 1: from his extended mind because he wasn't allowed to go
Speaker 1: into his university office, and the way his books were
Speaker 1: arranged in the shelves around him formed a kind of
Speaker 1: external memory and an external body of knowledge that he
Speaker 1: was not cut off from because he couldn't be in
Speaker 1: his office. So I think the fact that our minds
Speaker 1: are extended became much more apparent to to many of
Speaker 1: us during the pandemic. Yeah, I think the implications for
Speaker 1: children is striking. In fact, Angel Duckworth, who you know
Speaker 1: you were talking about grit a few seconds ago, she
Speaker 1: co authored a big study on some of the implications
Speaker 1: of children not being able to go to school and
Speaker 1: inplications for their well being, and and you know, she
Speaker 1: found there's huge implications, very very high levels of anxiety.
Speaker 1: And I think that's just really goes to show the
Speaker 1: extent to which just learning a contextually, you know, is
Speaker 1: not not all that matters for school children having social
Speaker 1: law needs met, have their having their other basic needs
Speaker 1: and growth needs in that right. Yeah, The idea that
Speaker 1: all that matters is the transfer of information from one
Speaker 1: brain to another is such a limited and constrained idea
Speaker 1: of what learning is and how it happens, and it's
Speaker 1: it's not an accurate view at all of how that
Speaker 1: happens for kids or for adults for that matter. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, I think I want to talk about information.
Speaker 1: And we both talked her herd at the same time.
Speaker 1: Did you see that there's something there about it about
Speaker 1: the extended mind? Where we were we were so in
Speaker 1: sync that we both at the same pause did the
Speaker 1: same hand gesture. I think so. I mean, I write
Speaker 1: in the chapter on introception about how the way we
Speaker 1: know how another person feels is that we subtly mimic
Speaker 1: their their facial expressions, their their posture, their gestures, and
Speaker 1: then we kind of read that off our own bodies
Speaker 1: and that gives us that that creates a channel for
Speaker 1: us to understand the otherwise inaccessible feelings of another person.
Speaker 1: So maybe in that moment, Scott, you and I were
Speaker 1: engaged in that kind of introceptive dance. Yeah, we're able
Speaker 1: to illustrate that. People who watch the YouTube video you
Speaker 1: can watch that happen in real time on planned. I
Speaker 1: do want to I do want to segue into talking
Speaker 1: a little about information overload, a really important top that
Speaker 1: you talked about in your book, and I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: that discussion in your book and the extent to which
Speaker 1: you know, we have this bombardment of information coming us
Speaker 1: way too much for a conscious mind to rest, and
Speaker 1: we are very not We're not that too privy to
Speaker 1: the extent to which our unconscious minds are. It's influencing
Speaker 1: our unconscious right and and all sorts of So I'm
Speaker 1: just wondering if you could talk a little about perhaps
Speaker 1: how people who design social media platforms or other sort
Speaker 1: of news outlets, et cetera, might take an account some
Speaker 1: of the principles you're talking about in your book. Oh,
Speaker 1: so interesting in terms of information overload. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, yeah, interesting, Okay, I have I have
Speaker 1: two thoughts there. One is that I make the argument
Speaker 1: in the book that are the biological brain is kind
Speaker 1: of operating at peak capacity at this point, and there's
Speaker 1: so much information coming at us. Our expertise is so specialize.
Speaker 1: Our problems, as you've made reference to a couple of times,
Speaker 1: are so daunting that the biological brain on its own
Speaker 1: is not really up to the task. That we really
Speaker 1: have to acquire what I call a second education and
Speaker 1: in thinking outside the brain, at skillfully using these external
Speaker 1: resources in order to meet the moment really of you know,
Speaker 1: what our world demands of us. And then the other
Speaker 1: thought I had, you know, I talk about non conscious
Speaker 1: information acquisition in the chapter on introception, because that was
Speaker 1: the explanation, you know, just like the nature loving stuff.
Speaker 1: I initially approach the idea of intuition that's informed by
Speaker 1: introception with a little bit of skepticism, like, you know,
Speaker 1: gut feelings, like how often, like how would that work?
