The Backwards Bicycle Will Break Your Brain
Here’s a fascinating look at how our brains are programmed to expect certain behaviors from the tools we use, and how difficult it can be to re-program those neural algorithms. Destin was given a bicycle that was designed with a fiendish twist — the steering was reversed so that turning the handlebars left made the bike go right, and vice versa. And he discovered it was amazingly hard to overcome his normal bike-riding behavior, but not impossible. But it took a lot of work.
By trying to ride this bike, he learned something very interesting about the cognitive biases we all have.