If You Think ReThinking is Easy, Try Riding this Backwards Bike

Last updated on: May 4, 2015 at 3:52 pm by Kyle Roberts

If You Think ReThinking is Easy, Try Riding this Backwards Bike 2015-05-04T15:52:26-05:00 Kyle Roberts

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Destin Sandlin of the SmarterEveryDay YouTube channel has a challenge for you: Try riding the “backwards bicycle,” a bike whose wheel turns opposite the handlebars (i.e. you turn to the right, the wheel goes left). It took him several months of practicing every day to learn to ride this bike–because the normal way had been so deeply engrained in his neural pathways. His young son, however, caught on in only a few weeks.

I’ve been working through Robert Burton’s On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not. Burton describes the process by which our brains become firmly established in a certain pattern of thought or practice or habit. The brain processes information through a “neural network,” a “massive web of neuronal connections microscopically interwoven throughout the brain” (51). This network constitutes what Burton calls the “hidden layer” that pretty much determines, beneath the level of conscious awareness, how we process ideas and events and how we make decisions. That hidden layer functions like a “powerful committee” which organizes, sorts and filters inputs of information–letting some come through and pushing others out of conscious awareness. The network is also responsible for the resistance to change and to re-thinking new ways of doing things. Here’s what he says:

The concept of neural networks also helps explain why established habits, beliefs, and judgments are so difficult to change. Imagine the gradual formation of a riverbed. The initial flow of water might be completely random–there are no preferred routes in the beginning. But once a creek has been formed, water is more likely to follow this newly created path of least resistance. As the water continues, the creek deepens and a river develops…

The brain is only human; it, too relies on established ways. As interneuronal connections increase, they become more difficult to overcome. A hitch in your golf swing, biting your nails, persisting with a faulty idea, not dumping your dot.com stocks in late 1999–habits, whether mental or physical, are exasperating examples of the power of these microscopic linkages (52).

There are so many implications for the phenomenon of the “only human” brain and the power of the “hidden layer” of neural networks.

For one thing, we should try to be consciously aware of the difficulty of thinking outside of our established patterns. Perhaps we can practice doing that. For another thing, we might have more empathy for those whose resistance to our ideas or suggestions seems so intolerably unreasonable.

And for theology: Just reflect for a moment on the implication of the difficulty of unlearning and rethinking well-established “tried and true” beliefs, convictions, interpretations of the Bible, ways of doing church, theological education, and so on. The human way is following pattern, habit, and custom. The challenge of facing those established patterns head-on seems rather difficult; but–at times, at least–must be worth the effort.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/73645804@N00/4805055489″>little story</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>

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