David Brooks— The Social Animal: Mindsight

The truth is, starting from before we are born, we inherit a great river of knowledge, a great flow of patterns coming from many ages and many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past, we call genetics. The information revelaed thousands of years ago, we call religion. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago, we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago, we call family, and the information offered years, months, days or hours ago, we call education and advice.

Some people believe that humans are careful theorizers...rational scientists, constantly weighing evidence and testing explanations.

However, a rival hypothesis states that we automatically simulate others, and understand what others feel by a version of what they are experiencing, in ourselves. In this view we are unconscious Method actors who understand by sharing or at least simulating the responses they see in the people around them. We're able to function in the world because we partially permeate each other's minds and understand— some people more, some less. Human beings understand others in themselves, and they form themselves by reenacting the internal processes they pick up form others.

...the processes of perception and evaluation are intermingled...the more two people imitate each other's movements, the more they like each other— and the more they like each other, the more they imitate.

Minds are intensely permeable. Loops exist between brains. The same thought and feeling can arise in different minds, with invisible networks filling in the space between them.

Most jokes are intensely social and bubble up when people find a solution to some social incongruity. Laughter is a language that people use to bond, to cover over social awkwardness or to reinforce bonding that has already occurred.

People are born into relationships— with parents, with ancestors— and those relationships create people... a brain is something that is contained within a single skull. A mind only exists within a network. It is the result of the interaction between brains, and it is important not to confuse brains with minds.