Michelle: We're told to 'trust the data.' But what if the most important data isn't on a spreadsheet? What if it's in the body of a janitor who can outperform a multi-million dollar smart system, just by feeling the building? That's the world we're exploring today. Mark: Wait, a janitor beat a smart building? That sounds like the beginning of a folk tale. John Henry versus the steam drill, but for the 21st century. Michelle: It’s a true story, and it’s the perfect entry point into the paradox at the heart of The Power of Not Thinking by Simon Roberts. Mark: And what's so interesting is that Roberts isn't some armchair philosopher. He's a leading business anthropologist who consults for giants like Google and Facebook. He's in the belly of the data-driven beast, arguing for a more human approach. Michelle: Exactly. He’s making the case that we’ve spent centuries celebrating the brain as the CEO of our intelligence, while treating the body like an unpaid, slightly dim-witted intern. He argues it’s time to give that intern a promotion.

Michelle: And Roberts argues this bias against the janitor's knowledge goes back centuries. It really crystallizes with a guy who probably never had to fix a boiler in his life: René Descartes. Mark: Ah, "I think, therefore I am." The ultimate celebration of the brain. I remember that from Philosophy 101. Michelle: That’s the one. Descartes essentially split the universe in two. You have the mind—the thinking, rational, pure thing. And then you have the body—a physical, mechanical, and ultimately untrustworthy machine. The mind is the brilliant pilot, and the body is just the clunky airplane it has to fly. Mark: So this is why we say 'use your head' and not 'use your spleen'? It’s a deep-seated cultural bias. We see our brains as sophisticated computers, and our bodies as just the hardware they run on. Michelle: Precisely. And that brings us back to that janitor. This story from the book is just a perfect illustration of this flawed thinking in action. It took place in 2006, in the Portland public school system. They decided to get 'smart' and 'efficient'. Mark: I can already hear the ominous music. Michelle: They invested a huge amount of money to install technology to monitor and control energy usage in nearly eighty old school buildings, all from a central desk. Temperature sensors, energy monitors, complex algorithms—the works. The goal was to manage costs with pure, objective data. Mark: And in the process, they could get rid of the expensive, unpredictable humans, right? Michelle: You got it. One of those humans was a janitor who had been tending to his specific, idiosyncratic old high school for over a decade. He knew its quirks. He knew which boilers were temperamental, which rooms got drafty on a windy day, how the heat flowed through the old pipes. He didn't have a spreadsheet; he had a feel for the building. Mark: A feel for the building. I love that. He had a physical relationship with it. Michelle: He did. But the new system made him powerless. His knowledge was replaced by sensors and reports sent to a central administrator miles away. He eventually got fed up and retired. So, what do you think happened to the school's energy bills after this super-efficient, data-driven system took over? Mark: Oh, they had to have skyrocketed. Michelle: They shot up. Dramatically. It turned out the janitor's embodied knowledge—this deep, intuitive understanding acquired through years of physical interaction—was far more effective at managing a complex, unpredictable system than any algorithm. The school system learned a very expensive lesson: they had mistaken abstract data for true understanding. Mark: That's both infuriating and brilliant! It’s the perfect real-world example of this mind-body split. We trust the abstract data on the screen over the guy who has physically felt the building for a decade. It’s a modern-day parable.

