# Quote — Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

> Suppose the reasoning centers of the brain can get their hands on the mechanisms that plop shapes into the array and that read their locations out of it. Those reasoning demons can exploit the geometry of the array as a surrogate for keeping certain logical constraints in mind. Wealth, like location on a line, is transitive: if A is richer than B, and B is richer than C, then A is richer than C. By using location in an image to symbolize wealth, the thinker takes advantage of the transitivity of location built into the array, and does not have to enter it into a chain of deductive steps. The problem becomes a matter of plop down and look up. It is a fine example of how the form of a mental representation determines what is easy or hard to think.

- Author: [Steven Pinker](https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker.md)
- Book: [How the Mind Works](https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works.md)
- Page: 291
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker#How_the_Mind_Works_(1997)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works/suppose-the-reasoning

## More from this book

> Status is the public knowledge that you possess assets that would allow you to help others if you wished to.

p. 499 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works/status-is-the.md)

> Humans . . . entered the 'cognitive niche.' Remember the definition of intelligence from Chapter 2: using knowledge of how things work to attain goals in the face of obstacles. By learning which manipulations achieve which goals, humans have mastered the art of the surprise attack. They use novel, goal-oriented courses of action to overcome the Maginot Line defenses of other organisms, which can respond only over evolutionary time. The manipulations can be novel because human knowledge is not just couched in concrete instructions like 'how to catch a rabbit.' Humans analyze the world using intuitive theories of objects, forces, paths, places, manners, states, substances, hidden biochemical essences, and, for other animals and people, beliefs and desires. . . . People compose new knowledge and plans by mentally playing out combinatorial interactions among these laws in their mind's eye.

p. 188 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works/humans-entered-the.md)

> Stripped to its essentials, every decision in life amounts to choosing which lottery ticket to buy. . . . Most organisms don't buy lottery tickets, but they all choose between gambles every time their bodies can move in more than one way. They should be willing to 'pay' for information---in tissue, energy, and time---if the cost is lower than the expected payoff in food, safety, mating opportunities, and other resources, all ultimately valuated in the expected number of surviving offspring. In multicellular animals the information is gathered and translated into profitable decisions by the nervous system.

p. 175 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/steven-pinker/how-the-mind-works/stripped-to-its.md)