Speaker 1: Like that sounds a little mystical, But the idea or
Speaker 1: the research, what the research suggests is that you know,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, there's so much information coming at
Speaker 1: us all the time, just in daily life that our
Speaker 1: conscious minds can't absorb at all. But we can store
Speaker 1: and register and store a lot of that in our
Speaker 1: in a non conscious way in terms of noting patterns
Speaker 1: and regularities. And but these these patterns are too complex
Speaker 1: for our conscious minds to really to for us to
Speaker 1: be able to articulate in a conscious way. So the
Speaker 1: way we have access to those those helpful patterns and
Speaker 1: signals is through the those introceptive cues. You know. That's
Speaker 1: what a uh uh, you know, a sudden sort of
Speaker 1: tightening in your stomach or a sudden elevation in your
Speaker 1: heart rate, that's what that's your body telling you. You know,
Speaker 1: this is pay attention. This is something you've encountered before.
Speaker 1: You've you've you've maybe had a similar experience before, and
Speaker 1: this is how you acted, you know. So we get
Speaker 1: access to all that non non consciously stored information through
Speaker 1: the body. And that's why it's so important to be
Speaker 1: attuned to what the body is telling you. Otherwise you're
Speaker 1: kind of missing out on all that the richness of
Speaker 1: that information that you actually do possess. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's a really good point. But when you're talking about
Speaker 1: how's it different from intuition? How how you know rationality
Speaker 1: decision making researchers refer to as intuition, Is it similar?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it different? You know, because a lot
Speaker 1: of them argue that, Yeah, it always strikes me how much.
Speaker 1: How you know, it's such a strong current in our
Speaker 1: culture to want to see ourselves as perfectly rational as
Speaker 1: as computing machines, and I just I really take a
Speaker 1: different view that, you know, we have this incredibly rich
Speaker 1: source of wisdom and knowledge and information that's that's there
Speaker 1: with us all the time in our bodies, and why
Speaker 1: wouldn't we take advantage of that? Not not that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be that we should act on it uncritically, And
Speaker 1: in fact I describe and exercise in the book called
Speaker 1: keeping an Introceptive Journal, which means sort of tracking, which
Speaker 1: involves tracking your introceptive sensations and what they're telling you
Speaker 1: and then if you act on them. How that decision
Speaker 1: turned out? Just looking at introception and our bodily signals
Speaker 1: as another source of information that can possibly be very informative.
Speaker 1: Not that we should base everything on that. But I
Speaker 1: don't think it's smart to base everything on pure rationality either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it sounds like, you know, this is not well
Speaker 1: you're arguing, is not at all incompatible with a mindful
Speaker 1: way of life. You know, you can use that, you
Speaker 1: can be aware of the information coming from your body,
Speaker 1: and you can also be mindful of whether or not
Speaker 1: you want to apply it right right, And just to
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned expertise there a moment ago, and
Speaker 1: I do think that the extended mind has implications for
Speaker 1: how we think about expertise, because I think our brain
Speaker 1: bound notion of expertise is that the expert does it
Speaker 1: all in his head. You know that that he's the
Speaker 1: chess grandmaster who never has to has to, you know,
Speaker 1: do anything except sit there and cogitate, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think if you look at how experts actually operate
Speaker 1: in the in the real world, these are people who
Speaker 1: know how to use their bodies, who know how to
Speaker 1: pay attention in a skillful way to their internal signals,
Speaker 1: who know how to use space, who know how to
Speaker 1: use relationships. That's, in a way, the essence or the
Speaker 1: core of their expertise and their skill is that they
Speaker 1: do use their extended mind in an incredibly skillful and
Speaker 1: effective way, and that's something novices actually could emulate. Rather
Speaker 1: than thinking that as you become more expert, you become
Speaker 1: more brain bound. I think it's just the opposite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you extend it to culturally and socially. You say
Speaker 1: we're better together. I mean those are you? Those are
Speaker 1: your word Scott, but but but very characteristic. I think
Speaker 1: think of you. Oh cool, Well, you do argue that
Speaker 1: engaging in synchronious activity maybe those are your words, synchronious
Speaker 1: activity with others is can be very beneficial. And I thought,
Speaker 1: I thought this was kind of cute. The effect of
Speaker 1: eating togethers of families heightened if food is served family
Speaker 1: style and it's very spicy. Yeah, not even just as
Speaker 1: a family, but as a group, like a team or
Speaker 1: a class of people. Yeah, because the way we get
Speaker 1: on the same page, you know, intellectually or mentally with people.
