The Backwards Brain Tractor - Smarter Every Day 305

0:00 [Tractor engine running] Good news!

0:02 I fixed the tractor.

0:03 Except, watch this.

0:09 [Destin laughing hysterically] Hilarious.

0:19 It's like the backwards brain bicycle only a tractor.

0:23 Oh, man.

0:29 Oh, golly.

0:30 The steering cylinder was out.

0:33 Actually, I've been amazed at how quickly

0:35 my brain has adapted because of the bicycle.

0:37 Seriously.

0:39 I can do it.

0:43 It's really, kinda fun.

0:50 The steering cylinder had a leak, and I got it repaired.

0:54 I'll show you what I did.

0:57 Put it in neutral.

1:00 It's pretty easy mistake.

1:03 These are swapped.

1:05 I got to fix that.

1:09 Being a country boy is awesome.

1:13 Oh, that's reversed.

1:14 My bad.

1:15 Okay, I have a little announcement here I'm going to make.

1:16 But first, if you're not familiar with the concept

1:18 of the backwards brain bicycle, that's it.

1:21 And years ago, I made this video.

1:23 It's pretty cool because it's got this set of gears on top.

1:26 And when you turn the handlebars one way,

1:28 the wheel will go the opposite direction.

1:30 So the thing about this is it's very, very hard to ride.

1:33 Your brain has a hard time getting over your own brain, and it's fascinating.

1:38 Had I realized at the time that I made

1:40 that video that so many people all over the world

1:43 would be able to relate to that video and understand

1:46 cognitive bias in a new way because of this metaphor,

1:49 I would have changed the video just a little bit.

1:51 For example, there's one moment in the video where I say

1:54 it took me eight months to learn how to ride this bike.

1:58 In two weeks, he did something that took me eight months to do.

2:01 I would just get on the bike, up at the driveway, up and back every so often.

2:05 But yeah, that took about eight months, but I wasn't locked in.

2:08 And what I found over the years that I've had friends

2:11 that have come up to this thing and they've locked in.

2:13 They're like, give me the bike.

2:14 I'm angry because I can't ride it.

2:16 I'm going to focus and I'm going to learn how to do it.

2:18 And they are able to do it in a few days.

2:21 And that's fascinating to me.

2:22 There's something about the quality of the dedication you have

2:26 to the learning of the thing that affects your ability to do it,

2:30 I think that's fascinating.

2:31 Years ago, I wanted to test this.

2:33 So I mailed one to Mike Boyd and challenged him

2:35 to learn it by locking in and seeing what he could do.

2:38 He learned it in an hour, which is absolutely remarkable.

2:42 Now, Mike is not normal.

2:44 He has the ability to learn very complicated things quickly,

2:47 and he has some other skills that probably helped him along the way.

2:50 But at the end of this video, I'll tell you about a common thread between people

2:53 who can do this instantly or in minutes, at least.

2:56 There's been a lot of academic articles written using this as a metaphor,

3:00 and there's something there, because I'm not a neuroscientist or anything,

3:04 there's something about how focused you are on the learning

3:08 that affects your ability to do something like this.

3:10 Now, there's also something like when I got on the tractor,

3:14 the backwards tractor, When I got on that thing, I instantly could do it.

3:17 I didn't have to learn anything.

3:19 I already had that neural pathway in my head.

3:21 In fact, somebody asked me last night, Can you still ride that bicycle?

3:24 And the answer is yes.

3:25 In fact, I have this really cool bicycle,

3:28 and you can just ride it in normal bicycle mode,

3:30 or you can pull this pin and change it to backwards brain bicycle mode,

3:35 and I can ride it in both modes.

3:37 What's interesting is when I hop on this bike, I'm wobbly for a foot or so,

3:41 and then my brain will pick which algorithm I'm supposed to be using,

3:44 and I can just do it.

3:46 It's fascinating, which tells me that once you learn this, you keep it.

3:50 Now, some people that I know, they've tried to learn this stuff,

3:53 and they didn't stick with it very much,

3:55 so it's harder for them to keep the skill,

3:58 but it seems to be something that persist

4:00 once you build that pathway in your brain.

4:02 Big thank you to Jonathan, Manon, and Mike,

4:03 who reached out and offered to help many years ago,

4:06 so they engineered and built this interchangeable bicycle.

4:08 Thank you so much, guys.

4:09 I appreciate it.

4:10 Okay, it's time for the announcement.

4:11 Every year here on Smarter Every Day,

4:13 I create what's called the Smarter Every Day Sticker Team,

4:17 and it's my way of saying thank you to the patrons of Smarter Every Day.

4:21 That support at Patreon.com/smartereveryday.

4:25 I thank people for sticking with me.

4:27 They're stickers.

4:27 You get it?

4:28 It's a dad joke.

4:28 Anyway, So it's also my way of trying to create artificial scarcity.

4:33 So basically, if you jump on the sticker team,

4:36 you're a part of that year's sticker team.

4:38 For example, the first year, we were the supersonic baseball sticker team.

