The Backwards Brain Bicycle - Smarter Every Day 133

SmarterEveryDay · 31.6M views · 2015-04-24 · 7:58

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Overview

Destin of Smarter Every Day learns to ride a bicycle whose steering is reversed, taking about eight months, and compares it with how his young son learned much faster. It illustrates knowledge versus understanding and brain plasticity in adults versus children.

On Hacker News

HN cites it widely in discussions of tacit knowledge, habit, unlearning and adult versus child learning.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2015–2025

Topics

Everyday physics & science demos Neuroscience & the brain Education & learning

What people said

victor106 · 2018-12 · Strong recommendation
From the excellent smartereverday youtube channel [VIDEO] Strongly recommend to watch the above video.He does an experiment on how long it takes to get comfortable by changing the handle bars.
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jw1224 · 2017-03 · Strong recommendation
I agree - surely adults can learn these tennis strokes, even if they are harder to pick up. There is an absolutely fascinating video about plasticity of learning between adults and children that I'd highly recommend watching [1]. A man built a "backwards bicycle", where the handlebars steer the bike in the opposite direction to what you would expect. It was almost impossible for him to ride the bike more than a few feet at a time before falling off. Finally, after 8 months of consistent practice, he could ride it relatively well. When he put his 6-year-old son on the bike (who'd been riding a normal bicycle for 3 years), he had it mastered just 2 weeks later . [1] [VIDEO]
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jonas21 · 2018-12 · Recommendation
Reminded me of this Smarter Every Day video, which is definitely worth a watch: [VIDEO] (The Backwards Brain Bicycle)
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Sources

Video by SmarterEveryDay, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

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