Speaker 1: We can do that by sort of hacking our bodily systems,
Speaker 1: which which respond to synchronous movement, as you're saying, like
Speaker 1: when we when we're moving together, when you're our move
Speaker 1: or when your head moves at the same time my
Speaker 1: head moves. It it's it sort of flips a switch
Speaker 1: what Jonathan hate Height calls the hive switch. You know,
Speaker 1: this like, which is his metaphor for like switching from
Speaker 1: an eye orientation to a we orientation. When we're moving together,
Speaker 1: it feels kind of like we're one being, you know.
Speaker 1: And then when we not only move together as one,
Speaker 1: but also have intense feelings or experiences, whether those are
Speaker 1: physiological experiences or emotional experiences, when we feel together, we
Speaker 1: also feel like we're we can get on the same
Speaker 1: page mentally in a more effective way. So the idea
Speaker 1: behind eating together is like you're actually there's something about
Speaker 1: eating together that's meaningful. Of course, you're sharing resources, you're
Speaker 1: sharing food, but you're also, in an informal way sort
Speaker 1: of synchronizing your movements. Everyone's sort of lifting their fork
Speaker 1: to their mouths and chewing, and you know, and then
Speaker 1: also when you eat something spicy, you're all experiencing together
Speaker 1: this physiological arousal. So there's a kind of glue that
Speaker 1: binds a group together when they've had all these shared experiences,
Speaker 1: for sure. And a related concept in the cognitive science
Speaker 1: literature is socially distributed cognition. Very mouthful but yeah, better together,
Speaker 1: it's much much more recognition. Did you I mean the
Speaker 1: years you took writing this book, did you delight in
Speaker 1: nerding out over the scientific papers? I mean, I can
Speaker 1: just imagine I like spending days of where you weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily writing, but you were going on Google scholar and looking,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at all the latest kind of stuff. Scott,
Speaker 1: you know me, well, I think I imagine you have
Speaker 1: done the same thing too. I have a sneaking feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally geek out about the journals. And that's why
Speaker 1: this book took me so many years, because it does
Speaker 1: cover a lot of different disciplines, a lot of different
Speaker 1: strands of research, and yeah, I totally geek out about
Speaker 1: the research. And what's exciting is that there's more of
Speaker 1: this research coming out every day, you know, an embodied cognition,
Speaker 1: on situated cognition, on socially distributed cognition. I really feel
Speaker 1: like we're maybe at the at a turning point where
Speaker 1: you know, the I think the the old brain bound
Speaker 1: conception of thinking is just not adequate anymore, and we're
Speaker 1: realizing that there's so there's so much more to what
Speaker 1: goes on when we when we think, and so to me,
Speaker 1: the research is pointing in really exciting new directions. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: really exciting. So well, along those lines, is there was
Speaker 1: what do you what's some recent stuff that you're most
Speaker 1: what's your most excited about? What are you most excited about?
Speaker 1: To choose? Oh gosh, well, we haven't really talked so
Speaker 1: much about gesture. I find gesture really fascinating because I
Speaker 1: tend to be someone who talks with her hands a lot,
Speaker 1: and I love the idea, for example, that often our
Speaker 1: most advanced or most cutting edge, or our newest ideas
Speaker 1: that we can't quite put words to yet show up
Speaker 1: in our hands. First. You know, there's in some movement
Speaker 1: of our hands we manage to capture some element of
Speaker 1: what we're trying to express verbally, and then we can
Speaker 1: read off that self generated information, you know, we can
Speaker 1: read off our own hands that can inform our sort
Speaker 1: of emerging verbal explanation for of what we're what we're
Speaker 1: trying to get at. And so I love the idea
Speaker 1: of not only encouraging students and others to move their hands,
Speaker 1: but also creating occasions where gestures are more likely to happen,
Speaker 1: like people are more likely to gesture when they're asked
Speaker 1: to give an impromptu explanation for something in front of
Speaker 1: an audience, because to speak in an impromptu way like
Speaker 1: that is really cognitively taxing, so we tend to offload
Speaker 1: some of that burden onto our hands. We also gesture
Speaker 1: more when there's something to gesture at, you know, some
Speaker 1: kind of artifact or model or map or diagram and
Speaker 1: so and you know, the research suggests that the more
Speaker 1: we gesture as we're trying to work something out in
Speaker 1: our heads, the the greater our understanding, the more accurate
Speaker 1: our memory. So we actually want to be getting people
Speaker 1: to gesture as much as possible. I find that really fascinating.