4:43 After that, we were the JWST space team.

4:47 We've done the Exploration team.

4:49 This year, we have three stickers because we figured out during

4:52 the space team years that people like the little stickers, too.

4:56 People have sent me photos of them sticking these stickers all over things.

5:00 For example, this year's first small sticker, there's three stickers,

5:04 this year's first small sticker is good for playing pranks on people.

5:08 For example, let's say your son were to buy a water bottle and it were

5:12 to come in the mail and you were to intercept it before he got it.

5:16 So the first sticker is a cicada.

5:19 Now, we had a cicada thing happen this year in the US.

5:22 And so this looks like a cicada with a white border.

5:25 That doesn't look real, does it?

5:27 But what you realize is this is actually a transparent sticker,

5:31 and it actually looks like a cicada.

5:34 So when you put it on something, it makes you do a double take.

5:38 You're like, Wait, what is that?

5:40 It looks really cool.

5:41 So when you put this thing on a wall somewhere,

5:44 it looks like some random thing is stuck there and it confuses people.

5:48 And I have had way more fun with these stickers than I care to admit.

5:51 They're really, really cool.

5:52 So that's the first sticker.

5:53 The second sticker, you may recall during the Eclipse this year,

5:57 I worked really hard to take this really cool film photo on one piece of film.

6:03 Now, I tried to get that sticker on...

6:06 I tried to get that image on a sticker.

6:08 It didn't quite work out, so we made a graphic representation of it.

6:11 This form factor is pretty cool.

6:12 This long sticker ends up working really well on a laptop

6:17 or maybe on a lunch box or something like that.

6:20 But I really enjoy seeing where people put their stickers.

6:23 People have sent in photos over the years of where they put their stuff,

6:26 and I'm excited to see where people end up putting this sticker.

6:29 The big sticker this year, the name of the team,

6:32 this year we're calling it the Smarter Every Day Discovery Team,

6:35 and it's just a hodgepodge of all the stuff

6:37 we've studied this year on Smarter Every Day.

6:39 We've got the cicadas, we launched a rocket, we've got the eclipse.

6:42 It's a really cool sticker to commemorate what we've done this year together.

6:47 I would love it if you would consider

6:48 supporting Smarter Every Day on Patreon at Patreon.com/smartereveryday.

6:53 It's a really big deal because when you support...

6:56 I'm trying to pick up a cicada.

6:57 Because when you support Smarter Every Day on Patreon,

6:59 that frees me from the pressures of the algorithm,

7:03 allows me to take the time to make videos about things I really, really like.

7:08 So there's a few videos I did this year

7:10 that I knew weren't going to perform well in the algorithm,

7:12 but they were very important to me.

7:14 And I think authenticity is key.

7:16 And I want to continue to make intelligent, respectful content.

7:19 And I'm grateful to everybody that supports on Patreon

7:22 because you really allow me to do that.

7:24 So everybody that's supporting by the end of the year,

7:26 I'm physically going to mail you these stickers to your house

7:28 and you'll get to do whatever you want with them.

7:30 You got to stick them somewhere because you

7:31 can't just put a sticker in a drawer.

7:33 It needs to be stuck.

7:34 That's what stickers want to do.

7:36 So anyway, thank you so much,

7:37 everybody that supports on Patreon, Patreon.com/smartereveryday.

7:42 I think a good way to end this video is to drive some more backwards things,

7:47 in this case, the backwards tractor.

7:49 Here we go!

7:50 Put it in gear.

7:52 Go forward, turn the wheel to the left.

7:56 The tractor goes to the right [Destin laughing] Oh, man.

8:03 Oh.

8:11 Is that good?

8:14 That's hilarious.

8:16 I got to go switch those hoses now, but for the time being, it's very funny.

8:35 So good.

8:37 I thought you'd enjoy that.

8:39 I'm Destin, you're getting Smarter Every Day.

8:42 Have a good one, hah!

8:45 Okay, I came out here to shoot the thumbnail for the video,

8:49 and it was out of steering fluid, even though I swapped the connectors.

8:56 So clearly, I have a hard time getting this tractor running.

9:00 But a couple of things I wanted to say.

9:02 While preparing this video, I realized that there are a lot of people

9:06 that have made videos about the Backwards Brain bicycle.

9:09 There's one guy on YouTube, his name is Laser Saber.

9:13 He made a video about being able to ride it almost immediately.

9:16 And also Carl, who did the remote control helicopter stuff

9:19 for us during the helicopter series way back in the day,

9:22 he could do it very quickly.

9:24 People that seem to be able to ride

9:26 the bike immediately all have one thing in common.

9:29 They're drone pilots.

9:31 They seem to be able to do this way quicker than most people.

9:35 I think that has something to do

9:37 with the fact that they invert things in their head.

9:39 They can fly things inverted.

9:41 I thought that was really cool.

9:43 I just wanted to note that.

9:44 Turns out power steering systems like fluid.

9:47 That's good.

9:50 Also, that nut is loose there.