Mark: Okay, so if the janitor's knowledge isn't just 'in his head,' where is it? What exactly is this 'embodied knowledge'? Michelle: Roberts defines it as a form of knowledge where we've acquired practical understanding and ability through perception or experience. It’s knowledge that comes to inhabit our bodies. The classic example is learning to drive a car. Mark: Oh, I’ve been there. At first, you’re consciously thinking about everything. "Okay, check the mirror, foot on the brake, signal, turn the wheel ten degrees..." It’s a clunky, mental checklist. Michelle: That’s what the book calls propositional knowledge—a set of rules and facts. But after enough practice, you stop thinking. You just drive. You merge into traffic, you adjust for a swerving cyclist, you feel the car start to skid on ice and you correct it, all without conscious instruction from the brain. That seamless, automatic skill is embodied knowledge. Mark: It’s like typing on a keyboard. I don't know where the keys are if you ask me to point them out, but my fingers do. It's 'muscle memory,' but this book is saying it's more than just muscles, it's a form of intelligence. Michelle: It's a profound form of intelligence. And the book has this fantastic contrast to make the point: the London black cab driver versus a driver using a satnav. Mark: Right, the cabbies who have to pass "The Knowledge." That test is legendary. Michelle: It's insane. To get a license, they have to memorize 320 routes through London's chaotic streets—that’s 25,000 streets and thousands of landmarks within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. And they don't learn it in a classroom. They spend years on scooters, physically driving the routes, "pointing" out landmarks, getting a feel for the traffic flow. Mark: They’re literally embedding a map of London into their bodies. Michelle: And here’s the amazing part: neuroscientists have found that the process of acquiring The Knowledge physically changes their brains. The hippocampus, the area responsible for spatial memory, is significantly larger in London cabbies than in the general population. The more years they've been on the job, the bigger it gets. Their body's experience is literally re-wiring their brain. Mark: Wow. So the satnav user is just passively following instructions from a machine. Their brain isn't changing. They're outsourcing their navigation. The cabbie, on the other hand, has become the map. Michelle: Exactly. The cabbie can improvise. They can sense a traffic jam forming, they notice new roadwork before it's in the system, they can find a clever shortcut. They have a deep, generative understanding. The satnav user only has a set of instructions. Mark: This is where some of the book's critics get a bit stuck, right? I saw that the reception was a little mixed. Some readers felt Roberts creates a false choice between the 'smart body' and the 'dumb brain.' Isn't it really both working together? Michelle: That’s a fair critique, and I think Roberts would agree. His point isn't to dismiss the brain, but to rebalance the partnership. For 400 years, we've put the analytical brain on a pedestal and ignored the body's contribution. He’s arguing that we need to see them as equal partners in the dance of intelligence. The cabbie's brain is changing because of what their body is doing. They are inseparable.

Michelle: And this rebalancing act is where Roberts, the business anthropologist, really shines. He shows how companies that understand this are creating huge breakthroughs that data alone could never achieve. Mark: This is the 'so what' part. How does this apply in the real world, outside of cabs and boiler rooms? Michelle: The book is full of great business stories, but my favorite is about the development of a Motorola smartphone app. In 2014, Motorola was designing a personal security app called Moto Alert for the Brazilian market. Mark: Brazil. A place where personal security is, unfortunately, a very real, daily concern. Michelle: A very real concern. The app was designed so that if you were in trouble, you could press a button on the screen, and it would send an alert to your emergency contacts. The product team, based in the US, thought it was a great, logical solution. They flew to Brazil to get feedback from users. Mark: Let me guess, the feedback was not what they expected. Michelle: They sat down with a user, an event planner named Rogério. He looked at the app and was polite, but skeptical. The designers kept explaining the features, and Rogério kept trying to explain that in a real mugging, you don't have time to unlock your phone, find an app, and press a button on the screen. The team just wasn't getting it. They were stuck in their abstract, logical design world. Mark: They couldn't feel the user's reality. Michelle: So Rogério decided to make them feel it. He got up, went to the kitchen, came back with a big kitchen knife, and staged a mock mugging on one of the designers. Mark: Whoa! That's insane. But I bet it got the point across. Michelle: Instantly. In that one, terrifying, visceral moment, the entire design team understood something that months of market research and data analysis could never have taught them. They understood the feeling of panic, the fumbling, the loss of fine motor control, the need for a surreptitious action. Mark: That's incredible. No amount of data or brainstorming in a safe office in California could have produced that insight. They had to feel the fear, even for a second. What happened to the app? Michelle: They completely redesigned it. The final version could be activated by holding down a side volume key, without ever taking the phone out of your pocket or even looking at it. It was a success born not of data, but of a deeply embodied, if terrifying, experience.

Mark: So what's the big takeaway here? In a world of AI and endless data, are we supposed to just throw out our spreadsheets and go with our gut? Michelle: It's not about throwing out data. It's about recognizing its limits. Roberts's big message is that human intelligence is a partnership. The brain is the analyst, but the body is the scout, out there on the front lines, gathering a different, richer kind of data through experience. Mark: The data of feeling, of context, of physical reality. Michelle: Exactly. The failure of the 'smart' building and the success of the 'mugging' app both hinge on the same truth, which is a quote from the roboticist Rodney Brooks that Roberts loves: "The best model of the world is the world." You can't fully understand it from a distance. Mark: So the challenge for us isn't to stop thinking, but to start noticing more. To pay attention to what our bodies are telling us, whether it's the subtle vibration of a car engine that feels 'off' or the atmosphere in a room that tells you a meeting is going badly, even when everyone is smiling. Michelle: That's the power of not thinking. It's the power of allowing this other, older, more holistic intelligence to have a voice. So the question for all of us is: where in your life are you trusting the abstract map over the real, felt territory? Mark: A question worth pondering. This has been fascinating. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.