Speaker 1: It is fascinating. It's also can be used as a
Speaker 1: manipulation to the tool for marketers who don't really want
Speaker 1: you to pay that much attention to the words they're
Speaker 1: saying and want of distract you with their hand motions.
Speaker 1: I found that just because like I, I grew up
Speaker 1: like with an auditory disability, so I became hyper hyper
Speaker 1: tuned to nonverbal communication and those bs and and I
Speaker 1: actually cringe when I watch some of these people, you know,
Speaker 1: like like motivational gurus and people you know, like some
Speaker 1: of some of them on YouTube or whatever be like
Speaker 1: the five things that will help you bring, you know,
Speaker 1: and and they're like the overdue with the hand motions.
Speaker 1: But like I actually listen to the words they're saying,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know about that. So interesting, Scott,
Speaker 1: I you know I do. I write in the book
Speaker 1: about how entrepreneurs who are making a pitch for their
Speaker 1: their proposed venture, when they employ the skilled use of gesture,
Speaker 1: they they attract more funding. Now they maybe they're they
Speaker 1: that goes for the charlatans as well as the earnest,
Speaker 1: well meaning entrepreneurs. But you know, I tend to think
Speaker 1: of gesture as another channel of communication, and so that
Speaker 1: channel could be used, could be used for good or
Speaker 1: ill I suppose absolutely, I mean it can be used
Speaker 1: Like when I said be used to manipulate. I mean
Speaker 1: that can be good. You know, you know I want
Speaker 1: or you want to want to convince certain foods or
Speaker 1: she you know, maybe is better worth to manipulate. But
Speaker 1: oh boy, what what other topic? What if I'm missed?
Speaker 1: What have I missed? I feel like we covered we
Speaker 1: covered a lot thinking with our bodies, with our surrounds, now, well,
Speaker 1: here's something I think is super cool about your book.
Speaker 1: The way that we can over the way we can
Speaker 1: unload our ideas into like notebooks and other things. I've
Speaker 1: long argued in the field of intelligence that we focus
Speaker 1: too much on working memory capacity is the core aspect
Speaker 1: of human intelligence, and that you can get a lot
Speaker 1: more intelligence out of people, especially neurodiverse people who working
Speaker 1: memory issues, by allowing them to take these a Q
Speaker 1: tests or things by unloading it from their minds. So
Speaker 1: I've made that argument. I think it's just tells nicely
Speaker 1: with it was a lot of the things that is interesting, Scott.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been arguing since the book came out.
