Summary of Matthew B. Crawford's The World Beyond Your Head

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The concept of a jig can be extended beyond its original context of manual fabrication. It can be applied to any environment where a repeated action is required, and it helps reduce the degrees of freedom that are afforded by the environment.

#2 The expert constantly rearranges items to make it easy for them to track the task, figure out what to do next, and predict the effects of their actions. They do this by seeding the environment with attention-getting objects or arranging the environment to keep attention away from something.

#3 High-level performance is a matter of being well situated. When we watch a cook who is hitting his flow, we see someone inhabiting the kitchen – a space for action that has become an extension of himself.

#4 Our capacity for advanced cognition depends on environmental props, such as a pencil and paper. Our moral capacities are also highly scaffolded by environmental props, such as laws and cultural practices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822513129

IRB Media

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Insights on Matthew B. Crawford's The World Beyond Your Head

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The concept of a jig can be extended beyond its original context of manual fabrication. It can be applied to any environment where a repeated action is required, and it helps reduce the degrees of freedom that are afforded by the environment.

#2

The expert constantly rearranges items to make it easy for them to track the task, figure out what to do next, and predict the effects of their actions. They do this by seeding the environment with attention-getting objects or arranging the environment to keep attention away from something.

#3

High-level performance is a matter of being well situated. When we watch a cook who is hitting his flow, we see someone inhabiting the kitchen – a space for action that has become an extension of himself.

#4

Our capacity for advanced cognition depends on environmental props, such as a pencil and paper. Our moral capacities are also highly scaffolded by environmental props, such as laws and cultural practices.

#5

The view of human beings that prevailed in economics and public policy in the twentieth century is implausible in retrospect: we are not rational beings who gather all the information pertinent to our situation and then calculate the best means to given ends.

#6

The contrast between the jig and the nudge is not a brief for autonomy. It is instead a discussion of the source of external authority: administrative fiat or something more organic, derived from the social world.

#7

The idea that Americans should be thrifty was once part of a larger cultural setting: the Protestant ethic. The invention of consumer credit early in the twentieth century did a fair bit to dismantle this jig.

#8

The nudge argument is that we are already administered in various ways, but we are not aware of it. And this has everything to do with the managing of our attention by others.

#9

The beginning premise of the behavioral economics studies is that we are poor reasoners in isolation. But this is false,