Adaptation is the key to survival — at work, at 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 the 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 across 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 that share the same qualities. We are discovering implicit assumptions by applying our theories to multiple contexts. This is a lot like how basic scientific processes of induction and deduction work 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 that can now 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 it to a new context, enables transfer of learning. It’s a process that is not limited by the boundaries of genres or scientific disciplines, and is instead tested by the limits of our own cognitive boundaries. It’s worth emphasizing that abstraction introduces a loss of information, so it should be used carefully as a starting point for deeper engagement, not accepted as is without scrutiny.

Eventually, the motto of abstract, apply, test, and progressively refine mental models can be universal. Higher levels of pattern recognition, when transformed into consciously articulated models, can lead to a unified causal view of reality. Just like how someone can apply Darwin’s individual and group selection models to multiple layers of the social system, from biology to a higher social order. Eventually, these unified models provide us with an arsenal to fast-track root cause analysis. Every experience cannot be a totally new learning opportunity; instead, it should simply be 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 – their 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. Just like how a part needs to be chiseled and sculpted to fit into a larger machine. 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.

Republished at ridersmodel.com