EXTENDED MIND: Want to Get Smarter? Try Thinking Outside of Your Brain

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Science, Social Sciences, Education, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2021

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Modern life has not been easy on our brains. Average IQ scores rose steadily throughout the last century. Now they appear to be leveling off. The problem, according to neuroscientists, may be that we have reached our neurobiological limits. Our brains simply can’t work any harder. Luckily, science writer Annie Murphy Paul has a solution. In her bold new book, “The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain,” she draws on a wealth of scientific research to show that we’re smarter when we get out of our heads. By offloading our memories onto our phones, making decisions based on our bodily sensations, using tactile tools to solve abstract problems, drawing inspiration from our surroundings, and arguing with our friends, we can access intelligence that exists beyond the confines of our craniums. In this episode, Annie explains how to do it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think the theory of the extended mind has something to say about that.
0:10.0	It acknowledges the built-in limits of the biological brain, but it offers some hope in the
0:15.6	sense that it says, but we can transcend those limits by drawing in these external resources.
0:21.2	That's how we make the most of our sort of biological equipment.
0:26.5	I'm Rufus Grisco, and this is the next big idea.
0:31.0	Today, can you think outside your brain?
0:48.6	I want to begin this episode by telling you three stories about three very different people.
0:54.3	See if you can figure out how they're connected.
0:56.6	The first one is about Charles Darwin.
0:59.8	It's August 1831, and Darwin is another 22-year-old without a plan.
1:04.7	He recently graduated from Cambridge, and he hasn't the faintest idea what to do with himself.
1:10.3	Until he gets a letter from an old teacher.
1:14.3	It's an invitation to work as a naturalist on a two-year expedition aboard the HMS Beagle.
1:19.9	The teacher writes,
1:20.9	there never was a finer chance for a man of zeal and spirit.
1:25.4	Four months later, Darwin is at sea.
1:28.5	He's an apprentice to the ship's captain, Robert Fitzroy.
1:32.2	The two of them have lunch together every day, and every day, as soon as they're done eating,
1:37.1	Fitzroy sits down and writes in his journal.
1:40.2	Eventually, either to flatter his boss or because he can't think of anything better to do,
1:44.5	Darwin starts scribbling too.
1:46.7	He's never kept a diary before, but he takes to it right away.
	...

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