Speaker 1: I've made the point on a bunch of podcasts that
Speaker 1: people who who learn differently or think differently are often
Speaker 1: kind of leading the way in terms of extending the
Speaker 1: mind because because their brains don't work the same as
Speaker 1: as other people, because they're neuro a neuroatypical is that
Speaker 1: how you say it, And they they neurodiversient. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: have had to develop ways of thinking outside the brain
Speaker 1: and using skillfully using resources you know, and not and
Speaker 1: not thinking in the conventional way. But but developing often
Speaker 1: very ingenious solutions that involve thinking outside the brain. So
Speaker 1: and that there's a lot we have to learn from
Speaker 1: people who who've encountered challenges in conventional classrooms and workplaces,
Speaker 1: you know, because they've been forced by necessity to come
Speaker 1: up with really ingenious ways of thinking outside the brain,
Speaker 1: and cognitive offloading, as you mentioned, is one of those
Speaker 1: ways just getting I think all of us can benefit
Speaker 1: from getting that stuff out of our head onto physical
Speaker 1: space where we can manipulate ideas as if they were objects,
Speaker 1: you know, or navigate through them as if they were
Speaker 1: a physical three dimensional landscape, because those are the things
Speaker 1: we evolve to do when we do so effortlessly and easily,
Speaker 1: and to keep it all in our heads again, doesn't
Speaker 1: do justice, doesn't draw on all the capabilities and resources
Speaker 1: that we have as human beings. Yeah, what's the benefit
Speaker 1: of like copying experts? Hmmm? Yeah, Well, in that chapter
Speaker 1: on experts, I talk about and I know you know
Speaker 1: this research about how by virtue of being experts, you know,
Speaker 1: experts find it very difficult to articulate for a novice
Speaker 1: exactly how they do what they do because it's become
Speaker 1: automatized for them, it's become second nature in a way
Speaker 1: that they're not even that's not even accessible to them anymore.
Speaker 1: And yet our systems of education are systems of workplace training.
Speaker 1: They rely on experts teaching novices. So we really need
Speaker 1: to think harder. I think about how experts can become
Speaker 1: more legible examples for novices so that they can become
Speaker 1: more easily copied, because you know, that's another bias in
Speaker 1: our culture that I'd like to push back against, this
Speaker 1: idea that innovation and originality is always better than emulation
Speaker 1: and imitation, because you know, imitation used to be at
Speaker 1: the core of education for centuries. That was, it was
Speaker 1: understood that to master a body of knowledge or a
Speaker 1: particular skill, you emulated the people, the masters, the people
Speaker 1: who did it the best, and you learn how to
Speaker 1: do it sort of from the inside that way, and
Speaker 1: only then could you add your own twist. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a famous professor of composition and rhetoric who
Speaker 1: like to say imitate that you may be different, you know,
Speaker 1: like you, but you first have to master the fundamentals,
Speaker 1: and imitation can be the most efficient and effective way
Speaker 1: of doing that. So I'd love to see the stigma
Speaker 1: that attaches to imitation currently in our society to I'd
Speaker 1: love for that to fade away. Yeah, I love that
Speaker 1: and U but not in like a John Alaire sort
Speaker 1: of way. We don't no, no, no, yeah, there's no limits, no,
Speaker 1: no plagiarism, yeah, no, more like an apprenticeship. Apprenticeship, apprenticeship,
Speaker 1: right and sharing expertise, uh, so important for a lot
Speaker 1: of scientific discoveries. But I've always been fascinated this idea
Speaker 1: of multiples, you know, ideas, great ideas that seemed to
Speaker 1: just be in the air. You know, if you have
Speaker 1: a certain level expertise, and obviously that that expertise is
Speaker 1: not a vacuum. Is not a vacuum, right in some
Speaker 1: cases it is, though there was there's this guy I
Speaker 1: think he independently discovered and came up with calculus with
Speaker 1: literally no knowledge of this the other information that had
Speaker 1: been going on. It's amazing, isn't it. Do you have
Speaker 1: a theory about that, about why that happens? It seems
Speaker 1: like so there's two separate phenomenas, so the multiples, well,
Speaker 1: and I do think it's it's related to what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. I do think that when there's a certain
Speaker 1: certain amount of shared expertise in the air, and people
Speaker 1: there is like something that's ripe if you have that
Speaker 1: expertise and the intelligence, the talent, the background, the resources,
Speaker 1: all these perfect There are multiple people with perfect storms
Speaker 1: that have the perfect storms that they can independently come
Speaker 1: up with it. But I don't have a good suggest
Speaker 1: there's another different phenomena because I was just thinking, like,
Speaker 1: are there instances where a great discovery happened and there
Speaker 1: really wasn't great shared expertise? And there are a few
Speaker 1: instances throughout human history where that is the case. And
Speaker 1: now I'm not going to get all ancient Aliens on you.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like, you know, they were tapping
Speaker 1: into the acrom record or whatever it's called Ansian aliens.
Speaker 1: Actually I was in an episode of Ancient Aliens on Genius.
