Adaptation is the key to survival — at work, home, or for that matter in any social environment. The exact adaptive mechanism depends on the situation. But a causal explanation for a problem always helps. Essentially why did something happen? Explanations to that `Why` can happen through therapy, through study, or it can also happen when they are combined with motorcycling.  

Understanding the cause requires theory, and adequate explanations mandate good theories applied to correct contexts. Reading provides us with theories. But, hardest part is internalizing those theories and applying them to real life. Marvin Minsky famously said – “You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way”. There is a certain depth and significance to this quote. Any relatively complex theory has several implicit assumptions. One way to discover those implicit assumptions is to apply those theories in multiple contexts and see the predictive power. For instance, here is a theory — ‘”Apocalypse Now” is a great war movie’. But is it great because it’s a war movie? Not all war movies are great, so is it because it’s three hours long and well edited? But, then there are other mediocre movies which share the same qualities. We are discovering implicit assumptions by applying our theories to multiple contexts. This is a lot similar to how basic scientific process works in a lab. 

Beyond the specific question of a movie, we can also apply this refining process to higher levels of abstraction. For example : “Apocalypse Now” is gritty, atmospheric and sufficiently dark. This can be interpreted as an abstract artistic model which now can be applied to paintings, music, lyrics, and poetry! Can we now say someone who enjoys “Apocalypse Now” will also enjoy doom metal? When sufficiently abstracted, a model can be applied to various contexts to discover new information – details about the context where it’s applied and about the model itself.  

To illustrate this principle beyond art — here’s another example of a social theory – `democracy is an effective process to make decisions`. But, if we generalize that to all decision-making, we’d soon be subjected to the whims and fancies of the majority. No organization can function by making all decisions via voting. Sufficiently abstracting an observation into a model, then applying that into a new context enables transfer of learning. It’s a process which is not limited by the boundaries of genres, or scientific disciplines, and is instead tested by limits of our own cognitive boundaries. 

Eventually — abstract, apply, test, and progressively refine mental models can be a universal motto. Higher levels of pattern recognition through consciously articulated theories can lead to a unified causal view of reality. Just like how someone can apply Darwin’s individual and group selection process to multiple layers of a system – biology to social order. Eventually these unified theories provide us with an arsenal to fast track root cause analysis. Every experience cannot be a totally new learning opportunity, instead it should be simply about classifying and integrating into a previously known pattern. This enables us to arrive at the same conclusion through multiple paths of reasoning and live up to Minsky’s advice to `learn it more than one way`. 

Reading is a way to get exposed to new ideas, but as we can see, internalizing them requires reflection. Everyone has their own assumptions and beliefs – own mental models, often with internal contradictions — developed through accidents of nature, nurture, and life experience. So, no matter how good the book is, new ideas need to always take root and evolve within our own mental context. They need to be progressively refined and adapted to fit within our own minds. To get there — some prefer meditation, or just `sleeping over it`, but for restless minds it can be some activity — like rock climbing or hiking — or motorcycling.  

Someone said — you are never on a motorcycle; you are always a part of it. Riding forces us to be outside the cage, vehicular and metaphorical both. At 70mph, reflexes related neural layers are dedicated to sensing impending dangers, while higher levels of cognition are reserved for refining mental models with a picturesque backdrop of passing landscapes. In that sense, when you are a totally different entity, different ways of connecting, interpreting, and unifying ideas simply emerge.  So, the scientific excuse for motorcycling would be to live up to Minsky’s sage advice.