There is a YouTube channel called Smarter Every Day, where host Destin explores surprising results. He had a video a while back about a reverse bicycle, which was given to him as a "gift" and challenge from a friend who modified a regular bicycle such that it simply reversed the handlebar input: when you steer left, the wheel goes right, and vice versa; it was a simple 1:1 gear that mirrored the input/output relationship. (This isn't the first time I'm writing about this, so it may be familiar, but this is an update with fresh insights).

The challenge from the friend was to see if Destin could ride the bike. And his initial arrogance was, yeah, I think I can probably override my habitual way of operating a bike to be successful on this one. But he was very surprised at how challenging (and frustrating) this was. But because he was determined, he decided grind through the training regimen to ride it. He could only spend five minutes each day before his frustration threshold was maxed out. It took him eight months to ride it in any real sense of the word. Eight months of stumbles and crashes (https://youtu.be/MFzDaBzBlL0?si=41t8CaFnn8IMj5e7).

The video is only 8 minutes long, and very interesting and intriguing: highly recommended if you haven't seen it, and still recommend even if you have seen it before.

Steve Jobs has said that computers are essentially bicycles for the mind. He was using the bicycle metaphor to explore efficiency gains in locomotion to the efficiency gains in cognition (a person on a bicycle can get further per energy expenditure relative to mass than any other creature, according to Jobs).

But as a metaphor aficionado, I have to throw a penalty flag. Is efficiency of cognition really what computers give us? Isn't it actually language that is more like a bicycle for the mind, and coordination or cooperation between people is the thing that becomes more efficient?

I'm probably at the edge of metaphor breaking point, but using computers with large language models is then kind of a double-lever of efficiency gain for some kind of cooperative endeavor, but we probably don't know how to even ride the AI bicycle yet. Best get to practicing... Just five minutes a day, and in eight months, maybe you'll make something like progress.

After all, we really are probably at one of the most pivotal moments in history, if you believe this video: https://youtu.be/w5k72A30kUc?si=WcdaNS1-q9I83AJ0

learning theory

Language is a Reverse Bicycle ...