Speaker 1: So that's why I joke about this, because I was
Speaker 1: actually the expert in that episode and I they did
Speaker 1: what I said in a way that I was trying
Speaker 1: to be very scientific about it. And then like this
Speaker 1: guy was like, well, could it be that they were
Speaker 1: tapping into the aliens? But I didn't say that, but
Speaker 1: but but but there there's got to be an explanation
Speaker 1: for it. And you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I think that maybe you know, there there there there
Speaker 1: is something to be said for talent. There is something
Speaker 1: to be said for uh, you know for some of
Speaker 1: these prodigies. These child prodigies have a certain genetics that
Speaker 1: that they can be traced to their ancestors who had
Speaker 1: certain expertise. So I'm not actually rolling out the idea
Speaker 1: of epigenetic transmission, you know, and that's that's going to
Speaker 1: be shared expertise throughout the ages in inter generationally. So
Speaker 1: that's another region that is that is let's talk about
Speaker 1: talk about cutting edge. I know, I know it really is, Scott,
Speaker 1: it really is. What did we talk about in that
Speaker 1: first uh that first one that I seven years ago
Speaker 1: that I recorded more about the science of learning, the
Speaker 1: science of learning? Yeah, yeah, but I want to listen
Speaker 1: to it again after this. Yeah I will too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be really fun. We know so much more now,
Speaker 1: we're so much now. There are a lot of things
Speaker 1: I wish I didn't know. I know that was more
Speaker 1: naive then, right the line from a Bob Seeger song,
Speaker 1: wish I didn't know now what I what I wish
Speaker 1: I didn't know now what I didn't know then, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: but there's something that I certainly a happy about. I
Speaker 1: would I'd like to leave today's episode with a quote
Speaker 1: that I saw you you write in an interview, you
Speaker 1: had your someone conduct on you. You You said, acknowledging the
Speaker 1: reality of the extended mind might well lead us to
Speaker 1: embrace the extended heart. We didn't bring up the heart
Speaker 1: today at all, the hearts, but I thought we could
Speaker 1: end on this note just because there's so many people
Speaker 1: hurting right now. There's some people so yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1: I just can't not think about it, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like I do these interviews, but like my
Speaker 1: brain just keeps thinking how how blessed we are in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. You know, I know, I know
Speaker 1: you've able to have the freedom of having this conversation. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about how, you know,
Speaker 1: just like ending that note, you know, how they extended
Speaker 1: mind can help us mm hmm. Yeah. I think it's
Speaker 1: so important to see people in their full humanity, and
Speaker 1: their full humanity means their bodies. You know that we're
Speaker 1: in we're in these fragile animal kind of bodies, you know,
Speaker 1: and we are embedded in a place, and the place
Speaker 1: we are affects us so deeply, and we're connected to
Speaker 1: each other. We're not individual atoms just sort of floating around,
Speaker 1: you know, We're really embedded in a network of of
Speaker 1: other people, and we have to take care of each other,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean to me, that's what I was
Speaker 1: trying to say with the idea of the extended heart,
Speaker 1: that maybe if we see each other for the in
Speaker 1: the in the round, you know, in in full, that
Speaker 1: maybe we can have some more compassion for each other
Speaker 1: and extend our heart feeling to them and not see
Speaker 1: them just as you know, lumps of intelligence of larger
Speaker 1: or smaller size, you know, reducing people to how well
Speaker 1: they're able to take a test. You know that I
Speaker 1: find that offensive, and I'd love to encourage people to
Speaker 1: see each other as full human beings. Thank you, Annie,
Speaker 1: You always bring so much knowledge to the table. I
Speaker 1: feel like you every new book you do, does it
Speaker 1: feel like you've earned a new PhD? And at the
Speaker 1: top it feels like that to me too. God, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll just like write like a rip off of this
Speaker 1: book a few more times so I can like get
Speaker 1: my get my money's worth out of it. But I'll
Speaker 1: probably write another PhD with the next book. I'll probably
Speaker 1: get another PhD with the next book, too. Wonderful and wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thanks thanks so much for being on the Psycholic Podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you Scott. This has been a pleasure. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.